The Three Month Vacation Podcast

This is not a regular podcast episode but a quick announcement about Fritoon... Your chance to receive a funny cartoon direct to your inbox every Friday. Visit psychotactics.com/fritoon , to sign up! Enjoy

Researching an article is so frustrating because it's time-consuming But there are ways to beat the pressure—and the pain. Believe it or not, there are ways to be productive with zero last minute research. This episode shows you how to make advance research work for you, as well as in situations where you have no research at all. Sounds too good to be true? Well, listen to the episode. Click here to read online: How to research an article (without killing your productivity)  

Readers often get lost in an article and hence abandon it. However, there are pretty simple, yet powerful methods to let the reader know exactly where they are in the article at all times. Plus when you use these techniques, you push the reader forward as well. Here's how you go about using these "Transition Techniques". Read on the website: Transition Techniques  

Websites are daunting projects but even the casual listener is astounded to learn that a website took three years to complete. Of course there's a story, so here we go with the tale. Read on the website:  New Psychotactics Website Story ==== Back when I was in university, my friend, Shelly Brown sent me a recording of a rap band called Run DMC I listened to the music patiently, then decided rap had no future. As you can see, I'm a lot worse than most people at predicting the future. Even back in 2008, I had friends in the industry, who were talking about mobile as being the next big thing. But there we were in the middle of 2015 with no intention of creating a mobile-friendly site. I figured mobile had no future, so why bother with a new website when the existing website was doing just fine? However, what prompted me into action was a little chat with a client This client was into some sort of search engine optimisation, and he suggested it would be a good idea to create a new site as well. While we'd designed all the earlier sites, I was clearly out of depth when it came to mobile, which is why I left the entire task of design to the client. The design he produced was so horrific, so hard to describe, that there was no choice but to abandon the project. But now we'd been bitten by the redesign bug. And so, on July 27, 2015, the first website sketch was done. It would be another three years and ten days before the website went live. Planning is priceless but plans are useless I don't think we'd ever decided a fixed date for the release of the website, but shortly after a burst of initial designs, we ran into a whole bunch of barriers. The first was the Headlines Course, that started up in August. In 2015, I decided to add headline trainers to the course as well, which complicated my life a bit. When the course was done, we got an unexpected invitation to go to Nashville. There was no point in making such a long trip just to attend a seminar Which is why we decided to have a workshop of our own on the topic of storytelling. This meant notes needed to be written, slides had to be created, zillions of cartoons needed to be drawn for those slides. And yes, the website went into the first session of deep freeze as we conducted our workshops in Nashville and then Amsterdam. Which brought us right into 2016 and the promise of a renewed resolution to get the website going. However, remember how I wasn't clued into mobile? It had been over six months, but I was still working out how mobile designs worked differently from earlier websites. Which meant that the very pretty looking Photoshop designs looked gorgeous in the program, yet terrible on the site itself. Plus we were so much in love with our sidebars that we wanted them on the new website as well until we saw how messy it all looked on mobile. While I was spending inordinate amounts of time on websites like Squarespace, March came along, which brought about the biggest challenge of 2016. As you're probably aware, we tend to treat our courses like software Every now and then we'll do a major update even if a course is selling extremely well. I'd grown tired of the Article Writing Course and Version 1.0 had to somehow move to Version 2. In theory, this rewrite shouldn't have been a problem. I'm pretty adept at writing, as well as at creating course material. But there's also a factor of laziness. If I can procrastinate, I will, and the only way to get going is to announce that we're rolling out Version 2.0. The challenge was to write the course material while the course was in progress We tend to send course material at least a month in advance, and clients got Version 1 of the audio and notes. While they were working their way through the new course, I moved everything around. And by everything, I really mean everything. Assignments that were in Week 8, were moved to Week 3. Whole sections of the course were chipped away, while others were completely discarded. It may not sound like a lot, but every assignment takes over 3 hours to write because it includes complete step by step instructions as well as detailed examples. Then to add to that workload was the notes and the re-recording of the audio series. All of this was happening while the course was in progress. To say I was fried after all of this activity was putting it mildly I remember a whole week of headaches. My sleep wasn't so good either, and my head felt like Neil Armstrong could take a walk on it. By the time we headed to India in July, on vacation, my blood pressure was up, and so was my cholesterol. To talk about or think about the website was not much of an option, yet that's exactly what we did when we got back from our break. And the website might have still been ready to go by end 2016, but we had two painful technical problems One of those was our broadband connection. The broadband connection and other issues. If you drive around parts of Auckland, you're likely to see signs that say, “fibre connection coming in 2019”. And back in 2016, if there was one thing I wanted more than anything else, it was that fibre connection. All around us, everyone seemed to have broadband. Plus our home, it seemed, was the furthest away from the Phone junction. This meant that like a water pipe, everyone got their water, and we got just a tiny trickle. It was so bad that it would take 4 to 5 minutes to upload 5 MB of data. And just as a matter of comparison, in order to upload the podcast I had to go to the café down the road and stand there for 10 to 12 minutes. If I was brave enough to upload a file from the office, it would take anywhere between 12 to 16 hours. It wasn't until 8th August 2017 that we got a fibre connection Suddenly we were 500% faster and we could actually get around to the website. That didn't mean that our work process improved dramatically. Because of some technical difficulties we had hosted the sandbox website on another server. That server was extremely slow and it took ages to get any of the pages updated. When it's a single problem that you're dealing with, it doesn't seem much more than a bother, but these problems were cumulative. The software, the Internet connection, the server — they all piled upon each other to create a perfect headache. Still, when you're faced with barriers there is no way but to go forward. Anyway, by August 2017 we had our modem, did a little modern dance and got on with the job of completing the website. It was late in the year, and we were a bit exhausted The membership site at 5000 BC had been upgraded and there were the usual pieces of the puzzle that didn't fit in. When all