The Three Month Vacation Podcast

The very moment you announce a waiting list, it seems like a nerve-wracking decision. Is it going to drive clients away? Or will it work? The odds are it will fail if you don't consider “segregation” and “creating attraction”. This episode shows you exactly what those two terms mean when it comes to waiting lists. Let's roll on to the episode, shall we? Click here to read online: Why Waiting Lists Fail ======== Commitment Would you wait 14 years to join a Disney Club? Apparently so, because Club 33, in Disneyland has a 14-year waiting list. Originally intended as a place for Walt Disney to entertain investors, the club now has a nose-bleed $25,000 joining fee plus a recurring $10,000 a year membership fee. Oh, and you still have to pay your tab for the food and drink. But surely all this waiting is excessively nutty behaviour, isn't it? We wouldn't ever get obsessive about a waiting list, would we? And yet we do get on a waiting list all the time, though on a modest scale. You may not think of going to your hairdresser as being on a waiting list, but if you've made an appointment, that's just what it is. The reservation you made at the restaurant next week, that's also a waiting list. That flight in October, the hotel bookings—they're all waiting lists. Waiting lists are everywhere, but we don't quite seem to notice because they're part of our everyday lives. And when you book or put down your name, the commitment increases Or does it? If we look at the hotel you booked, there's a reason for that specific choice. The flight, the tennis match, the restaurant booking—they're all a form of commitment. Some of them you might need to pay for, in advance. Some of them, you pay for later, but the reason for being on that list is because you and I seek a level of satisfaction. However, we are more likely to show up, pay for, or join something if we're already on a list than if we're not on that list. Nonetheless, a waiting list by itself doesn't work. If all you do is slap on a form on your website, it's unlikely to get any attention. However, if you create the demand for it, the corresponding commitment goes up as well, because potential clients have both something to gain and to lose. If they get into Club 33, for instance, they have additional status, plus other goodies such as immediate fast passes, upgrades on Disney cruises and behind-the-scenes tours of Disneyland attractions. If your eyes glazed over the attraction—and the loss factor, in the case of Club 33—then clearly you're not going to get on that list even if you owned half of L.A. At this point we are probably clear, a factor of attraction is what we're going to need to get a commitment of any kind In the case of a famed club, restaurant or event, the attraction can be a foregone conclusion. In the case of your course, workshop or book launch, you need to spell out the detail of why the client should even bother getting on that list. However, you don't have to list everything that the client is likely to get. Clients are pretty smart and know a good deal when they see one, but can quickly get overwhelmed with dozens of reasons. Instead, picking one reason why someone should get on the list is extremely important. For instance, even with the home study versions, we expressly communicate that there are only 25 copies. When a to-be buyer realises the scarcity factor, they understand they can't get the product any other way and hence sign up. But what if you're a complete newbie? If you are, pay close attention to the previous paragraph. Even a completely unknown business can focus on one big idea that will convince a client to commit. Let's say you've just decided to sell a physical product like a water bottle. There's nothing fancy about water bottles, but let's say your bottle is designed to enable the person know for sure, how much water they've consumed in a day. That's a single point. It solves a problem, and the potential client is likely to be more eager to want to know when the product is out so they can buy it. Or let's say you have a camera—a video camera—that is likely to help you edit video as if you were operating a two or three camera set up. That one point is likely to get most people who shoot video to pay very close attention to your list. As you'd expect, it works just as well for a training session or a digital product. You'll need to pick ONE point from your product that's super-compelling. Let's say, for instance, I'm laughing a book on “talent” for example, or a book on how to “make nutritious Indian food, 10 minutes after you get home”, I'd be harping on a single point. And that point alone without a ton of details about the book is likely to be enough to get you on a list. Once you're on a list, it doesn't mean you'll go through with the commitment Many reservations get cancelled and changed along the way. However, the greater the loss factor, the more likely the client will go through the entire process. Therefore, even if you're only able to create attraction at this point, you'd want to think about the downside as well. A person headed to a hard-to-reserve restaurant is more likely to clear all obstructions so that they can make it for dinner. A person that is keen to do a course will wake up at midnight just to make sure they sign up. It might sound a bit like science fiction to you right now, but remember that all businesses that have that kind of demand today, were once struggling just like everyone else. They systematically put the attraction/loss factor, increased the scarcity and then commitment followed soon after. In case you missed it: Listen to Part 1: 3 Elements That Create Waiting Lists that Work

A waiting list seems to be both a barrier and an enticement The problem with waiting lists is that they fail, and fail miserably if you don't get the elements right. So what are the elements that contribute to a really smart waiting list? Let's find out in this episode, shall we? Click to read online: 3 Elements That Create Waiting Lists that Work: Episode 183 ======== Why do most of us prefer Friday to Sunday? It's odd when you think about it, right? Friday is a working day (in most countries), and Sunday is a day of rest. Yet we wait with baited anticipation for Fridays. The reason is probably apparent to you by now. Friday clearly and consistently holds the promise of the weekend that is to follow. We all know what follows Sunday, don't we? Anticipation—that's one of the big reasons that you need to have a waiting list Anticipation creates an enormous amount of drama in our minds. If you have to wait for something, there's a pretty good chance you're going to value the product or service a lot more than if you hit some magic button and got an instant delivery. We create waiting lists for three core reasons: The first reason is the anticipation The second is to create a barrier And finally to get a commitment. Let's take a deeper dive, shall we? 1: Anticipation In 2010, some British ministers came up with an incredibly interesting, if slightly preposterous idea. If you were going to apply for British citizenship, you had to learn to queue. Phil Woolas, the immigration minister at the time was dead serious when he suggested that to-be citizens would need to learn to queue. He said: “The simple act of taking one's turn is one of the things that holds our country together. It is very important that newcomers take their place in queues whether it is for a bus or a cup of tea. It is central to the British sense of fair play, and it is also better for everyone. Huge resentment is caused when people push in.” There you go—anticipation in a nutshell And you know something, the British are spot on when it comes to creating anticipation. We like stuff better when we have to wait. Tali Sharot, associate professor of cognitive neuroscience in the Department of Experimental Psychology at University College London gives a simple example of how anticipation works. Regardless of the outcome, the pure act of anticipation makes us happy The behavioural economist George Lowenstein asked students in his university to imagine getting a passionate kiss from a celebrity, any celebrity. Then he said, “How much are you willing to pay to get a kiss from a superstar if the kiss was delivered immediately, in three hours, in 24 hours, in three days, in one year, in 10 years? He found that the students were willing to pay the most not to get a kiss immediately, but to get a kiss in three days. They were willing to pay extra to wait. Now they weren't willing to wait a year or 10 years; no one wants an ageing celebrity. But three days seemed to be the optimum amount. So why is that? Well if you get the kiss now, it's over and done with. But if you get the kiss in three days, well that's three days of jittery anticipation, the thrill of the wait. The students wanted that time to imagine where is it going to happen, how is it going to happen. Anticipation made them happy. A waiting list is all about anticipation, isn't it? No matter whether you're about to sell a product, service or training, it would do us all a bit of good to create a waiting list. And waiting lists work for a simple reason: it creates a feeling of scarcity—even if you're not exactly well known in your field. Take the example of Joseph Pilates, for example. When Pilates started out his studio, he wasn't just an unknown; he was also an immigrant to the US with a German