The Three Month Vacation Podcast

Why do some books, courses or workshops end up becoming so addictive? Is it the teacher, the system, the information, or is it all of the above? In this podcast we look at why your business needs a bit of movement through three precise stages. Those stages are information, results and elegance. Elegance is hard to resist, but how do we get there and how long does it take? Is there any guaranteed way to get to elegance? Let's find out in this episode.

We tend to believe that we're more overwhelmed than ever before. Yet look around you and you see people who are doing twice or thrice as much. It's hard to admit it, but often their work is of a higher standard too. How come they're not overwhelmed? Is it because they're more talented, or is there something that we're not quite seeing? Let's find out in this episode.

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. Click here to read online: Onboarding is Crucial -------------- There are three distinct stages before we order a meal in a restaurant. The first stage is when you're standing outside the restaurant, deciding whether to go in. The second stage is when you get welcomed into the new space. Finally, it's when you first get acknowledged after sitting down; you get a glass of water, and a menu. All of this happens so quickly that we don't realise that every stage is essential. More so, the very same steps have to play out when you're getting a client into a new space, like a membership site, course, or even an offline store. The first stage is before they enter your site or course. The second is how you greet them and the third and equally crucial stage is how you make them feel within “minutes” of entering that new space. These three sequential steps are what you'd call “on-boarding”. Every stage of on-boarding is vital because if we were to go back to the restaurant, would you be happy if no one received you once you entered? And having been assigned a table, how long would you wait before stalking off when you got no service? All of these ideas and this very sequence seems particularly vivid when we think of restaurants, yet we fail to roll out these systems when clients sign up. The importance of onboarding can be boiled down to a single term: safe zone Standing outside the membership site, course or workshop, you are trying to gauge if you're making the right decision. Once you do get in the door, it's equally important to feel as if you're in a safe space. You need someone real to step up to you and take care of you. Instead, what you get is an automatic e-mail that confirms you're in the membership site and then it's just a bunch of weekly e-mails that don't have the slightest personal touch in place. Now wait a sec, no one is saying you shouldn't use automation What's about to follow is how automation doesn't become a crutch but is a handy companion that allows a small business to keep in touch with clients and prompt them to consume what they've purchased. However, depending on automation alone is a mistake. At some point very early after the client has shown up to your “restaurant”, a real person (that's you) has to make yourself available. If you're surprised at where this article is going, it's only because of how a large part of the internet works. They take a hands-off method and wonder why there's constant churn. Which is why they then have to do constant advertising (which in itself takes time), joint ventures etc. to make sure their membership site doesn't look barren. At 5000bc, we like to see ourselves as a restaurant. And here are some of the things that we do within less than a month of a client joining the site. • Tiny increment autoresponders • Cave Guides • Taking Action • Contact individually • Chocolate • Buddy • Country welcome • Video conference • Tags In this episode, we will look at three things. 1. Tiny increment autoresponders 2. Cave Guides 3. Taking Action 1: Tiny increment autoresponders Have you noticed how there's a lag when you're talking to customer support on chat? Let's say you get to a site. On the right-hand side, you see a little button that signals you can talk to someone. You click on the chat button and almost immediately you get a response. It may say something like, “Hi, I'm Maria”, how can I help? You automatically assume Maria is around and start to type your question. It then seems to stall you for a while, asking for your name and possibly a phone number, just in case you're disconnected. Then, there's a lag after you type in your details. So what just happened? I'll tell you what. You were talking to a machine. All that “Maria bit” of chatter was an automatic back and forth and once you got past a certain point, it handed you over to a real person. And for the most part, no one is wiser, or unhappy, but it allows the transaction to go ahead pretty flawlessly. This is what automation can do well, if used intelligently. Which is why we use autoresponders. It makes sure a client gets into 5000bc and then continues to gain from it. Some clients jump right in, introduce themselves and are off the mark right away. Others may not enter right away, and things go on the back burner. It's easy to buy something these days, fully expecting to use it, but then other distractions take over. Hence the autoresponders. There are seven that show up in the client's inbox, over a period. The welcome Meet others Next step Cave Guide Handy tools Two questions What you expected Every one of these autoresponders is meant to do something similar to what you'd experience in a chat. They're designed to engage with the client. It means that in the early stages, you're giving a sense of what's where (it's mostly information). But as you go down the line, you're called to participate and given many options to do so. At every single stage, Renuka or I respond back to the client. If you've ever gotten an e-mail from us, and replied, we write again and keep conducting a