of that had subsided, it was time to head to Australia. I had a speaking engagement in October, but we decided to take a couple of weeks off in Bryon Bay. That was October, and before we knew it December had rolled along and it was time for another New Year's resolution. But it's really 2017 where things got going However, we had this start, stop, start, stop for so long that any progress was frustrating. At times I just wanted to give up, but there was no way of going back. We had to go forward. Here's a note from as late as August 2017. Part of the problem was my own doing I didn't want the website to be a rehash of the earlier one. If we were going to create a new website, we needed a new look, and this included dozens of cartoons. But luck does play a role from time to time. Without putting much thought into it, I bought an iPad Pro. I'd owned iPads before and they were mostly glorified book readers, but this one was different. The software, Procreate, combined with the Apple Pencil, allowed me to do a lot more sketching. Before the iPad Pro, I was chained to my computer and Photoshop. But once I got the iPad Pro, I could go anywhere and draw. In fact, I would lie on the sofa and generate quite a few cartoons. It got to the point where I was creating about a dozen cartoons a week. This was a critical component of the new website and the new look. To have all those fresh cartoons with a style that represented where we were in 2017 was pretty important. In the iPad, Pro played that role in getting me to draw at a furious pace. It's August 2018 as I write this note If you were to ask me what was the most challenging part of the website, I could cite the broadband, the server, the software—lots of little things. What took me by surprise, however, was the testimonials. Of all the elements on the website, the testimonials took the most time to put together. A single testimonial would involve four different sections to be updated. Then there was the size of the photographs. The photos on the previous site were tiny, some weighing in as small as 8 KB. That would not do for the new site, but we had hundreds of testimonials and many of them need photos. That's when my great Facebook and LinkedIn scavenger hunt began. I'd look for the clients first on Facebook, then if I couldn't find them, I'd go to LinkedIn. Some of the testimonials go back in time, so clients had updated their photos. I couldn't tell if they were the same people, so I had to read through the bios just to make sure I wasn't putting the wrong photo alongside the name. The only reason why the website got completed in 2018, was because there was no choice We work for about 12 weeks and then we take a break. This means that any sort of project which is ongoing, like the website, gets put on hold. But not only does it get put on hold, but everything else takes priority. We have to queue the newsletters for when we are gone, and also the podcasts. And then we have to queue a whole bunch of newsletters and podcasts for when we get back. However, looking at my calendar I knew that if we postponed it past August, it would never get done in 2018. This is because the article writing course was due to start in August, and that is extremely demanding. After the course, I knew I had a speaking engagement in Australia, and then a vacation coming up. That would mean we would be tossed straight into 2019. It had to be launched before August rolled out. However, all of this frenetic activity had taken its toll I was pretty exhausted and so was Renuka. We decided to take a week off in Fiji even though the website was ready to go. The web developers, Audrey and Mangesh, from Stresslessweb.com were keen to get going in late July, but Renuka was adamant that the break came first. That meant another ten days or so of waiting. But it was a good move. In Fiji, we did almost nothing. No swimming, or snorkelling—zero activity. It wasn't so much a vacation as a change of scene. We'd have breakfast and Renuka would head back to the room, check e-mail and fall asleep. We'd have lunch and we would nap for another few hours. This was pretty much the routine for a week before getting back and setting the launch date for the 6th of August. Even at that point, there were a few hiccoughs I can't remember what we were waiting for, but the cartoon I drew seemed to reflect my mood. And then on the 7th of August 2018, at 10 am, New Zealand time, we were not quite live. There was a “site soon to be back again” sign on the website and we were told to do a sanity check. But sanity was the last thing on our mind. Renuka wasn't in the mood to go through hundreds of pages, or even the most important pages. If things didn't work, we'd fix it later. An hour later, at 11:17 am, the site was live. Three Years and about a month—that's what it took And this is just Version 1. I'm still working on the pages I really want to do. But first, I need another vacation. Those changes will need to wait until next year. Footnote: Now that the website is live, I have to thank the dozens of volunteers from 5000bc.com who have combed through several pages and Renuka's inbox is flooded with suggestions. Some of these suggestions are simple typos, but others reflect the sophisticated nature of our clientele. It's going to take several months of work to get through all the suggestions, but that's what needs to be done. we are extremely grateful to all of those who volunteered in 5000bc.com, and especially grateful to Audrey and Mangesh, who put up with a lot of stop and start activity over the years. Their business, StresslessWeb.com is really what kept our stress at bay. Without their technical expertise and without 5000bc, this task would have been infinitely harder and we'd still be working on the website in 2020. Next Step: The Psychotactics Story: The Craziness of The Very First US Workshop

It sounds bizarre to make your own products, courses and services redundant, but it's a very sound strategy that's been used by companies such as General Motors, Apple—and oh, we've done it for almost as long as Psychotactics has existed. What's it about? Let's find out in this episode. Read on the website: The Cannibalisation Strategy ======= In 1923, Alfred P. Sloan took over a company that was far behind its closest competitor The company in the first place was the Ford Motor Company with a monstrous 60% of the market. General Motors, in comparison, was lagging far in the distance at just 20%. Part of the reason was Ford's Model T, which was far more affordable than what GM was offering. Sloan decided General Motors could never win a price war and so he rolled out a completely different strategy GM rolled out not one, but five different brands. Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac—these were all from the same company but had their own identity and were pitched at different economic brackets of US clients. When we look at what he did, we see a cannibalisation strategy Let's see: how would we describe a cannibalisation strategy? The concept seems more straightforward to understand when we think of software or a specific software like Photoshop. For the past 25 years or more, Photoshop has been through thousands of changes and had about 27 versions. Each version cannibalises the earlier version. Today the program works through a subscription model and upgrades without fanfare, but until quite recently, a new version of Photoshop would effectively be the death knell for an earlier version. It meant that Version 8, would cannibalise Version 7, which in turn cannibalised Version 6, and so on. What Sara is referring to is a concept called cannibalising your product When we brought out The Brain Audit, it wasn't designed to be a version—as in Version 1.0. We were so new to the business that we were happy just to have a book that clients were buying. Nonetheless, the earliest version of the book needed an update, but we called it an upgrade (just like they do with Photoshop). The Brain Audit went from Version 1 to Version 2. And then to Version 3 and finally sits at Version 3.2. With every iteration or upgrade, existing as well as new clients bought into the product. The Brain Audit was cannibalising the previous versions, and all the time, we were getting newer clients and earning revenue. Which is General Motors did very effectively The strategy to overcome Ford was built around how the client would operate. At least in the case of their cars, they'd come back to buy a higher priced brand as soon as they could afford it. What we'd call the upgrade is essentially a concept of cannibalisation. When Sloan took over as president of GM in 1923, Ford was the dominant player in the U.S. auto market Ford's Model T cost just $260 ($3,700 in today's dollars), and Ford held 60% of the U.S. car market. General Motors had 20%. Sloan realised that GM couldn't compete on price, so GM created multiple brands of cars, each with its own identity targeted at a specific economic bracket of American customers. The company set the prices for each of these brands from lowest to highest (Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac). Within each brand, there were several models at different price points. By 1931, a mere eight years after Sloan took over; he combined some excellent financial management and cannibalisation strategy to turn the tables on, Ford. GM had a 43% stake vs Ford's 20%. What do we learn from this seemingly simple concept? When most of us create a program—whether it is a service, a product or course, we're super happy for a while. Then we tend to get bored and want to create something entirely new. And I do this as well. I'll create an Article Writing Course, and then I'll be itching to create a storytelling course, with the fancy name of “Traffic light storytelling”. No one is suggesting you stick to one product endlessly. However, when you go back and cannibalise your product, you create two markets—new buyers and existing clients. The Article Writing Course is no longer on Version 1.0 And clients have not only bought the new version home study, but they may also come back to do the new course online, as alumni. Take the copywriting course as well. That's going through a metamorphosis as we speak and later this year, Version 2.0 will be available. The storytelling course we talked about earlier? That's been done live in Nashville and Amsterdam, but guess who's keen when I announce a newer version? It doesn't mean we don't create new products, courses or products. But it does mean that the existing products and courses are given a significant upgrade. When you get down to writing your course or even offering a service look at it as Version 1.0 And when Version 2.0 is on its way, offer it to clients. And you'll experience what Apple does with its phones every year, or what Photoshop did for years, and certainly what catapulted GM over Ford. Cannibalisation may sound weird to you. Well, then just call it an upgrade. Next Step: Here are a few marketing strategies that work extremely well for small business.

It seems natural to keep an eye, even get obsessive about your competitors. However, it's a poor strategy for many reasons. In this episode we make the case for why the competition doesn't really matter as much as you think. And why focusing on them could possibly cause clients to desert you, instead. Here is the website link: Ignore Competition === There is a story about an author who wrote a book The book was incredibly cheap, and as a result, he was able to sell several thousands of them. The competition looked at the increasing volume of sales and decided they could do the same. However, to their frustration they found themselves losing money. The reason why they had such significant losses, was because the book production cost more than the price that it was being sold for. And in this little tale is the story of competition. Most of us are reasonably obsessed with our competition We don't start out that way. When we start out, we are in awe of the people who have already made it. We don't consider them to be “competition” at all. They seem so far ahead of us that they are more like people we admire. We don't feel we need to compete against them. However, in time we make more significant progress, and we see that we are on par with them in several respects. That's when we decide that they are officially competition. It also makes perfect sense to watch what the competition is doing, so that we are not left behind. Which is precisely the point where things can start to go wrong Let's say you're a competitor of Psychotactics. And you notice that we are selling home study versions of the Article Writing Course, the Sales page course etc. And you decide, “Well, I have the same courses, and let me create some home study sales for myself as well”. All good so far, and let's assume you sell a few home study versions, but your sales are crappy. You're possibly selling 2-3 copies a month, and that's it. You are convinced something is wrong with your system and you keep trying to copy what we're doing. You spend hours trying to tweak your website, trying to track down where we're posting and copying what we're doing. You probably did your due diligence in every area, except one. You possibly forgot to ask: What is our goal? Simply trying to monitor the competition is fine for inspiration, but if you don't know why the competition is doing what they're doing, you are simply creating a nasty scenario for yourself. Remember the author who wrote the book? What was his goal? His competitors assumed it was the profit margin from the book. In reality, the author was also losing money, but his goal was not to earn from the sales but to build a client list. That client list then bought other products and services from the author, which is how he made his real fortune. When it came to the home study versions, we too had a strategy Back in 2016, I decided to write a brand new version of the Article Writing Course. That was Version 2.0, and it was built from the ground up. I didn't refer to the earlier notes or audio. I took what I knew (based on the knowledge we'd gained in the last ten years) and put it in the course. By the time I'd completed creating the new version, I was exhausted. So tired, in fact, that I didn't want to do any courses until 2017 Courses form at least a fourth of our income, and not doing the live courses online meant that we'd have to forego that income. It's at this point, that my wife, Renuka, came up with a strategy to sell home study courses instead. Remember, we were already selling home study courses, but they weren't doing so well. The primary reason for the not-so-great sales was that we were promoting the live courses and had no bandwidth on the newsletter to also promote the home study versions. However, once I got super-tired in 2016, there was little choice. It's at this point, that we also made a radical choice We decided to sell only 35 copies of the course even though it was digital. It may not make sense to restrict a sale of a digital product, but we wanted to create urgency and scarcity (something you should do too). In essence, I got taken off the live course schedule for a whole year, and that was our first move. The second move was to create the waiting lists with the urgency and scarcity Two quick moves that from an outsider point of view are almost impossible