accent. That didn't exactly stop Pilates from creating a waiting list. He started his exercise regimen near a niche audience—dancers. Despite being brand new in the business, Pilates never agreed to see a client right away. The client was always put on a waiting list, a few days or a week or two after the initial contact. Waiting in that “queue” as it were, created anticipation for the client. When the day rolled along, they were eager to get started. In the case of a kiss, that anticipation needed to be relatively quick However, that's not always the case. A few years ago, I bought a cigar-shaped Nakaya pen from Japan. If you're into fountain pens, you can bow now, because the Nakaya is easily one of the most revered pens. Solar orange in colour, the nib is fashioned to your writing style, and yes, the nib is made from 22 karat gold. It comes with its own fancy box and a whole lot of razzmatazz justifying its price. And as you'd expect, you can't just walk in and buy a Nakaya. That would ruin everything, wouldn't it? The joy of owning a Nakaya is in telling this story. The story of how I was told I'd have to wait for at least nine months. Nine months turned to a year, and if I'm not mistaken, it took yet another six months to get the pen. By the time it showed up, I had almost given up on ever owning it. Which brings us to an important point of anticipation Some anticipation can be relatively quick; some months long. The main factor is to keep the flame alive while the client is waiting. Waiting for the Nakaya was partly interesting, partly a pain. I didn't get any updates on what was happening, and as a client, I had to follow up. That's not good practice, especially since the delivery was an unspecified date. Even if the delivery time is well into the future, it's a good idea to keep the client in at least a mild state of anticipation, or the whole experience can quickly turn to irritation. Pilates' system wasn't complex He created a list. Anyone of us can do that. Whether you use a notebook, appointment software or some form online, the first task is to create a list. That list alone creates the first level of anticipation. And believe me, it makes a big difference to how clients perceive your offering. Take for example the home study courses we have at Psychotactics One of the downsides of creating content is that there's this eagerness, almost a lust for creating new products. It's so much fun to create yet another course, yet another product, yet another service. And it's inevitable that as you produce new products, the older products—powerful as they are— seem to become very Cinderella-like. They don't get much attention because all you're doing is promoting the new and fancy program or workshop or app. Well, in 2016 I overdid things a bit. I rewrote the entire Article Writing Course so that it was now in Version 2.0. However, I like to do things “live”, which meant that I rewrote all the notes, re-recorded all the audio, and moved around whole sections of the course. Stuff that was in week 8 moved to week 2 and let's just say it was like trying to refuel a plane while flying it. Anyway, that fried me a bit and I couldn't do any more courses that year Which is when Renuka and I sat down and decided to bring out the stuff that we'd already done. The uniqueness course, the copywriting course, and yes, since I wasn't going to conduct the Article Writing Course in 2017, that too went on the list of courses to be sold. We then created waiting lists. And just because we're weird, we kept the list down to a fixed number. Which meant we'd sell only 25 copies. As you can tell, the scarcity works quite well, and the sales of the product replaced me. Instead of me doing a course, just the combination of the waiting list, the anticipation and the scarcity created enough revenue so I could do something else instead of conducting a course. If you're just starting out, Pilates is an excellent beacon in the dark Yes, go and do some Pilates at a class, but also pay attention to how he created anticipation by making people queue in an imaginary line. And that's the first point to consider when designing a waiting list; the first element to put in place. Create the anticipation. However, a waiting list is an instant barrier. Is that a problem? Or a blessing? And can it blow up in our faces? Let's find out. 2: Barrier If you host a valuable seminar and charge a lot, will more people show up? Or is it better to have one free of cost? Back in March 2007, we had the chance to test the free option. We'd decided we wanted to give back to New Zealand because we got so much from this strange and lovely country. We decided we'd have free marketing events under the brand name “The Learning Rock”. You could come to the event; there would be no up-sell; no charge and not even the Psychotactics logo anywhere in sight. In effect, we decided to spend over $1000 a year (and these were the costs of hiring the venue), without expecting anything in return. We had a room capacity of 40 people. Would enough participants turn up or would the room be half empty? The answer lay in the barrier that needed to be put in place. For one, the event was at 7:32 am. Not 7:33, not 7:34. The doors were fastened as though with superglue once we got to the start time. The attendees were put on a list, and if they showed up, they'd get a chance to be on the priority list. If on the other hand, they didn't show up they'd be taken off the priority list. All of these barriers should have put people from making the long drive into the city. Instead, the room was packed to the brim, every single time. Barriers play a significant role in creating a filtered waiting list It's not like there aren't waiting lists online, but having a barrier of sorts makes a big difference to the quality of the clients. It's easy to believe that a barrier isn't much use if you're selling something like products or digital products, but it matters. In our case, we don't sell products, but we do sell information products. When there's a barrier in place (and we insist on clients reading The Brain Audit), they tend to buy a home study product and finish it. This behaviour carries on to online courses like the Article Writing Course. The course is incredibly tough and should have a high dropout rate. Instead, the opposite scenario unfolds. Over 90% of the clients get right to the finish line and get the skill of writing. Having a barrier in place is one of the first things to consider when starting up a waiting list The size of the barrier doesn't matter. What matters is that there's some sort of barrier in place. You could get the client to read a few pages of a report. Or you could get them to fill in a detailed form. Or there could be a small fee—say $10—that creates a barrier. The waiting list itself is a barrier, but to make it, even more, wanted, add one more level, and you get a far better quality of clientele. However, easily the coolest reason to have a waiting list is, so you don't have to bug clients who are not interested in your product or service. Having a waiting list creates a nice opt-in and commitment factor. Next-Up:   Listen to—Why Waiting Lists Fail.

How do you instantly grow your small business? How do you become “rich” overnight? These are the frustrations we have to deal with, almost every single day as we wade through the temptations of the internet. It almost seems like a lottery, doesn't it? But people win the lottery, don't they? And so we fancy our odds too. Yet, there's a hare vs tortoise race in play here and usually, it's the hare that seems to burn out. How can you enjoy the race and have a good life and yes, become an “overnight success?”. Find out in this episode. Click here to read online here: How to Become An Overnight Success: Episode 182 ============ Winning the lottery is like flushing money down the toilet, right? Richard Lustig doesn't agree. Despite odds of 175 million to one, Lustig has won the lottery seven times, and claims he's won over a million dollars so far. When you hear the repeated success of Lustig, it's easy to miss the sub-text in his wins. The first point of the sub-text is that he's been playing the lottery since 1992—that's well over 25 years. Plus he has a strategy. He goes after the smaller prizes, like the $100,000 lotteries, completely avoiding the $40 million jackpots. Are you going after the $40 million jackpots in your business? You know what I mean, right? Let's say you've managed to make the break from a job to your own business. That move, wonderful as it is, hasn't brought a lot of relief because you still have to commute to and from meetings with clients. And now you're keen on hitting the jackpot. Well, what's the jackpot? You want to reduce or eliminate that commute completely, don't you? And while it would be ideal, that's not what a “gambling man” would do. A “gambling man” would reduce their odds of losing. Instead of five days of commuting, maybe you can whittle it down to four. Four may not sound like much until you get into the percentages—yup a 20% increase in home-time, isn't it? In the months to follow, reduce that by yet another day, and you have a 40% improvement over the start of the year. A similar sort of phenomenon plays out when it comes to earning revenue online Let's say you're earning twenty three dollars online. What next? Oh, that's easy. Most people would like to go from twenty three to two hundred