conversation, asking questions, etc. It's not just a “here you go, it's automation, and you're in a funnel”. Instead, the emails are designed to help us help the clients to consume what they've bought; to get use of the resources; to find others just like them. Without the automation, it would be too much for a small business (or any size of business to handle). It's a nightmare keeping track of who's been contacted, what they've been told, etc. The automation allows us to give the pertinent information to the client and then to work with them on an ongoing basis. That's the starting point, and there are a lot more elements in place. The second primary factor is the Cave Guides. Why are Cave Guides essential? Let's find out. 2: Cave Guides When I first visited Paris, I got lost for several hours. I thought I knew my way around, so one morning before Renuka was up, I stepped out for a walk. I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, because I couldn't find my way back. What made it worse was I knew Renuka would be up and getting ready to go out for some croissant and coffee, but she wouldn't know where I was, or how to reach me because we never have any data on our phones. Worse still, though I can read French reasonably well, I can't speak much, if at all. It was nearing 9 am, when I had an idea. I walked into an Internet cafe, and typed in the destination. It worked out where I was, and where I needed to go. With a printed map I was able to make my way back in half an hour or less. Google Maps had calmed me down and helped me get back when lost in a new city. Cave Guides perform a similar function in 5000bc When you get to 5000bc, it's a whole new city, possibly a whole new world. At this point, there are hundreds of articles, vanishing reports, and over 322,000 posts of extremely valuable discussions. When a client signs up to 5000bc, they have a heightened sense of anticipation. However, it's very possible, despite their excitement, that they find themselves on an unexpected road, and get lost. Which is where the Cave Guides come in. The Cave Guides are 5000bc members who volunteer to help those who are new in the membership site. A guide doesn't necessarily give any business advice, but instead merely gives you the chance to familiarise yourself with the city. However, it's the feeling of safety that's more important than just familiarisation When you and I get to a new place, we are apt to be uncertain and tend to make mistakes. Some clients will push through, but others may feel silly when they make a mistake. Others still, may not even attempt to make a move as they think they are guaranteed to make an error and be publicly called out. And this fear could be justified as there have been numerous instances where people are made to feel small and insignificant, in the full glare of a large group. Having to deal with one person, and a person that's specially dedicated to being a guide, brings a tremendous amount of safety to the entire exercise. Even seemingly “trivial” questions are asked—and they seem “trivial” to the person asking the questions, but in fact they're huge barriers to getting comfortable in that new space. It's an integral part of the onboarding process Just like in a restaurant where someone is usually around to receive you, you need to have some guide to help you along. If you walk into an Apple Store, for instance, you'll see this level of guidance occurring as well. When I walked into the Apple store for the first time in 2008, I had been a Windows user for years. Everything about the Mac was weird and unknown, if enticing in some way. However, because I could make a quick appointment with someone at the Genius Bar within the store, enabled me to get my questions out quickly and safely. In a course, we have onboarding of a different kind With the cartooning course, there's a fair bit of posting cartoons and linking to be done, which is why the entire first week is about slowing down the progress. The clients get assignments that enable them to get familiar with the forum and how to get their cartoons to display. With headline course, or any other online course, clients are given extremely tiny instructions so they can get through the first week familiarising themselves with their environment and with each other. At a live, onsite workshop in a city, we have a meet and greet the evening before. The clients are often told what to expect the next day, and wherever possible we take them to the room itself so they're comfortable and can show up having gone through a rehearsal of sorts. Being a guide or having a guide is essential for a company When you're selling a product or service, it might seem like a big bother to take so much trouble to get a guide system in place. It might seem that a guide might be betters suited for a workshop or course instead. However, every entry point is fraught with the chance that the client may get lost, sometimes for a short while, but often for hours, just like I did in Paris. That one mistaken turn might put them off getting back and they've lost the chance to be part of your wonderful enterprise and you've lost a potentially fantastic client. Which is why you need guides or at least a guided system that everyone follows. But that guide is still just one step. What's needed is a sense of comfort. How do you achieve this sense of happiness? We find someone who's familiar. Let's find out how it all works and why it's so imperative. 