to decipher. How are you supposed to know that all these micro decisions were taken along the way? How would you know if we got results or not unless I were to reveal the results to you? But if you're a competitor, how can you know all of this detail? It's impossible to know, and so you copy, but it's a blind copy. You're spending so much time and energy trying to work out what we're doing when in reality you should be working on your own product or services. If you really want to monitor the competition, you have a full-time job Sure you can find gaps in their products and services. And yes, you can find out where they're advertising and who are writing about their offerings. You can also track which podcasts or sites they appear on, thus saving time with your own research. You can also maybe, possibly, work out the threats that are headed your way. However, by and large, all these activities suck up a humungous amount of time. In reality, the best form of defence is attack—or co-operation. When you think about it, every restaurant is almost automatically a competitor for another restaurant, even if it doesn't serve the same food. However, at least at the top level, restaurants will vie for awards, rather than go around poking into the kitchens of other restaurants. To get that Michelin star, they have to up their own game. There's often not much time, let alone any point in trying to worry about other restaurants when you have your hands already full. Which is why your efforts are much better used trying to create your own uniqueness, than worrying about what others are doing in your own space. And if you can't beat them, you join them Almost all of our business over the years hasn't been as a result of an attack, but instead from cooperation. All the websites that we've guest-blogged on, all the podcasts we've appeared on, and every event that we've spoken at—they're all that you'd traditionally called “competition”. We don't see them as competition and instead we've worked with them very successfully. Even two of the biggest rivals—Windows and Apple worked together In 1997, Bill Gates invested $150 million in Apple, for shares of Apple non-voting preferred stock. Microsoft was going to support Microsoft Office for the Mac for five years while Apple agreed to make Internet Explorer the default web browser on the Mac. Apple was desperate for cash that the time and Microsoft was able to shoo away the concern that it was getting to be too much of a monopoly. They just shook hands and worked side by side with each other. Does this mean you never have to look at the competition? In reality, you never do. You just have to focus on your clients, instead. Clients have a problem they want you to solve. If you can solve that problem extremely well, there's more than a chance that clients will choose you. All the information you have about the competition isn't going to change the fact that clients will make their own decision based on the information in front of them. Plus the client sees the world differently than we do as business owners. For example, if you were to run a restaurant, you'd likely see other restaurants as competition. Clients don't see the world the same way as we do. They see the marketplace as a choice. A place where they can pick and choose what they like. In terms of the restaurant analogy, they will eat Japanese food today, Indian food tomorrow and gorge on fish and chips on Friday. And it's the same sort of decision making they do when dealing with us at Psychotactics. They will buy a marketing product from us and buy it from some other marketing company next month. Even if you and I have worked at becoming a unique product or service, in the client's eyes, you're mostly just a commodity. If they don't buy it from you, they just go elsewhere. They may find the competition to be inferior and hence come back, which is what most of our clients do. And that's one of the reasons why we encourage them to go to the competition, instead. And yes, I get it. It does take a lot of guts to send your clients to competition but think about it for a second. Aren't they doing it anyway? For instance, Renuka and I drink coffee at five different cafes. Is it because the coffee isn't good at Cafe No.1 or Cafe No.2? Clients are going to buy from the competition anyway, with or without our help. The more time you spend trying to figure out what the competition is doing, the more likely you are to stay a commodity. In my opinion, trying to pay close attention to the competition is a waste of time Too much changes too quickly and by the time you figure out what the competition is doing, they're well down the track. By the time those wannabe authors figured out the profit-making backend strategy, they'd already lost too much time and money. ˇˇNo one is saying you should stick your head into the ground and not pay attention to what's going on around you. However, other than the cursory knowledge of what's happening in the market, it's really a complete waste of energy and time to bother with the competition. Or as the popular comic, Mad Magazine used to write in their slogan: No.1 in a field of one. That's something worth aspiring for. Next Step: Why selling your secrets to competition is a sound business strategy

When it comes to testimonials for our product or service, we assume clients have to get to the end. Or do they? The reality is that it's a mistake to wait until the end because anyway clients aren't giving you a review of the entire product or service, but only a small section. But what structure and system do you follow to get a testimonial—or even to get the client to respond to your request? Let's find out in this episode on pit stop testimonials. Read on the website here: Pit Stop Testimonials -------------------- How do you know if the fruit is ready to be picked? According to monk and philosopher, Matthieu Ricard, here's how you do it. “You reach up to the fruit and touch it. You don’t have to pull and break the branch to get the fruit. You just touch it, and it falls in your hands.” Which is fine when you're dealing with fruit, but what do you do when your course, product, workshop or consulting is still unfinished? One of the most frequent questions I get is one about testimonials And clients ask: How do I get testimonials if my product is new? Or they may make a comment which goes like this: The course I created is so new that no one has completed it yet, so it will be a while before I can get these testimonials done. I have one student who is in part 3 (of 3), so hopefully, she will be ready soon. It's easy to see how you can wait forever to get a testimonial—or do you? Let's take both the situations and deal with them separately. Situation 1: You have a brand new product, course or service Situation 2: The product, service or course is not brand new, but no-one has finished it yet. Situation 1: A brand new product or service When I was young, I'd occasionally get to see a movie before everyone else. Movies were only ever screened in the cinema, and to get to see a movie, days, often a few weeks in advance was a rare treat. However, my father seemed to know people who did these early screenings which got us into the movie theatre in advance. However, there were other people in the same cinema hall. Who were these people, I wondered. My father told me they were movie reviewers. They'd get to see the movie in advance; then they'd critique the movie in their newspaper or magazine columns. Not a lot has changed in terms of advance reviews Movies still run private screenings so that they get reviews as do books, software and pretty much most products you can think of. In most cases, if you