thousand and twenty three. It sounds bizarre right now, as you're reading it. No one in their right mind is likely to achieve so much of a monetary gain, so quickly. Even so, it's a lot like playing the lottery, isn't it? You see others playing, they seem to be winning; surely you have the same odds too. Our world, your world is inundated with success stories Everyone is making more money than you, everyone is spending more time on vacation (yes, I'm guilty) and everyone seems to be winning the lottery, except for you. It's not like there's any shortage of avenues, either. Some make their fortune via podcasting; others on YouTube; the third through some SAAS (software as a solution) offering. We all have this multi-pronged attack of the different types of media that will make us our fame and fortune, and the fact that everyone else seems to be doing just fine. But a gambling man like Lustig may tell you a different story He's spent the past 25 years hacking away at the lottery. He's picked the smaller wins, because the odds are so much better. It's all about structural change, making sure that he gets ahead bit by bit. And to be fair, his gains are pretty average by a wage standard. By his own admission, he's won a little over a million dollars over twenty five years. That's a pretty modest $40,000 per year. You can easily beat those odds in your own business, but your goal must always be structural. I guess it's time for an example, right? When we bought our first house in New Zealand, it was priced at $230,000. I'd read a book about how to whittle down that mortgage in a few years (In New Zealand it pays to wipe out the mortgage quickly). Our expenses, barring educational courses, was about $3000 per month (and that included the mortgage). We set about aiming to turn that mortgage into a big fat zero. In the first five years, we bought three houses in Auckland, totalling well over a million dollars. In ten years, we paid off every last cent on those loans. Would anyone in their right sense try and pay those loans in three months? How about six months? Ten years seems pretty quick by any standards, but we learned what we had to do, and we went about it systematically. We applied the same rigour to our business In the year 2000, the business was just a website with a dozen articles. No one bought anything, hardly anyone read much of anything. We simply buckled down, went for dozens of meetings with clients. And out of those dozens, sometimes hundreds, we got ourselves our first client; a sofa store. The second client was a law firm. The third was a division of Quickbooks. We paid the mortgage, we budgeted our expenses and the only big blow out was education. I bought a ton of stuff online and we both read through them. We listened endlessly to workshops and marketing material (even the stuff which was tedious). It took a while for things to happen. The first international workshop was in 2004, but that was after we'd done a tonne of speaking sessions in little places all around New Zealand. By 2006, we had our first really big ticket item, the Protégé sessions where clients paid us a substantial sum. That's when we knew we were finally getting somewhere. Jim Collins is the author of “Good To Great”, a book that has sold over 2 million copies In the book, Collins talks about the “Egg and Chicken”. He says: If you look at an egg before it hatches, it looks like nothing’s happened. Then the chicken jumps out—now we’re the chickens—the chicken jumps out, and Fortune magazine comes running in or Fast Company comes running in and says, “Revolution at Egg! Transformation to chicken! Interview with CEO of Egg!” But if you ask what it looks like from the chicken’s point of view—from the chicken’s point of view there was a lot going on inside the egg before this one step happened that you never know about that led up to that process. We know what leads up to that chicken moment It's structural change, bit by bit. Whether you're aiming to win the lottery, or start up a business, your job is to go about the steps systematically. — Will you get twenty e-mails telling you that you could become a millionaire overnight? Sure you will. —Will there be a pull to do this, that and the other all at once? Sure there will. But eventually, it's the gentle progress that counts. Progress like commuting just four days, instead of five; getting one strategic alliance per month; taking on one medium, e.g. podcasting, and working it day after day for the next few months, weeks, and yes, years. All those stories about how you can double and treble your income, they're probably true. And they probably aren't at odds of 175 million to one. However, the structural way is better. With tiny changes, you can move ahead. You can slowly but surely get your commute down to zero; your bank balance to a healthy state and pay off the mortgages in style. If you want to become an overnight success, you'll need to slow down a bit and work the structure. The odds are a lot better, I can assure you. Special Bonus: The Brain Alchemy Masterclass give you the structure that you need to build your business upon. It gives you the tactics and strategy that will form the very core of your business, no matter whether you're just starting up, or have been in business ‘forever.' We've always recommended that clients start off with this workshop because it whizzes your strategy around. Here is the link to get this $2500, product free: The Brain Alchemy MasterClass—How To Structure Your Business.

Is negotiation a skill? How do you win when your back is against the wall? When negotiating will aggression help or should you use something else, like questions? Questions play a role, but nothing does the job quite like calibrated questions. In this second part of negotiation strategy we find out exactly the questions you need to ask to get the information you need to get your negotiation to work out stunningly well. You can read the article online here: https://www.psychotactics.com/negotiation-battle/ ---------------- The three negotiation concepts we'll cover are 1) Going too fast—and why you need to slow down and listen. 2) The power of labelling—and why it validates emotions. 3) Calibrated questions—a way to completely remove the attack mode and get the opposition to give you vital information. If you're a cartoonist and want a job as a copywriter, how do you get that job? This was my dilemma around the age of 20. I'd finished university, and my dream was to become the top copywriter in the city I lived in—which was Mumbai, at the time. There was this peculiar problem, of course: I didn't know much about copywriting. To smoothen my entry into the world of advertising, I did a class, which loosely promised a job in an ad agency, but it was just a hot-air promise. No one got a job, or not at least one with the big agencies. And I was impatient. I can't remember the details, but there I was sitting in front of the creative director who was leafing through my cartoons. She looked up and said: “You know there's a difference between cartoons and copywriting, right? I agreed, but it wasn't a time to be coy. As most negotiators will tell you, there's a way out of any negotiation, if you know what to ask. When FBI and other international negotiators get on a scene, the situation is already way out of control. Their job is to somehow, get a nutter to give up hostages; and to surrender. In short, their job is simply to win in a situation where winning seems implausible or even impossible. Which is why Chris Voss talks about calibrated questions Calibrated questions are easy to dismiss as everyday open-ended questions, but they're pretty precise in how they get the discussion moving forward. They're designed first to acknowledge the other side (that's always super-important). Once that acknowledgement is achieved, calibrated questions get you to introduce ideas and requests that would generally seem pushy. It edges you forward. Instead of getting all riled up, a question that's calibrated swings the problem across to the other person. In the book, “Never Split the Difference”, the author gives a range of questions you can choose from However, most of the questions he recommends you work with, are simply “HOW” and “WHAT” questions. Quite by chance, this is approximately what I did back at that early meeting with the creative director. I asked her: What can I do to be a part of this agency? How about I work for free for a month and then you can decide if you want to pay me, or I can decide if this agency is a good fit? The questions seem pretty mundane, and even silly when you think about them, but they get outstanding results. Voss insists that calibrated questions have the power to educate your counterpart. It brings the problem to the fore and completely defused the conflict. Calibrated questions aren't random at all. Once you have a conversation going, or if you've decided how that conversation should move, you design what and how questions that make the other person think it's their idea. Of course, when I was sitting in front of my potential boss, I had no idea I was asking intelligent, let alone calibrated questions, but they were “how” and “what” questions and I was hired. Without pay for a month, as you'd expect, but I had a job in Leo Burnett, one of the largest agencies in the world. The same kind of questions apply to most negotiations because they get the other side to explain their