3. Taking Action Way back in 2009, Mackay Rippey (a founding member of 5000bc) made a suggestion. “How about a Taking Action forum?” he asked. That was the start of a journey that's had a ton of ups and downs, but today is the core of creating a quicker onboarding. Why? Because getting into a new community is always scary. There are far more people than you want to deal with. The Taking Action section forms a tiny little capsule where you (and just one other member) can create a bond and move ahead in tiny steps. You'd think a taking action post would be easy for clients, right? It's not. As Nobel Laureate, Richard Thaler says: It's not that people are dumb. It's that life is hard. And taking action is one of the hardest things that a person can do, but also one of the most critical steps for onboarding. Let's take the example of 5000bc first and experience the journey of a client, before heading out to see how it may work in other cases both online and offline. In 5000bc, a client signs up to become a member They do so for reasons of their own, but primarily are interested in relevant information, access to me, priority for courses—but also to be part of a community. The moment they join, they wander in, may add their details and photograph, look around and leave. Will they come back? Sure they will, but to get value out of their membership, they have to come back more often. They have to not only absorb the information but implement it. This is precisely the point where things start to go off course. The client is often too unsure to ask for advice, and they lurk. The key is to get them out of lurk mode, which is where the Taking Action forum comes in At first, the Taking Action forum was just a place where you went and posted your goals. In time, the instructions got refined because it was easy enough to get started, but then lose track because of a lack of planning. When we look at the Taking Action Forum today, it has seven steps. They read like this: Here are the easy steps to play. Step 1: Name your goal. Step 2: List what you'll do. Keep it restricted to 2-3 things. Step 3: List how you intend to do it. Step 4: List how much time you'll spend on it daily x 21 days (this is very important) Step 5: What resources you have/ What help or information you need. Step 6: Start date/finish date. Let's keep it for 21 days. Step 7: Don't miss this step: Get a buddy: It is always good to have someone nudging you along in case you start slacking off. Sean me an email me, and I will assign you a buddy: renuka@psychotactics.com All of the steps are important, but there's one that surpasses them all Naming the goal, the list, all of that organisation—that's all crucial to the success of the plan, but the most critical element of all is Step 7: getting a buddy. It's obvious when you think of it, right? What does a buddy do for you? You're in an unknown forum, a new membership site and are bound to get lost. You can't depend on the power of the group, but another person—your buddy—is easy to lean on and learn from. Plus, it's easy enough to lose steam when you're trying to motivate yourself. When you have a buddy to keep you going, the very act of knowing someone is waiting nudges you on. The Taking Action Forum works incredibly well in many cases And the reason why it works so well is because it gives the newcomer a tiny space and a friend. That's usually all we need when we enter a website—or at least a membership site. However, the dynamics may change depending on the business itself. In the courses, like the Article Writing Course or cartooning course, the group size is larger at about 5-7 people. The same applies to the group size in live, on-site workshops. And there's a reason why this is the case. When working on an individual goal, the input, often just the nudge from another person is enough. When it comes to learning a skill like writing or drawing, the higher the contribution, the better. Also when the client is part of a group, they're able to see what the others are doing, and most importantly the mistakes they're making. This in turn, reduces their error rate, and it keeps the group going. However, the moment you start to go beyond 7 people in a group, you're asking for trouble. About 7 is just right to create activity and keep the momentum going. Beyond 7 you merely have anonymity and it's not hard for clients to slip away. No matter whether you have a membership site or something offline, you want to get them involved with a human We get so gung-ho about technology that we forget that we're humans first. And that humans seek humans. But once they're done finding the other person, they also want to contribute. And this contribution needs to be towards their cause (their action plan) but also help the other person. The combination of settling in and getting moving is probably the more natural way for a new client to get going, without being too much in the spotlight. The final question is: does it work? For the most part, it does, but it doesn't work automatically. In our case at 5000bc, we make sure that we pair up clients. In the workshops and courses, it's the same. All of this requires a bit of groundwork on your part. When one of the pairs goes missing—and it happens—there needs to be a mechanism in place so that the client can get in touch with you and you can assign another partner. It's easy enough to dismiss this activity as too much work, but it gets clients in and keeps them coming back. Which in turn means you don't have to spend all that time and money—and energy, I might add—trying to get new clients all the time. Onboarding is crucial, and a big part of this onboarding is getting people to know each other and start working on a project. When we started out the forum back in 2009, based on Mackay's request, we had no idea how useful it would be. However, it's been one of the main areas for us and I suspect it will be for you as well. Start up a Taking Action Post to take action on your membership site. Oh and before I go If you haven't yet subscribed: Here are the links to get all the Psychotactics articles, goodies and podcasts automatically. iTunes | Android | E-mail (and get special goodies) | RSS  

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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. We go deep, but not too deep into how to create evocative titles. If you've ever struggled with a title, here's a system that will work almost every single time.