have something physical or even digital, someone can go through it and give you a review. You may or may not have a list of clients or subscribers. If you do, you can ask them to review your material. If you don't have the list, you may well be able to ask on social media, in forums, or in your networking group. Some of this review process can start earlier than you'd expect Most of us tend to finish our books, tie up the courses, go through from start to end in a training program. And you don't necessarily have to go to the end. You can get someone—even a friend—to help you while you're still putting that course or book together. They can not only be a source of feedback and information, but they can then give you that testimonial. To give you an example, let's say I was putting a course together on cooking Indian food At this point, if you go to the Psychotactics website, you'll see a recipes page with yummy food photos and recipes, but there's no mention of any recipe book or course. Let's say I wanted to create a course or book. I could invite a friend, or people from my networking group, members from 5000bc, or anyone who was interested. Take my friend, Els Jacobs, for instance. We communicate almost daily through Facebook messenger. And I send her some recipes, and she tries them out and gives me her feedback. Now let's say I wanted to get that book or course going, I could get Els and others like her to be on a sort of beta program where they tested the product and gave their feedback. And here's a question for you: Do you think they'd be likely to provide a testimonial sooner than later, even though the product isn't ready? It's easy to believe that a product needs to be complete before you get your testimonial However, let's assume that your product is ready for the market. In such a case, you have to get some early reviews, so that you can put the product on your site or in your marketing material. In such a situation, you have to reach out to someone you know—or some group that you belong to. However, this is precisely the point where things tend to go wrong. You try to get people to review your product, but no one is interested. Several requests later, you've received no response at all. Why should this be the case? Part of the reason is you're asking for too much When you ask people to review your book, your course, your entire long and winded consulting program, you're asking me to put my life on hold, to meet your deadline. Most people simply ignore such requests, because they're already busy. Even the most helpful people shy away from such a complex task. Which is why you make it easier by breaking it up into pieces. In early August, we launched a new version of the Psychotactics site A week before the launch we asked our members at 5000bc if they'd be keen on reviewing the site. What was the response? It was terrific, but why was this the case? The reason for their enthusiasm was two-fold. We promised we'd get them to review just ONE page. And we had clear guidelines as to what feedback we wanted in return. When you look at most people asking for a review, they do just the opposite. They ask their friends or clients to “review the site”, or “review my book” or “give your critique of my course”. Are you surprised there's little or no response? If you really want to get a response, you have to have both elements in place. You have to give the reviewer a tiny piece to review, and you have to give them guidelines—clear guidelines. And that's when you get reviews in advance. Not surprisingly, if you follow this practice of asking for specific feedback on specific sections, you also solve the second problem. This takes us to the part where we look at: The product, service or course is not brand new, but no-one has finished it yet. Situation 2: The product, service or course is not brand new, but no-one has finished it yet. Early in 2016, we launched a three-day Sales Page course workshop in beautiful Queenstown, New Zealand. And six clients made their way from the US, UK and Australia to be on that course. How can you get a client to give you a testimonial for the course on the first or second day? You almost know the answer, don't you? It's not unlike the website review situation. Instead of the client talking about the entire course, they can talk about a section, instead. Maybe they were surprised to find out that the sales page needs to be written from the bottom up and not top down. Perhaps they learned how to create a uniqueness from the features and benefits. Or let's say they understood how they could create bonuses from the bullets. All these three aha moments come through on the first day of the course. Does the client have to wait until day three to give a testimonial? In our case, the clients had flown in all the way to New Zealand and weren't exactly leaving in a hurry, but it's still exhausting to collect testimonials on the last day when your brain is like a fried potato. If anything, we tend to get clients to give testimonials right through the course itself. Some give their testimonials early on the next morning, some in the lunch break and at other times of the day. You see what's happening? The product, course or service is brand new. No one has finished it yet, but why do they have to get to the end? No single testimonial can cover every single aspect of the course anyway. A client is always going to give you just one or two points that were of value to them. Why not ask which part was of value to them? When you do, people will be happy to volunteer. Or you could change the question. You could say, what did you find in Section A that was useful to you? Or what did you find in Section B? Or Section C. This line of questioning causes the client to review what was important and, if requested, they would be more than happy to give a testimonial. Your product or service may be unfinished Or it might be that clients haven't quite reached the end of your book or course. It doesn't matter, because you can still get testimonials if you structure things well. However, there still might be a problem getting a testimonial, if you don't set things up. Let's say you're quite desperate for a few testimonials You don't have people in a room like in a live workshop, so you are dependent on them getting back. Nonetheless, you can improve the odds right from the start. When a client buys your product or service, you can let them know you're keen for feedback and testimonials. Would it be possible to get their feedback early—long before they finish the product? Would they give their feedback on the first chapter itself? It might seem premature—almost like a fruit that's not ripe—but you'll be surprised at how many people say yes, but provided you don't use the word “testimonial”. Unless they know you well, they're likely to want to give a testimonial only after they get to the very end. But feedback? They can give feedback from the very start. While in this feedback mode, they'll also want to balance things a bit. They may tell you what you can improve (which is great for you) but also what impressed or changed things for them. And that's your moment—ask them whether they can elaborate on that point. They are likely to do so, which in turn gives you your testimonial. And there you have it. You usually have two situations where you struggle to get a testimonial. Situation 1: You have a brand new product, course or service Situation 2: The product, service or course is not brand new, but no-one has finished it yet. In both situations, it's relatively possible to get a testimonial well in advance. And strangely, Matthieu Ricard is right. You reach up to the fruit and touch it. You don’t have to pull and break the branch to get the fruit. It’s just “touch it, and it falls in your hands.” You just have to set up the situation so that the client is ready well in advance. And that's how you get your testimonial. Next Step: Find out—The Six Questions To Get Outstanding Testimonials