situation You start with “what” and “how” and completely avoid the “why”. Why is very confrontational so barring rare situations (which Voss describes in the book) you stick closely to “what” and “how” questions. Which is what I did when we were negotiating the fence issue earlier this week. • What about this is important to you? • How can I help to make this better for you? • How would you like me to proceed? • How can we solve this problem? • What are we trying to achieve here? • How can we look at this in a completely different light? What if we could put in a hedge instead of a fence? Notice the tenor of those questions? They're all about the other person and their agenda. And you almost appear subservient. You're not even asking “what can “WE” do to make this better. You're asking what can “I” do? And only once you've moved along do we get to “we” solving the problem. Or “we” trying to achieve a goal. The scene outside my dining area was complicated. The builder didn't want to leave out the space that was owed to his client. The client didn't want the area to become a problem when she developed and sold the property. In short, there wasn't even one person to deal with, but a range of people, some of whom weren't even on the scene until they bought the property somewhere down the line. Even so, being calm and working through the problem got the builder to progress from, “We are sorry, but there's no way out,” to pitching in with a whole bunch of very workable solutions. The trees at the far end weren't going to be touched. The apple and the pear espaliers (which grow on the fence) will be removed in the dormant winter season in June. Even the big tree that's in the way will have a skirting around so that it doesn't have to be cut down. In short, the builder got precisely what he wanted, including every inch that was on his client's property, and we got our trees, our fence and yes, there will be some minor inconvenience, but what a good solution, wouldn't you say? The calibrated questions led the way at all times As we went through the questions, he showed me his plans, explained his situation, worked with me. And though we went for the win, and not the win-win, both of us ended up getting whatever we wanted and without any fuss or aggression. The key to your success is to make sure you stay calm at all times and ask the questions. However, one question did make me a bit queasy. That question was “how am I supposed to do that? “How am I supposed to do that?” seems anything but an open-ended question. It seems like someone who has the upper hand would simply snap back and say: I don't know. You figure it out. However, that's not what happens. Once I went through the above questions, I blurted out the last question too. And I was amazed at the response. Instead of telling me to go take a hike, the entire set up of questions before this one caused the builder to be even more helpful than before. In the end, we shook hands on a decision that we both loved and went our merry ways! The next time you're in a negotiation, use just three of them and see them work like magic, though I'd add the fourth one about creativity too. It helps the other side come up with a slightly different point of view, especially if you give an example. However, here are the three questions and the fourth that I added to the mix. • What about this is important to you? • How can I help to make this better for you? • How would you like me to proceed? • How can we look at this in a completely different light? What if we could put in an “x” instead of “y”? What? How? And no WHY. And on that happy note, let's go to the summary. But here's something even more interesting. “Never Split the Difference” is almost like a layer over The Brain Audit. It handles the conversion issue in almost an identical way. Let's find out how these two books almost match each other, shall we? Negotiation Summary 1) Going too fast—and why you need to slow down and listen. 2) The power of labelling—and why it validates emotions. 3) Calibrated questions—a way to completely remove the attack mode and get the opposition to give you vital information. With The Brain Audit, you're likely to be using it more in written material, whereas negotiations tend to swing to words and situations. I think that's the core difference between these books (from a bird's eye view). However, the book had more than I could chew off, at least after going through it twice. So I worked out three core aspects: 1) Labelling. I moved very quickly to labelling the situation. 2) Calibrated questions: I used only three and a half: important, better, proceed (and the half was: how am I supposed to do that?). 3) Information gathering with two parties: I listened and made mental notes (and Renuka came along). The listening with two parties (and Renuka didn't say a word) meant she picked up stuff that I didn't hear at all. And she also was able to see things from her perspective, because I was too focused on working with the other person. The match with The Brain Audit. Often, when you read or listen to a book, the information either seems old or new. Old, as in, “I already know this stuff, so it's slightly boring, or at least not very groundbreaking”. Or “new” in the sense that you're learning nuances, and you have to pay close attention to what's being said. For instance, there's a tiny nuance in the calibrated questions: e.g. How can “I” make this better for you? which moves to “how can “we” solve the problem? The nuance is so tiny it's easy to miss unless you pay close attention, or someone points it out. Either way, whether you consider the information to be old or new, you're always working out how to implement the information in your own life, your own chat with a client, or when you have to negotiate something like a lease or rent. Which is why, when I listened to this book for the first time, I missed a lot of the information. Then, the whole fence-dispute started up and I was instantly focused on trying to speed up the learning and implementation. I downloaded the Kindle version of the book and marked it up (I have special software for the iPad, which I'll cover in a future series). Even though the negotiations are mostly over, I'm listening to it once more. Even so, I didn't realise how much this book fit with The Brain Audit, until I was being interviewed for a podcast. During the podcast, me being me, I stopped talking about The Brain Audit and went on to talk about “Never Split the Difference”, instead. And I realised something pretty cool. The books are almost identical from a bird's point of view. Let's see what Chris Voss' book really says: • Listen to the person • Ask them calibrated questions • Mirror what they are saying • Slow down and listen • Label their emotions What do you find in The Brain Audit? • Listen to the client (and fix an interview) • Ask them calibrated questions (the questions in the target profile interview) • Mirror what they’re saying by writing down their exact words on your sales page • Slow down and listen (don’t talk, just ask questions in the interview) • Label their emotions. How does it make them feel? Do they feel like hostages, in a way? Why? The Brain Audit, has an almost identical layer as FBI procedure, it seems You have the target profile; you ask them their problems, you listen carefully to their version of the solution. You write it down on your sales page. Mirroring, slowing down, listening all the time. You have now finished the first section of the book, which gets the attention of the client. Then you move to the second part of The Brain Audit, where you're reducing risk. In “Never Split the Difference”, Voss talks about “the objections” and how you need to destroy those objections, thus building trust. Objections equal risk and removing them becomes a crucial part of dealing with people who are not seeing things your way. You may not see the similarity between a kidnapper and a client, but they're both in objection-land and their objections need to be reduced or completely defused if you are to reach a solution. I haven't figured out how testimonials or case studies figure when dealing with terrorists or bank robbers, but they do reduce risk for a client. As I listen to the book for the second time, I'll keep my ears peeled. Finally, you have risk-reversal, which everyone wants. How are you reducing the client's risk? What guarantee will the hostage takers have when they walk out that door? Will the building project go through on time, or will there be a stall because of the fence? The risk-reversal needs to be in place for progress to do its thing. And finally, uniqueness: why you? Why not the other negotiator? Why should the client buy from you, and not from your competition? The similarities hit me like a thunderclap I simply hadn't seen the two overlap in so many ways. I was excited to be on the call, and even more excited to get off the call and listen to the audio as I went for my walk every morning. And that's just what I'm going to do today and tomorrow and for the week to come. And it's what I'd suggest you do too. Listen and read both books. They're really cool, but more than anything they're result-oriented. They get you and your client to a common goal. Negotiation is about information. So is writing sales pages. How cool is that? Special Bonus: The Brain Audit: Why Clients Buy And Why They Don’t Click here to get an excerpt of The Brain Audit.