Most of us aren't really sure how to know if our articles are really good, or even if an idea is good. It gets more complicated when we have a story that we love. Does everyone love it too? Malcolm Gladwell shows us how to get precise feedback and do it in a casual manner. Right click here and ‘save as' to download this episode to your computer. Or read it online: Lessons from Malcolm Gladwell ------------------------ What I learned from Malcolm Gladwell- Part 1 When I was in university, all I wanted to be was like Christopher D'Rozario. Chris was the creative director of an advertising agency called Trikaya Grey. However, I soon wandered away from that dream and then wanted to be like Bill Watterson, the creator of the comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes. But even that dream went into deep freeze as I transitioned to wanting to be a writer and ran into a book by Malcolm Gladwell called “The Tipping Point”. It was my tipping point in a way I loved the way Gladwell wrote, and for the longest time I yearned to know how he came up with so many cool stories. His research seemed exhaustive and to be like Gladwell was one of my big priorities. Then, like everything in life, you move on, and life pulls you in its own current. Even so, recently I watched a series made by Masterclass.com about Gladwell on Writing. I went in expecting to learn interesting stuff. I wasn't disappointed. And here in this series, I would like to share with you, six things that jumped off the screen—so much that I made a note of them, even drew some cartoons for a quick reference later on. What are those six points? Candy vs the main meal How to gauge reader interest with conversation The power of juxtaposed titles Why you need to walk away from drafts What to do when your story enters the world And finally, how to read   1) Candy vs the main meal In 2008, I switched to the Mac after almost 15 years of being on a PC. When people asked me why I'd tell them the story of my presentation I'd been doing a series of presentations for the clients of a radio station. Now, I'm like a helicopter mom when it comes to my presentations, but on this occasion, they wanted the slides in advance. To make sure nothing went wrong, I arrived a whole hour before the event and tested the slides. To my horror, everything looked different. “Who's tweaked my slides?” I asked the technician in charge. “We didn't change anything,” said the guy in charge. “All we did was load your presentation through the Mac software called Keynote. When I looked closer, I realised I was looking in admiration at the slides, rather than frustration. If all they did was run a Powerpoint through Keynote and it improved so much, it sure was my signal to fall head over heels with the Mac. This is akin to what Malcolm Gladwell calls “candy” “There's a difference between the meal and the treat,” he says. “It corresponds to the way people talk about things and think about things”. When people talk about things, they tend to strip it down to something smaller, something enjoyable, even tweetable. The reason, Gladwell continues, “Is because the way you think about something is complex, may have several parts, may or may not be contradictory. Or parts of it may even be remarkably difficult to explain. The things you talk about are those you can talk about. The things that are easy to remember or get across. And usually, they're short—tweetable.” Which is similar to the story of the migration to the Mac I didn't want to move to the Mac. I had a whole suite of programs on the PC, including costly Adobe software and painting software like Painter, which were all purchased for the PC. Moving to the Mac would mean I'd have to ditch all of that software or buy new versions all over again. Plus, there were programs like Corel Draw that at the time (if I remember well) worked solely on the PC. To have to make all of these changes were frustrating. When I explain my story about the Mac, there's a lot more that I'm not even expressing in this piece. Instead, I strip it down to the smallest, most interesting story. The story of how my presentation became went from Cinderella to Princess in glass slippers. In effect, I'm giving you the candy version. The candy version is a snippet, but no ordinary snippet. It's a way for the writer to give you something to talk about as well as something to think about. The information—whoa, that's clearly the cerebral, thinking stuff. The candy, in a story, article, webinar—the candy is the fun stuff. Which is why if you look at The Brain Audit, you'll see loads of candy. Let's say you want to talk to a colleague about The Brain Audit. To get the colleague to read the back page of the book, or even the introduction would be too much. But if you have candy, it allows you to talk about the “seven red bags” story. You're not dragging out all the words from the 180 pages of the book. Instead, all you're telling is a short 3-4 minute story. Instantly, you have the floor and the attention, but you've also neatly communicated something. A book must have the main meal, without losing out on the candy The candy is a tool for engagement and helps people sell the idea to their friends or talk about what they've consumed. It could be an analogy in the book, like what you experience in The Brain Audit with the seven red bags, but it could also be part of a chapter when you're explaining about “dog poo” and how it's relevant to how the brain processes “problems”. If you see the Yes-Yes pricing video which shows you how to raise your prices by 15%, there's an explanation—and a reasonably long one too—about pricing. But there in the middle of it all is a coffee and a muffin. When you're talking to a friend and trying to convince her to raise her prices, there's no way on Earth you're going to explain