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 block our progress. Click here to read this article on the website. --------- 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 the 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. Let's say you have to make an Indian dal (dal are split pulses or legumes) You're going to need onions, tomatoes, some chillies, ginger and garlic paste and about five-six spices. It's at this stage that the professional and the wannabe seem to have plans that are diametrically different. Let's take the act of chopping onions How do you chop an onion efficiently? Here's what you do: • You cut the onion from head to toe, not through the belly. • If you follow the first instruction, the peel comes off way faster than if you went through the belly. • You then hold the half of the onion, chopping methodically and evenly (but only three-fourths of the way) • Finally, you cross cut the onion, and you get chopped onion that's precise and cooks evenly. A similar amount of preparation is involved in the skill of article writing, as well A wannabe writer will look far into the future, towards how the article is written. That writer might even spend hours wondering how to start the article. But that's not what professionals tend to do. Professionals head right into the zone of prep work. They know it's the preparation—the onions, the tomatoes and the spices of the writing—that's what matters. They work on getting topics together. They then realise that topics are too broad, so they move to the sub-topic and even to the sub-sub-topic stage. When that phase is complete, they get into the act of outlining. Some scribble outlines in a matter of minutes, some colour their outlines with explicit detail. What is the wannabe writer doing at this stage? The wannabe is doing triple somersaults about what's down the road. They're eager to get past all of this nonsensical planning, outlining, topics and other blah, blah. All of this prep work is somewhat of an obstacle, and the sooner they get over it all, the more likely they are to get to the finished work. But any professional will tell you that the endpoint tends to be the most straightforward bit. All of the energy goes into the prep work. And this brings us to a critical point The prep work can be truly exhausting. Writing an outline can take anywhere between 30-60 minutes. That's on top of the time taken for the topic or sub-topic. And that's not counting the story you're going to need for the First Fifty Words. All of this prep work is truly frustrating at the best of times. Which is why the pros always focus on reducing the energy needed for the prep work. They know that if they can shave off the time taken to write a decent outline, they'll go from 60 minutes to 30, from 30 to 20, from 20 to ten—and even possibly just a few minutes. If they work on getting stunningly fast at their preparation stages, the end product takes care of itself If you want to find someone who struggles with their writing, drawing, cooking—or any skill—look at their preparatory stages. They're slow. They're inefficient. They may still turn out a great product, but it's mind-numbingly energy-dependent. By the time they're done with their project, they have to rest, take long breaks. They dread starting up another project of a similar nature. I was that person If you look at my drawing today, you'll think I was always this good at cartooning. And the thing with cartoons is that it leaves a trail. Even if you don't consider yourself much of a critic, you'll see giant strides all of a sudden. At one point, back in 2000, I was already a good cartoonist, but if you look at the work today, it seems remarkably superior. It's easy to put all of this down to practice because most of us don't see the prep work. But today, I put in more prep work than ever. I'm continually adding reference material to my iPad. There are over 800 images that are like ingredients for when I finally start to draw. I'll have several cartoons in stages of progress, all waiting to see the light of day. I'll toss out ideas to my wife on our walk and see how she reacts, or I'll send it to friends via messenger and wait for their response. And I do the same with my cooking. I cook a new dish for every meal. Unlike in the past, our fridge never seems to have leftovers, because we cook and we eat. The process of prep work has become so energy efficient than having stale, and reheated food makes no sense at all. It's taken years to understand what makes some people so incredibly productive. If we're paying attention, we'll all eventually come to an unmistakable conclusion. Prep work needs to be ruthlessly efficient Take, for instance, the Article Writing Course. In the Article Writing Course, the client has to learn about topics, sub-topics, about outlines and the first fifty words. And yes, as a teacher I'm looking at the assignment every single day. But I also want the daily log of the participants. I want to see how long they took to do the assignment. I want to look at how much time they spent on learning. I am more than slightly keen to read about their state of mind. Are they dreading something? Are they overthinking ahead? Are they getting confused by second-guessing? All of this information in the daily log is more important than the assignment itself. It paints the detail of the prep work and how they're going about it. This isn't to suggest that the end isn't important Having a goal, even a hazy idea where you're headed is definitely the way to go. However, it's easy to place all your attention on the endpoint and forget that it's the tiny components that it's the prep work that makes the journey more fun, instead of more dread and drudgery. To finish, let me tell you a story about John Wooden You may have never heard of John Wooden. He was a coach. An excellent basketball coach. In the space of 12 seasons, he won 10 championships with U.C.L.A, putting him in orbit all of his own. John Wooden holds the fantastic record for national championships in men’s basketball at ten. The next closest “competitors” are a couple of coaches who only managed a “paltry” four championships each. But John Wooden had a strange starting point to his coaching system At the start of every season, he taught every basketball player on his team to tie their shoelaces. Shoelaces? Surely there were better things to learn than tying shoelaces. But Wooden did it every year. And he had a reason why he went through this seemingly mindless routine. “Badly tied laces lead to blisters”, he would say. “And well-tied laces mean you don't easily get sprained ankles”. Notice something? Wooden wasn't focused on the final score. Instead, the prep work mattered. Take care of the prep work and becomes incredibly stunning at it, and the end—mostly the end will take care of itself. Next Up: For too long we've treated teaching and learning as an activity that needs endless slides, pages and work. But what if clients get better results having fun? Find out—How To Speed Up Client Learning With The Incredible Power of Infotainment.

It's one thing to get attention, but how do you use it on sales pages? And what about articles? Can we use it there as well? In this second part we see how the power of objections work for sales pages, when creating information products and also with articles. It's real, it's practical and it works. Here we go!