Imagine you're dealing with a terrorist or hijacker who has captives and threatens to blow up everything if you don't agree with his demands. How would that knowledge help when negotiating with a boss, a client or perhaps your own kids? And how are you supposed to remember the negotiation steps? That's exactly what we'll cover in this episode—you'll get to hear how we applied the negotiation skills we learned (and got to a perfectly great settlement). Listen away! Read the episode online:  https://www.psychotactics.com/negotiate-win/ ======== “The auction's on,” said the auctioneer, “would you give $520,000”? “I've got $520, now $525. The bid is at $530 would you give $550?” The year was 2005. We had decided to buy a three-bedroom house in Auckland to separate our work from our home. It seemed like a good idea to have a separate residence and a dedicated workplace. We thought it might even be a good idea to hire staff. And that's how we were in the middle of this auction. Except for one tiny fact The auctioneer wasn't having a good time. It seemed like just one person was bidding. For about 5-7 minutes, there was a spurt of bidding—many voices—and then suddenly, the only voice you could hear repeatedly was my own. The situation might have seemed bizarre to anyone who was standing around because I was bidding against myself. “$565”, said the auctioneer. I nodded and added “$567”. Then before he could recover, I shouted out, “$567,500. No sooner had those words come out of my mouth than I was off, but this time not in multiples of thousands, but in $500. Potential buyers must have been in a tizzy. Only a fool would keep increasing his own price; they must have thought to themselves. But there I was, moving steadily ahead, bidding $500 at a time. At one point, the auctioneer realised that the price was moving up in smaller multiples than he expected, but there was simply no opposition. As far as the assembled crowd was concerned, they were dealing with an escapee from the mental asylum. Pretty soon, the negotiation was over, and the house was ours (at a price very marginally over our initial budget). The auctioneer had been out-negotiated. Instead of the auction being a battle between two or more parties, it fizzled off at a much lower price than he might have normally received. But why did that occur? In every negotiation, both parties have information. The core of what makes one party gain the upper hand isn't logic. Instead, it's emotion. Emotion and information Two weeks ago, I started listening to a book that I'd bought way back in late November. We went on our vacation to Sri Lanka shortly after and I had a bit of catching up to do. However, I heard an interview with the author, Chris Voss, and I was taken with the concepts he brought up on the call. I was so excited that I started listening to the book shortly after. And that's what this series is all about. It's a look into “Never split the difference: Negotiating as if your life depended on it”, by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz. It's important to mention both Voss and Raz because they're both outstanding. Voss has a wealth of experience, and this is real-life experience with murderers, bank robbers and terrorists. They're the kind of people who demand a ransom and casually murder people. Voss walks us right through this minefield of ego and terror. However, Raz, Tahl Raz is the writer, and as a result, the book is spectacular. I rarely marvel at a book's structure, because by and large books tend to be more about information, which can get tedious. However, this book is masterful in the way it has been constructed. It brings up a concept, explains the concept, tells a story, gives examples and then goes on to succinctly summarise the contents of the chapter. I love this book for two reasons It's elegant in its construction and detail. But more importantly, negotiation is part of our lives. If you want to get a better price from clients, a higher salary, or even want your kid to go to bed, you've got to negotiate. But negotiating is one thing: winning is another. In this book, you're going to find out how to win without the other person feeling bad. No, it's not win-win in any way. You go in wanting a specific solution to the problem, and you win. And the other party doesn't feel like it has lost. How's that possible? I know, you're itching to know what makes this book so cool. In fact, you're probably trying to ditch reading this and go and read the book yourself. Well, hang in there What you don't know yet, is that I've read this book once, listened to it twice and listened to a couple of interviews as well with Voss. This piece will distil the core stuff that makes the difference. Instead of leafing through the entire book, you'll get a few core concepts that you can use right away. And then you can go and read the book and the concepts will be more enduring. Sound good? Well, keep reading. The three concepts we'll cover are: 1) Going too fast—and why you need to slow down and listen. 2) The power of labelling—and why it validates emotions. 3) Calibrated questions—a way to completely remove the attack mode and get the opposition to give you vital information. 1) Going too fast—and why you need to slow down and listen. About a year ago, our hedge was the bone of contention with the neighbours. Sure, we'd got the house for a very decent price at the auction, and with it came a hedge that four of five metres high. Every now and then, we'd get the hedge guys to trim the hedge, but it was always a respectable height. That gave us our privacy, but more importantly, we could look into a sea of green, instead of another house, with a grungy shed on the other side of the fence. And about a year ago, on two separate occasions, something happened that would permanently change our view. At first, the neighbour cut down the trees near the far side of the fence To come back and watch the trees hacked was an incredibly rough moment, but it chopped down while we were away on vacation and there was little benefit in getting into a war over trees that were gone forever. However, the next time we were away, the entire hedge was reduced to the legal height of just two metres, and that's the way it seems likely to stay. What's interesting about this whole hedge and tree episode is that the neighbour wasn't aggressive, to begin with. If anything, she was overly helpful, calling us to let us know when our TV antenna had gotten ripped off in a storm. How did someone who was on our side, literally move to the other side of the fence and declare a “hedge-war” of sorts? Author, Chris Voss would say: It's a listening problem. Back in 1979, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Harvard Negotiation Project was formed. The goal was to improve negotiation results so that people could be in a better position to take on stuff like peace treaties, business mergers and I suppose, the occasional hedge. As a result of the discussions at Harvard, the co-founders of the project came out with a book—and idea—called “Getting to Yes”. They mostly seemed to discard the unreliable, primal animal instinct and espoused a more rational, “let's be friends and fix this together” type of approach. And yet the FBI, who Chris Voss was a part of, wasn't getting consistent results in their negotiations. Even if deals seemingly worked out in the boardroom, the idea of a rational approach was ending up in a bloody mess when it came to terrorists and hostage situations. Which is when two of the most decorated FBI negotiators, Fred Lanceley and Gary Noesner, started asking a simple question. Their question was directed to 35 of the most experienced law enforcement officers, and the question went like this: How many had dealt with a classic bargaining situation where problem-solving (or logic) was the best technique? Not a single hand went up. Then came the follow up question… How many had negotiated an incident in a dynamic, tense, uncertain environment where the hostage taker was in emotional crisis and had no apparent demands? Every hand went up. What this informed the FBI negotiators was pretty clear. Emotions are the key drivers of our behaviour, not logic. It's the frustration of some factor that caused the trees and the hedge to be hacked in the way it was. Instead of silly logic and defining our position, we have to step over and listen. Listening, says Voss, is the cheapest, most effective concession we can make to get the other person on our side. When people feel listened to, they listen to themselves more carefully. Notice that line again? They listen to “themselves” more carefully. They almost do a double take evaluating the strangeness of their demands. The jagged defensiveness goes down, and they're keen to help, instead of simply barging in with their demands. The goal of negotiation is to stop acting like a goat Instead, always move towards the other side. What does the other side need? What are their monetary, emotional or other needs? Who do they need to report to? What constraints are they working with? Being angry and emotional will merely get them to mirror your behaviour, and you get to a situation of mistrust, which often leads to a standoff. The way to get control is to give the client the illusion of control. It isn't to suggest you're conning them in any way. However, when the chips are not in your favour, you want to even the odds and get the client to start thinking of you. And the only way to get that going is to start listening. When both parties want to row the boat in opposite directions, it looks like there's absolutely no solution However, experienced negotiators (like my 8-year old niece, Keira, for instance), knows that's not true. Her mother will be all upset, refuse to give her what she wants and threaten to ground her for a week. Keira switches from “whiny mode” to “listening”. She says: If I do this, that and the other, can I get it? And almost instantly you are taken back to negotiations you've had with your nieces, nephews or children. They know their position is pretty hopeless, and they turn from tiny little devils to skilled negotiation experts. They listen and turn things around in their favour. And that's what we need to do as well if we want to get anywhere, let alone get the negotiation in our favour. We need to listen. Slow down and listen. However, that's just one piece of the negotiation puzzle. Listening alone will pay huge dividends, but we need to get the person to realise that we understand. So we do the most obvious thing of all: we use labelling. What is labelling and how can we quickly use it in our negotiations? 