the entire Yes-Yes pricing. Instead, you're more than likely to reach for the muffin and coffee story. And this got me thinking because I like structure. Does every chapter need candy? Gladwell doesn't go into the details, but he gave me candy, didn't he? I had to switch into “ponder-mode” to work out how every chapter could have its candy. Logically, almost every good analogy is candy. Which means you and I have at least a few places where we can insert the candy. Analogies, case studies, examples, even footnotes. To get this act right, we can't just think of books as Gladwell does. What about podcasts? Or webinars (not the yucky sales pitches, but instructional webinars). Or we could even create our own candy version. For instance, at the Landing Page workshop, it seemed like a good idea to create some postcards that would encapsulate the entire workshop into a single postcard. Cartoons would make the postcard really cute, but the postcard also quickly allows a client to show a friend exactly what they learned, even as the elevator hits the “ding” on the eighth floor. Since around November 2017, I've almost stopped eating sugar, but I'll chew anyway into this candy concept as we head to the next idea: How to test your idea quickly and efficiently. 2) How to test your story idea quickly and efficiently. About two years ago, my friend Luca and I were up late at night drinking a bit of Lagavulin. As the whisky drained itself out of the glass, the topic veered to “talent”. Since at least 2008, I've been threatening to write a book, even three books on talent. But on this particular night, I was, for no particular reason, trying to boil down the concept of talent to an equation. From that moment on I have this equation chat with people I meet, discuss it on the forum at 5000bc, and finally, in Singapore, I presented to the audience. It wasn't a workshop about talent. Instead, it was a sales page workshop, but I found it pertinent to start day three with the “talent equation”. And when the day was done, my wife, Renuka came up to me and said: “That's it. I've heard you talk about talent many, many times before, but for the first time I've heard you explain the concept in a way that's easy to understand and implement.” Finally, it seemed I'd gotten to the core of the story. Gladwell talks about how he tests his stories as well Often at the outset of developing a story, he'll tell it over and over again to different people. You know what he's looking for, right? He's gauging interest. Apparently the story is interesting to Gladwell, but do the others find it interesting as well? Which parts interested his listener? When did they tune out? More importantly, when did they change the subject? It what point do they jump in with questions or objections? And also, what do they say next, once you've finished with your story or concept? The reason why all of these questions are so very important is due to the fact that Gladwell is testing the waters. He sees the person in front of him as a stand-in for his eventual audience. However, at all times, you want honesty with the listener's feedback. Laziness rarely helps in such matters. So what's lazy? Laziness in such a situation is texting someone an idea or sending an e-mail. Yes, there are situations where you're in Auckland, and the other person is in Leiden or Singapore. But even so, a face to face conversation matters. Gladwell prefers the direct, in your face feedback, because it brings out the directness. There's a raw honesty when you're right next to the person, rather than separated by technology. Even reading a draft of a chapter or book doesn't elicit the same level of honesty. And once again, we've done this draft reading before, haven't we? We're usually concerned about someone's feelings; we barely have time, we don't necessarily feel we're the right person to ask—and so on. But when someone's right in front of you, you can only tend to take so much. They ask your opinion, and you give your response. It's not necessarily a brutal response, but even if you say nothing, they can gauge how excited you are. Comedians know this factor of instant response to be true Take for instance some clips from The Daily Show with host Trevor Noah. When the show goes for an ad break, Noah chats with his audience. Noah improvises on the spot with a private audience. If the joke gets a lot of laughs, it could then be taken to a much bigger stage. This randomness in telling a story is what gets you great feedback It feels like a conversation, not an audit. And when you're just riffing in the wind, there's a lot less at stake. In effect, Gladwell is saying, “lower the bar, make it easy for them” Just for good measure, Gladwell will pick friends that he bores to death. He chooses people who he knows aren't awed by his status as a best-selling author. They will cut down his story if needed. Which is why he goes back repeatedly with a different angle to the same story. My battle with the “talent equation” story was similar Since 2008, I've been trying to get this idea across that inborn talent—if it exists—is inconsequential. That if you wanted to learn to draw outstandingly well, cook, dance—you could do so in an incredibly short span of time. So well in fact, that people would think you've been practising it for years or are “born with it” Anyway, it wasn't hard to find people who would say things like “you're so talented, I could never be like that”. They look at my cartoons, and at least 50% of the people say just that. Which was like a red rag in my face, because then I'd get into this two-hour discussion with them. At the end of the two hours, they'd either stick to their point or agree with my point of view. But how do I get this idea across in a shorter amount of time? How do I make it more elegant? The only