Most of us avoid controversy because it brings up too much pushback. But what if you were able to get your very controversial topic across and delight your clients? Let's find out how to ramp up that curiosity and controversy-level without alienating your clients. Click here to read online: Ramp up curiosity. ------- Do you know the exact date the Earth was created? If you lived in the 18th century, you learned that the world was created on Saturday, the 22nd of October, 4004 BC. And not just any moment on 22nd October, but “on the beginning of the night”. This idea of the Earth being just 6000 years old is preposterous to us living in an age of science, but back in those times, the only geology textbook was the word of an Irish bishop and theologian called James Ussher. It was in this world that James Hutton came up with his theory of the Earth James Hutton is called the founding father of geology. In 1747, Hutton had just graduated from medical university. He was a bright young man, but his sexual exploits and drunkenness got him in trouble. He got his lover, Miss Eddington pregnant. This scandal caused her to be rushed away to London to give birth, and Hutton went into self-exile from Edinburgh to a small family farm in Slighhouses, Scotland. It was at this remote, damp, seemingly boring place where he came up with the theory of how the Earth was formed. While observing the side of a hill, he noticed bands in the cliff face. Over time, he realised there were possibly hundreds of bands of sediment laid one on top of the other, compacting itself into rock. Hutton's great insight was that the creation and destruction of land wasn't one day in October, 4000 BC, but instead a remarkably slow build up over time. Today, in the world of science we have a term for this slow build up of land. It's called “sedimentary rock”. He mulled over these ideas for over 15 years, trying to drum up enough courage to put them forward. Then in 1785, he presented his radical idea to the Royal Society of Edinburgh The Society rejected his theory almost immediately. And as if that were not enough, the members of the society branded him an atheist. Hutton was God-fearing, and he must have felt the sheer weight of how his ideas were being rejected out of hand. History is full of instances where ideas were too controversial to be accepted. Ignaz Semmelweis concept that washing hands saves lives was considered to be bizarre, Alfred Wegener came up with the concept of continental drift and was thoroughly rejected. Nicholas Copernicus was sidelined because he stated that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe. And we too are faced with scepticism when we present an idea. While our ideas might not be as earth-shattering as these great scientists, they're still very important to us. The only problem we have is that our concepts are controversial. They're ideas that are very hard for clients to digest, and therefore we tend to stay on the safer, more boring side of life. But what if there were a way to present your controversial idea? 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. And we'll do it by using the power of objections. Let's find out how objections work and how and when to use them to maximum effect. Let's do this in three parts. Part 1: Why you should not discard a controversial idea Part 2: How examples, case studies and practical demonstration reduces pushback Part 3: Three real life applications: article, sales page and info-product. 1: Why you should not discard a controversial idea What caused the slow decline of newspapers? If you were to ask this question to most people today, the answer would likely be quite prompt. Most people are likely to say: It's the Internet. The news online is free and can be accessed at will. It can be tweaked to your taste, has video and other interactive content—plus, it's searchable. It's not hard to see that the Internet was the most dominant factor in the decline of the newspaper industry. Except there's a neat little graph that tells a different story If you started the graph back in 1945, you'd notice how the trend heads south. 1955 has fewer readers per household but is better than 1965, which in turn is better than 1975. As you hurtle through the years, the readership drops precipitously as we get to 1995—and the Internet as we know it today didn't even exist back then. In his book called “The Content Trap”, professor Bharat Anand, brings up a concept that we'd consider to be quite odd, if not outright controversial. However, the very nature of the controversy is what jolts your audience to life If you were to read an article on “how to increase prices”, you'd be likely to be interested, but something that talks about “how to decrease your prices” might seem controversial and ignite a much higher level of curiosity. But is this controversy really necessary? Can't we get our ideas across without having to raise hackles all the time? It really depends on the situation Take for instance the formula that most marketers tended to follow. Marketing strategies comprised of finding an audience, a target audience. Once you knew who you were targeting, you needed to state the features and benefits of that product or service. This sequence of events would get you your desired result, or so it seemed. Which is why we ran into instant pushback the moment we started speaking at small events in Auckland and parts of New Zealand. The earliest version of The Brain Audit did have the concept of Target Audience and Benefit, but it suggested that the most important element was the Problem. Not only was the Problem the most important, but it needed to show up before the Solution or any kind of benefit. Controversial ideas don't always land on fertile ground With The Brain Audit, we did get people saying that they loved the idea of the Problem. However, by and large, people felt the entire concept was negative. Why bother leading with the problem? they asked, especially when the solution has worked so well for so long? What if clients respond badly to the problem? They liked the other parts of The Brain Audit, but the concept of the problem needed to go, or so it seemed. The reality is that controversial concepts need to stay When your audience is saying, “this won't work”, they're simply objecting. They're saying, “we can't see how this will work for me, and could you possibly be so kind as to give us some proof?” Which is exactly what Bharat Anand does in his book—and he does so at many levels. First, he pulls out a graph of newspaper circulation per household over the past 70 years. Then, to bolster his point, he talks about a Norwegian media group called Schibsted. Schibsted published newspapers too, and their costs had spiralled upwards while the returns were horrific. They had a loss of over 200 million kroner. By 2011, Schibsted had turned the ship around. Its operating profits were up to about $220 million—nearly 60% of the entire group. Bharat Anand realised that controversy can be a friend When you introduce a controversial idea, there's instant pushback, but also instant attention. The pushback is merely the objection that needs to be tackled. Once he was able to furnish the proof, that attention level morphs into intense curiosity. The reader, or the audience, want to know more because their worldview has not only been changed, but there's proof to back up the sudden change. When presenting The Brain Audit to a sceptical audience, I had the same aha moment I could start off by being like everyone else or could choose to advance the idea of the Problem being the most critical element of all. Which is why I'd go through a demonstration of picking up a piece of paper and crumpling it into a ball. That would get the audience's attention, but then I'd suddenly throw the ball towards the audience. Instantly people would duck or swing their heads away from the oncoming missile. Without too much fuss, I was able to demonstrate that a ball of paper might get their attention, but when thrown at them, that very paper got far more people to react. It's more than likely that you do things that aren't run of the mill They may well be controversial, and it's easy to believe that it's safer to stick to the well-trodden path. However, all that's missing is the understanding of the objection. When James Hutton came up with his theory of sedimentation, sure he was ridiculed, but part of the problem was merely that he couldn't explain several facets of his theory. Granite was considered to be the Lord's foundation stone—the first part of the Earth to be created. Hutton, on the