2) The power of labelling—and why it validates emotions. Ever seen how some presenters start their speech when they get on stage. They might say: “Good morning, everyone. It's good to be here. It's a wonderful morning, isn't it?” And while all of this sounds like adorable banter, it's missed out on a significant opportunity to get right into the audience's emotional state. Audience members aren't sitting around to discuss the weather. And neither is the person across the table from you. While you don't have to be all business-like, it's best to get the person across the table to know that you're on their side. Most people always talk about themselves And here's where you can run a little test. Tomorrow morning tell your partner how you didn't sleep too well. Almost immediately, he or she is likely to ask you a question or two, but the conversation will swing rapidly to their sleep patterns. People are so obsessed with their issues that they fail to realise how quickly they take over the discussion. Now imagine you talk about their sleep patterns instead. See what I mean? Immediately two people are talking about precisely the same thing. Suddenly you're the best “conversationalist” ever. Negotiation pushes that point a little further with “labelling.” Labelling is a bit like putting a Post-It on a person's forehead. For instance, in early January we got a nasty surprise. There was some development work going on in the plot next door. Three houses were being built, and yes, there was the usual earth-shaking noise. However, nothing prepared us for what came next. The surveyor's plan indicated that our fence—and the eleven trees on our property, was really within their boundary. As you'd expect, they wanted every inch of their land, and it really did come down to inches. In reality, it was about 12-13 inches at one end and a lot less at the other. Even so, because of the location of the trees, it was about to cause enormous disruption to the landscaping. How do you get out of a mess like that? For starters, you listen and keep your cool. Once you've moved into your meditative zone, you label the situation. It was clear from the very start that the builders were not happy with this sudden surprise. On the very day they discovered the boundary problem, they were all raising their hands as if to say, “don't hate us for this problem”. Which is exactly the label I gave the builders when I spoke to them. I called it “messy”. I said: This is a terribly messy situation for you, isn't it? Think about that label for a minute Normally we'd be likely to say something like: This is a big issue for us. The trees are getting cut down; the fence is going to be destroyed. We'd go on and on about our own problems, which have absolutely nothing to do with them. No, no, no, no, no—that kind of nonsense won't get you very far. Instead, use the label. What is the situation? Is it messy? Is it noise you're negotiating (and it's noisy?) Does it seem like it's overpriced? (and hence they are already edgy about the price?) Whatever the situation, you can use labels to identify how the other side is feeling. And this is what author, Chris Voss, suggests Spot the emotion. Then label it aloud by using either of the following terms: • It seems like… • It sounds like… • It looks like… The exact terms are important You can't go around saying “I'm hearing that…”. The moment you put the “I” back in the discussion, you're talking about yourself. It also makes you take personal responsibility for the discussion that follows. And things may go horribly wrong. However, “it seems like…” is a very neutral statement that feels almost like you're trying to get to grips on the situation. It also gives the other side a chance to speak. When I said, “It seems like a very messy situation that you want to avoid”, the builder immediately responded to my point explaining what was going on. He told me about their plans, where they were stuck, and what had been discussed with the architects. The information wasn't particularly important to this situation, but in many cases, the smallest bit of information is of extreme value. But what if the other person disagrees? What if you said:”It seems like you're uncomfortable with this high pricing”, and they disagree. You can always step back and say, “I didn't say it was that way. I just said it seems like that”. However, in many cases, if not most, the other person will not go on the attack. Instead, they will explain themselves in a fair amount of detail. There's just one big caveat Once you've put forward the label, be quiet. Deathly quiet. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Four, tick, tick, tick. Wait for them to speak, because you won't have to wait long Once you add the label, you'll get the reaction you need. It's almost one of “thank goodness, you know how I'm feeling right now”. Now both parties are seemingly rowing in the same direction. You haven't lost any control. No one is going to eat you for lunch. However, a standoff has not only been averted, but you've got the other side to see you as a partner. Which takes us to the third part—calibrated questions. In the first part, we slowed down and listened. We moved from that stage to getting onto the other side's platform. However, there's a third part that gets most of the information you need. And that's really what negotiation is about. It's about information harvesting. The more you know, the more you can move in the direction you need. And what better way to get information than asking questions. Except there are some landmines in the question section. Ask the wrong question, and we're back to square one, or worse. Let's sidestep that landmine and find out what questions to ask, instead. Continue listening here: Why Calibrated Questions Enable You to Win Your Negotiation Battle

Is it really possible to get a surge in sales with products? And are product sales similar or different from services? In this episode, we go exclusively into the sale of products. But more importantly, you get to see where you need to dig to create the power of your headline and how the consequences that follow make a massive difference. Listen and read this episode. You'll enjoy it. To read online: How To Increase Sales Using The Brain Audit: Episode 179 ============ You've probably never heard of Ben Curtis Ben's a client and a self-described fan. In an e-mail addressed to both Renuka and me, here's what he wrote: “I am a massive fan! I listen to all your podcasts and reread sections and chapters of the Brain Audit over and over. I am constantly applying your tools in every way possible. I am using your advice and information in exactly the way you hoped people would from your book. I also purchased the “Applications for the Brain Audit” too. I am constantly using those tools for headlines, marketing material, and websites.” But it's not all hunky-dory, rah-rah Ben also has a bit of a bone to pick with me, in particular. And here's how he puts it: “I'd like to make a suggestion, recommendation, or at least make you aware of something when you're writing content.” “It's not that anything is wrong (I love it), I just wish there was more relatable or direct content for people who have products. That's what I do, and many other people have products too. I have products to sell either online or in retail stores, or both. In the Brain Audit, there were two examples– Website Strategy Workshop and Allergy Clinic. Both are service-based businesses. It was difficult for me to try and write with a product in mind when there were only two examples, and both were services. I'm was very happy to stumble upon the Applications to the Brain Audit because I was dying for more examples. I just started it, and already love it. However, I noticed the same thing here. The 15 case studies in Chapter 2 are all still service businesses and not directly relatable or useful for myself. It's difficult to model after the examples when none of them are products. I know that what you write can apply to many industries, but I am talking specifically about examples for products. There are 15 examples, and there wasn't a product based business.” Ben's got a point, don't you think? Well then, it's time to correct this grievous mistake, because it gives us a chance to dive deeper into The Brain Audit. Well, here we go. Let's look around the room for some products and play a game of “I spy”. What do I spy? It starts with the letter M. It's a product, and it's a microphone. Except that I already have six microphones, so why bother with another one? Let's find out, shall we? In this series, we'll go through the stages of how to get—and keep the attention of the client. Stage 1: We'll list all the benefits—and narrow down on our problem. Stage 2: This stage calls for us to drive home not just the problem, but also the consequences of ignoring that problem. Stage 3: We'll do an instant check after we've gone through the first two stages. We didn't start off needing or even wanting the products because the products have been randomly chosen. Has that desired level gone up just a little bit? Let's find out. Let's start off with three different products. And as you'd expect, I spy something with my eye, and we know, it starts with the letter m. M as in “microphone”. Stage 1: We'll list all the benefits—and narrow down on our problem. Microphone? Let's look at the microphone that I recently bought. What problem could it possibly solve? Why buy yet another microphone when there are plenty lying around? As you're probably aware, every product solves many problems, and since we're on that trend of reasoning, every product must have many features and benefits. Let's list the benefits and features of this microphone, shall we? • Let's start with the weight: It's just 10 g. That's just 0.35 ounces. That's light, don't you agree? • The usage time on a single charge is 6 hours. That solves a problem too, of having to change batteries all the time. • The operating temperature is from -10°C to 50°C. Which means it would work well in a desert, which is freezing by night and