way to get the story to that point of elegance was to keep pushing it back in different forms, over and over again. When I say forms, what I mean is I try and get the same idea across in different ways, using various examples, and different approaches to see which one is more palatable to the audience. Be aware that you're not watering down your concept, or changing it. You're just approaching the idea from a different perspective. And then it's time to test it out with an audience like Gladwell does. Let's take an example For years, I was trying to prove that talent isn't necessarily inborn. This concept would and continues to meet with massive resistance. Over the years, I changed the approach. I started to talk about how “almost children in all countries” draw when they are three years old. And almost all children in all countries are hopeless at maths and writing when they're three, but then something odd happens when they're ten. Suddenly all the kids who were pretty good at drawing, now become hopeless at drawing. And all who are hopeless at maths and writing are now reasonably proficient at it. That's a different approach, and it's something that all of us tend to agree with. However, there's still doubt because we feel that someone else is better at cooking, drawing, dancing etc. So I had to go back and formulate a system where there was no doubt at all. And that system would mean that I could prove, without question, that everyone in the audience could draw well, or multiply at super speed, or be able to speak in the future tense of a foreign language. And all of this had to be done in the space of 10-20 minutes. The concept is the same: talent is not inborn. The approach is different. When you suddenly see a room of 5000 people drawing, speaking and multiplying (and there's no exception), now the concept is on fire. But let's deviate for a second because most of us don't have easy access to feedback from others Gladwell works in New York; he's a staff writer at The New Yorker. Already, being in a big city is an advantage. But to then have access to other writers in a world-class magazine, that's extremely rare. Sure, there are interesting people everywhere no matter if you're in Cape Town, Liverpool or Dunedin, but it's not easy to find such people, let alone get their attention. Which is often where a forum helps tremendously. When I get an idea I want to test; I might put it on Facebook. But Facebook and even Facebook groups tend not to go in depth. The format is clunky because it's more suited to information that's on the move, rather than an archivable discussion. And in 5000bc, the forum is where I put forward my ideas. This article, for instance, is first being written in 5000bc, in the forum. At which point, the feedback comes in pretty rapidly. People like it, or have objections or have read something and drive you to another reference. Yes, the in-person chat is the best of all, no doubt about it, but barring that option, a well-curated forum is hugely beneficial to test your ideas. Even the validity of your headline can be gauged by how many people click on the link to read your discussion. When you do put it out in the world as an article, podcast or chapter of a book, do you know whether the title was exciting or not? Was it just interesting to you or others as well? This kind of information is part of a forum structure, and it's tiny little giveaways like this that give you a scale of how impressive your article or story happens to be. Gladwell urges you and me to pay attention to a specific phrase as well The moment you write or say something that's even mildly interesting to the other person, they want to jump in. They want to be part of the ongoing conversation, and they will utter something like: “Oh, that reminds me of…” and they will go off on a tangent. Listen, listen, listen. Don't pull back to your own megaphone because that person is giving you a lead into another world that you're not aware of. A world that possibly leads to a dead end, but there's often a chance that it will significantly enhance the depth and clarity of your story. Conversation is a bunch of building blocks that we have with each other. For instance, you may say to your partner: I didn't sleep well last night, and they say something about their sleep. And then you go down what possibly disrupted your sleep. Given some amount of chatter,that conversation may get to a point where you realise that all you need to do is to get that White Noise app out and you'll sleep a lot better. When you have a story, you have to do a lot more listening It's a conversation, yes, but it's a specific type of discussion. It's one where you're testing, but also getting their version of what they hear, what they know, the resources and connections they have, etc. Asking someone: “What does this story remind you of?” is a great way to get a conversation going. Testing a story isn't difficult, but it might involve a bit of Lagavulin and a conversation Or it might be just a walk that you take with friends or a visit to a cafe. But even if you can't go out, find yourself a forum where your ideas could be challenged consistently; where you can get objections and resources. And as far as possible do it casually, because there's a higher chance of the other person responding quickly and without too much fear of offence. And that's the second thing I learned. Let's go to the third: juxtaposed titles and why they matter when you're trying to get attention. Next Up: How To Choose Evocative Titles for your Book (Lessons from Malcolm Gladwell – Part 2)

It's very hard for most of us to slow down, but what happens when we slow down to a complete standstill? This little snippet is our story of how we got back and were stuck for two whole weeks. Here's the first little snippet.