other hand, claimed that granite was an example of a recent development. And, he suggested, that rock had not so long ago, been almost liquid. See the controversy at hand? Sure you do, but you also are hooked into the excitement that would follow if there were proof. And that's why the controversy concept is so very powerful. You push it towards your audience, and they, in turn, push back. They come up with every reason why your idea is nonsense. As you get more objections, you are quickly able to figure out which one of those objections recur with the most frequency. That's gold for you Now you've got controversy, but you also know what's getting the most attention. And then, you also have proof. However, it's not always easy to overcome the sceptic with one level of proof. How much proof do you need and how do you present it? Part 2: How examples, case studies and practical demonstration reduces pushback What material makes up Saturn's rings? Saturn's rings hadn't been a mystery for quite a while. Galileo discovered Saturn's rings in 1610, and by the mid 19th century, astronomers knew that there were two large concentric circles. However, no one seemed to know what the rings were comprised of. And more importantly, why did they not somehow disappear or float away? Over 200 years had passed since Galileo, and the rings were mostly a mystery until the Cambridge college announced a competition to solve the mystery of the rings. However, they also wanted mathematical proof. It's into this space, that James Clerk Maxwell entered Just 25 years old, this physicist decided to take on the challenge, and he did so by the process of elimination. Saturn's rings could either be solid rock or ice. The second hunch was that they were liquid-based. The final possibility was that there were millions of tiny particles. What Maxwell did was working it out by pure mathematics Through maths, he showed that a solid ring would be bunched on one side of the planet. The liquid explanation didn't work either because they would be quickly broken up by physical forces acting upon them. Which led to the final possibility: that the rings comprised of a large number of independent particles. What Maxwell did was to write an equation to tell you how many—yes, how many—particles would be needed to have the system stable. In short, James Clerk Maxwell used the power of demonstration to get his point across. The fact that he used complex maths to do it is fantastic, but it also underlines that we can overcome objections through three separate methods. The beauty of overcoming objections is that you can do it either using just one, or even all three of the methods. Let's look at the methods, first • Examples • Case studies • Practical demonstration. Let's start with examples and go right back to the presentation of The Brain Audit Faced with an onslaught of objections, it was essential to come up with the “roll the paper into a ball and throw it at the audience” trick. However, that was just the starting point. I'd then come up with an example to get across the point that the brain focuses on a problem, first. I'd talk about how you might go out to dinner and let's say you were wearing a white shirt or white blouse. At dinner, there's a bit of an accident, and the pasta on the plate seems to fly towards you. Fortunately, the disaster is averted, and you get a tiny bit of orangy-red tomato stain on that white shirt. The stain is almost pathetically tiny and will easily disappear when you have that shirt or blouse cleaned. However, the stain represents a problem. Then, you get to the state of obsession to somehow clean or at least minimise the redness on the apparel. However, for some, practical examples are not enough However, you could use a second, if you could, right? Which is precisely what I did as well. Because the most significant objection was that the problem represents a “negative view” of the world, I'd ask if anyone thought that weather forecasts were evil. Let's say the weather forecaster was to tell you that a thunderstorm or hurricane was headed your way. Would that be a bad thing to do? Or let's say you went to a warrant of fitness for your car and you were told you'd need to change the rear tyre or you'd have a nasty accident. Would those instances be negative or positive? In every situation, you realise that the audience shifts from the objection zone to moving across to your side of the fence. And all of this is done by simply taking on practical examples that you encounter in everyday life. However, for some, practical examples are not enough Proof—they want proof—and let's make it something that someone has written a paper on. Luckily there is proof pretty much everywhere, if you go looking for it (I hear there are people who you can pay to research for you as well). To get back to the point, I'd found this interesting experiment by Dr John Cacciopo. The late Cacciopo was a neuroscientist ran a test. He showed his subjects three different sets of pictures. The first was a picture of something positive—like a red Ferrari or a delicious pizza. The second picture would be a picture of something mundane, like a light bulb or a plate. The third would be a picture of a dead cat. I'd tell the story of how Cacciopo would record the electrical activity of each participant's cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex, in turn, reflects the magnitude of the information processing taking place. And then I'd tell the audience what Cacciopo found. The brain reacts more strongly to stimuli it deems problematic. Or to put it another way, when faced with a problem vs solution, the problem gets our attention. This cat vs plate vs Ferrari was a case study that quelled the objection but did so from another angle. Which leaves us with the third method—practical demonstration The crumpled paper was one way to demonstrate the power of the problem, but I'd put chairs between a participant and me. I'd then ask the participant to walk towards me. In every instance, they'd swerve past the chair. Why the swerve? I'd ask the audience. The answer was pretty obvious, wasn't it? If you slam into the chair, you could hurt yourself. “The brain sees the chair as a barrier; a problem”, I'd explain. Slowly, but surely the audience would have enough of examples to hold on to, thus getting to understand that as controversial as the “problem” may be, it's the way we do things in real life. It's the way we make purchasing decisions or just about any decision. However, you have to pick your media In an article, you might use an example and a case study. In a presentation, you might be able to have all three: the case study, the example and the demonstration. And when you read the same concept in a book, you could put in all three elements and have even more than one of each. In The Brain Audit book, there's an example of dog poo and Lisa's laptop before it moves to the Cacciopo case study. On the very next page, we swing back to the flashy car vs your 1980s gas-guzzling sedan. And then for good measure, there's a sort of demonstration where you're comparing between economy and business class. Or business class and first class. It doesn't end there There are examples of a slow computer, the weather report, the timing belt or cam belt in your car, and a coffee break. Yes, indeed, so many instances and that's only half the chapter. If you think it must be tedious to read so many examples slamming in one after another, you'll find to your surprise that it makes for easy reading. If you were to pick up your copy of The Brain Audit today, you're bound to be amazed at how the controversy has been stamped out in a simple, elegant manner, by using a lot of examples, demonstration and one solitary case study. Pushback isn't always permanent In most cases, you have to look at the objections as your guiding light. They're telling you exactly why people get edgy when you bring up your ideas. Instead of trying to evade the objections, hug them tightly. Then take those very objections and find the examples, case studies and demonstrations to drive home your point. In doing so, you've done something quite familiar. You've rolled out the stages of The Brain Audit. The controversy is the problem—and we now know that the problem does get the attention of the audience. And the objection quelling exercise is indeed the solution. This happy moment takes us right into the third part: how to use it for a sales page, an information product or an article. Next Step: Have you read the The Brain Audit?Here is an except: Find out why clients buy and why they don't