boiling by day. • And finally, it has an operating distance of 65 feet or 20 metres. That's a fair distance away. But what problem does it solve? Let's say you're keen to shoot videos of yourself as a speaker. There are two reasons why you'd need to capture the event. The first reason would be to capture the information for a showreel for your clients. The second reason would be to see and hear yourself so you can improve your technique. However, you've always needed a slightly sophisticated set up with a cordless mic. But imagine a microphone so small that it's just a clip-on. And once you have it on, you can be a whopping 65 feet away and record perfect video—but more importantly, the audio. It's a Bluetooth mic that frees you from cords and cables. That's it! No cords, no cables, but what about the other points? What about the weight, the extended battery time, the ability to work under crazy weather conditions? They're all important, but you have to pick one problem if you want to get the attention of your client. It's not like we're chucking away the rest of the points. We just can't have it all up in lights together. Only one problem needs to be chosen. Think of it as a movie. There's the hero, and there is the supporting cast. The rest of the points; those benefits and features are the supporting cast. The only thing that matters is the “no cords and no cables”. And if you're a speaker, you know exactly what that means. To be able to simply walk across the room, over even across the bridge to the other side and be recorded perfectly, that seems like a dream come true. It's a big problem and this microphone; this Bluetooth microphone solves the problem perfectly. That's example No.1 down. Let's take another example: Daniel Smith watercolours. Now this example is interesting because I've never used these watercolours. Back in 2010, I went for a watercolour class, and my teacher, Ted, told me to do one small watercolour every day. Being a model student, painting every day is approximately what I've done. In the past eight years, I've probably painted about 2500 images—yet not one of them was with Daniel Smith. My goal today was to find out why I should bother with Daniel Smith watercolours when I already have several tubes with a rival company called Winsor and Newton. So many tubes of paint, in fact, that though I paint every day, I'd still be using those tubes for at least two-three years. And yet, here we are, looking for a problem to solve with a whole new brand of paints This diversion brings up an essential fact of customer behaviour. In a majority of situations, clients or prospects may not have a problem. I am reasonably happy with my paints, but that doesn't mean I'm not on the lookout for something different. When we, as sellers of a product fail to get the point across clearly and succinctly, the customer is left in a bit of a limbo. Which is what Daniel Smith colours tends to do when you do your research. But here's a start from a post online: I love Daniel Smith. What I like about the paint is the pigment load, ease of re-wetting in my palette; ease of handling on the paper. Every tube I have bought is fresh, soft and well mixed with the binder, no separation into binder and pigment. And I love their range of colours. No other paint maker offers such a huge number of colours. It seems Daniel Smith is always looking for new colours to add. In that short client description we have the bits and pieces needed for a problem, don't we? Let's look at the features and benefits mentioned in that post. • Ease of pigment load: That's a bit technical, but what I can figure out, is that the paint sits nicely on the brush. • Ease of re-wetting: This is a nuisance with watercolours. They tend to dry up into a hard rock-like mass. Re-wetting is a definite benefit. • Ease of handling on paper: It's a vague description, but we'll take all the description we can handle. • Well mixed with the binder—no separation of binder and pigment: That's yet another winner. • And the final one: Astounding range of colours—especially for those always on the lookout for yet another shade. Once again, we have to pick, and most of the time, the pick will be based on the target profile It seems that artists are always on the lookout for new shades, new textures and so the range of colours is a big solution. And the opposite of the benefit is—tah, dah—the problem. Daniel Smith has a massive 252 colours, including the Primateks as well as 48 luminescent, pearlescent and interference colours. The problem is evident isn't it? With the paints I've been using, I've more or less restricted myself to a range of shades. Daniel and Smith seemed to have gotten me out of my stupor and caused me to investigate a whole range of colours that I may never have considered before. In effect, it's created a problem where none existed. This takes us to a third product, like the t-shirt I'm wearing. I'm a big fan of graphic design, and there's probably no greater joy than to walk into a t-shirt store when on vacation. Portugal, for instance, has an astounding design sense, which frankly surprised me. Whether we were in Vancouver, Tokyo or Sardinia, I'd be on the lookout for new, well-designed t-shirts. Yet, for the past three years or so, I've more or less given up buying t-shirts while away from home. It's a strange phenomenon, don't you think? The plot, as it were, thickens, because the t-shirt brand I now wear doesn't quite suit my design appetite. Even so, I've made the change to the Icebreaker brand. And the reason why I've made this leap is that it solves a precise problem: it doesn't stink. It's summer here in New Zealand, in January And summers here are hot, really hot, and with heat comes sweat and body odour. Which means you have to get yourself some sort of deodorant or wipe rubbing alcohol, vinegar or hydrogen peroxide onto your underarms. If you want to save yourself of the trouble of any of those weird and wonderful methods, all you do is wear an Icebreaker. That's it. No odour. Wear the t-shirt for a day, no odour. Ten days, still no odour. Forty days? You're getting the point, aren't you? As you can quickly see, Icebreaker solves a problem you didn't know you had in the first place. I wouldn't go so far as to say all my t-shirts are Icebreaker, but let's just say they've taken the whole fun part out of my vacations. I haven't bought a new t-shirt on vacation in over three years. I ask people to send me vouchers for Icebreaker for my birthday, or if they want to give me a gift. I use Icebreaker in my presentation on Dartboard Pricing at events. I can't even begin to tell you what killjoys this company has been for me, consistently solving my problem. And there you have it, random picks right in the room with me. A set of paints from Daniel Smith watercolours (I had to look up the name again). A t-shirt range called Icebreaker that wasn't on my radar but now accounts for 100% of all t-shirt purchases. And a microphone—the sixth or seventh microphone that I own, just because it solves the problem of no cords, no mess. Of course, we could go on and on. There's a type of cream in the room, shoes, a language course, computers—three of them, a standing desk that I never use any more, drives, etc. All of these solve a problem, but where do we go digging to find the problem? In the benefits, that's where We may not be clear which problem is the one we need to pick, but we sure know the benefits. You can pick up any object in your room, or head downtown to any store and randomly pick up a product. There on the side of the packaging are all the features and benefits—what we like to call the “solution”. The opposite of the solution is the problem. As you'd expect, an Icebreaker t-shirt will happily tout all its benefits, but it's best to stick to one as the lead actor, letting the other problems take a secondary role of supporting cast. And once we have our problem, you know what The Brain Audit recommends next, don't you? Yes, it's time for the consequences. A problem is a problem, but it's not quite as big a problem unless there are consequences. What are consequences and how do we use them with the marketing of our product? Let's find out. Stage 2: The consequences of the problem Imagine you're driving down the road, and in the corner of your eye, you see flashing red and blue lights. What do you do? You slow down, don't you? You're aware that somewhere in the vicinity there are cops and there's no point in flooring the accelerator. That's how the brain works. It senses a problem and immediately most other thoughts are subdued. The focus is almost exclusively on that problem. However, to stay in that state for too long would be counterproductive, so once the cops are out of sight, you and I tend to go back to our normal behaviour. When clients are buying products or services, the problem gets their attention, but it's not enough Once the problem isn't front and centre, there's the risk of the client going their own way. It's akin to spotting a cop car on the highway and then encountering a sign that says: No cop car for the next 300 miles, guaranteed. Without the consequences, the attention wavers quite a bit. Which is why when you introduce the problem, you need to pick the problem that is top of mind for your target profile (read about target profile in The Brain Audit). If you don't have a target profile, then you're going to have to make a choice, but it's more precise if you use the target profile. Anyway, let's not go off track, because we still have to focus on the consequences. So what are the consequences of not having an easy-to-use Bluetooth microphone? If you've ever fiddled with a wired microphone, you'd know what a pain mics can be. The cords and cables run all over the place, someone trips over the cords and cables, or at the very least they need to be taped down. That's great if you're in the sound business because as disaster hits, you have Option B in place. However, as a small business owner, you're hoping for one take. You want to get your video on YouTube, or you want to record that seminar you're giving. That's one take, in most cases, and there's no going back. With a Bluetooth mic, a simple phone can record the video from anywhere in the room, while capturing very high-quality audio. Without audio, even the sharpest video is unwatchable. And that's why a Bluetooth mic is so very crucial. One that you can quickly fasten to your clothing and in seconds the wired microphone is history. That's an example of consequences Just because you've brought up a problem in your headline or speech, doesn't mean that clients get the point to the fullest extent. There's no doubt they're paying attention, but unless the consequences are driven deeper, there's a good chance of bypassing, or at least not valuing the product to the fullest extent. The consequences are akin to underlining what's being said, and yet staying on point. We're not trying to cover all the problems the product solves. If anything, you have to be careful to stay on target. When I was writing about the microphone above, I was tempted to talk about the lightness factor and how it lasted for six hours. It took all of my focus to stay on topic of “no cords or cables”. We can bring up the issue of how it lasts for six hours later in the message. On a sales page, there's a lot of space to bring up features and benefits much later. At first, however, we have to nail down the problem and the consequences to the exclusion of everything else. And the consequences matter. Take for example another product like “Dartboard Pricing”, a product about pricing on the Psychotactics site When you look at the sales page, it's clear that the problem—the biggest problem—is about “losing clients if you choose to raise prices”. That message is clear, but just letting the headline do all the work is a mistake. The consequences have to come in quickly. And here's what the page reads like: How do you systematically raise prices without losing customers? Is it possible to raise prices and still keep customers? And how do you keep those costs going up, up and away—and still keep customers coming back? We all undercharge! No matter what our business, we've all undercharged for our products and services. And yet, at this very moment, there are others in our field that charge a lot more—for what seems to be a similar offering to ours. We know we should increase prices, but we can't bring ourselves to take that leap because we're deathly afraid our customers will leave in droves. And so we charge a lot less for our products, workshops, services and courses. As if that first section were not enough, there's a story that comes into play that explains the consequence of not being able to increase prices. I remember the first time we sold a copywriting course in 2006 I was reasonably happy with the price until I read the feedback from one of the participants. “You're charging too little,” she said.”I just did another course on a similar topic, and they're charging twice as much.” I took the feedback but felt the terror of having to increase, let alone double my prices. This is the dilemma we all face. We don't know how to increase our prices, even by a tiny bit. So how do we strike a balance between running a profitable business without losing clients and sales? How do stop trusting our mostly inaccurate “gut instinct” and work with a precise system instead? How do we raise prices solely based on client demand? And most importantly, how can we do this price increase step by step, instead of randomly increasing prices? The consequences put a spotlight on the problem, but because it creates agitation, it also sets up the client for the solution that must follow. As you read in The Brain Audit, the problem shows up, and then we go to the solution. But sitting smack in the middle is that big consequence that needs its share of the spotlight. Execute the consequences correctly, and it's clear why Daniel Smith range of colours solves a pressing problem of not quite having the shade you need in your paint palette. Or why choosing Icebreaker as a garment makes for the most pleasant t-shirt wearing experience, because who wants to stink? The consequence of being inadvertently socially unacceptable or even having to put chemicals (or for that matter vinegar) on your body is a bit of a pain. And it's only when those consequences are driven deep that we're ready for the solution. In fact, we're not just ready; we're hankering for the solution at this stage. Stage 3: An instant check Which brings us to the third part of this series: An instant check after we've gone through the first two stages. We didn't start off needing or even wanting. Did you need a microphone? If you're recording an event, do you feel like you need one now? And do you need that specific brand so that you don't run into cords and cables? What about the paints? Maybe you're not a painter—yet—but should you wander into watercolours as I did back in 2010, you'd want the best possible colours, right? And personally, I'm feeling a bit like a dunderhead because I haven't heard about this brand though I've been painting for eight years straight. What about the t-shirt? Icebreaker has no stink, even if you wear it for a month. Not that you want to wear it for a month, but notice how the problem and the consequence have gotten your attention and kept that attention. The proof of the pudding is almost always in the eating If you feel you need the products mentioned above, then The Brain Audit has started to weave its magic. We're not done yet, of course. There are the other “bags” of The Brain Audit that need to be tended to, as well. We still need to go to the target profile, the solution, the objections, testimonials, risk reversal and uniqueness. All those “seven red bags” need to be taken off the conveyor belt (and you'll know what I mean by conveyor belt when you read The Brain Audit). However, what we've done here is gotten off to a great start. And more importantly, we've found out that products, physical products or digital, don't differ that much from services. In fact, we just have to look at one thing to figure out the problem and the corresponding consequence. What's that one thing? Let's find out in the summary, shall we? Summary The three things we covered in this series were: Stage 1: The list of benefits that to narrow down the problem Stage 2: The consequences of ignoring the problem Stage 3: An instant test of desire This is your ONE thing to do today. Create a list of benefits. Look around your room and pick on that lampshade you bought. What are the benefits of that particular shade? The bookshelf that's in the corner does it have features and benefits? What about that bottle of wine that's on your desk? Wait, you have a bottle of wine at work? Anyway, all the stuff around you is probably there for a reason. You could make your work a little easier by heading over to Amazon.com because you won't need to hunt down features and benefits because all packaging has a list of bullets. However, this exercise is a solid one whether you're hunting down stuff in your office, on Amazon or just about anywhere. This exercise shows you that there's no real difference between a product or service or training. They all have their features and benefits, and one of those points is going to need a flip. You'll take one of those benefits and turn them into a problem. Which takes us to the second point: consequences. If you don't stick with the consequences, it's unlikely that the client will continue to pay attention. In many cases, the client may already fee the consequences, e.g. the roof tiles are missing, and a torrent of water is pouring in, but in a lot of situations, you have to drive home the consequences. For instance, I can tell you that The Brain Audit helps you in removing that last minute hesitation that you feel from clients. However, it's only when I recount the story of the seven red bags that the message really stays with the client. That's the point when they buy The Brain Audit, use it and write those wonderful testimonials. The entire sequence: from The Brain Audit to 5000bc, to other courses like the Article Writing Course is mostly dependent on taking the time to elaborate the problem with a paragraph or two of detail. And finally, we get to test the power of the problem I didn't start out wanting Daniel Smith paints. In fact, at one point, I even forgot the name and called them Daniel and Smith. But by the time I realised the problem they were solving, I was keen to buy some and test them out. The same concept applies to the microphone (yes, there's a link below). I didn't realise how intrusive wires and cables had become until the microphone company brought it to my notice. Did they do a good job of consequences? Maybe not. Most of us are too busy trying to get our message to every possible audience and to line up the features and benefits. We think the more we load onto our website or marketing material, the better. But in reality, it's the core stuff: the problem, the consequences—that is what really matters. And we can test it because clients don't just say, “wow that's interesting”, but instead ask, “where can I see it or where can I buy it?” That's your test. That shows you that your message is working. And that's pretty much it. You can use The Brain Audit on products, services or training with equal effect. Try it out today and you'll see how effectively it works. Special Bonus: The Brain Audit Excerpt Find out—'Why Clients Buy And Why They Don’t'       

So much effort goes into the launch of a product, but what happens next? How do you handle the calm after the launch? How do you keep selling products on an ongoing basis? These are the questions we tackle in this episode as we get rid of the "post-launch" blues. Read the article online: How To Sell A Product When There’s No Scarcity Factor ------------- Do you like cold pizza? Apparently, some people do. They eat pizza, leftover pizza, the next day and they thoroughly enjoy it over breakfast. Some people eat it as a snack, while others may eat it for lunch or dinner. What's the point of this pizza discussion, you may ask? The pizza analogy is to demonstrate that barring some exceptions; pizza is almost always treated as some kind of food. A similar sort of concept applies to selling a product. Often, people believe that selling a product is entirely different from a service. Or that selling training, a workshop or course, for example, must somehow be different from selling info-products online. The reality is sales is sales—pretty much like pizza. There are various situations in play, but by and large, whether you're selling a dump truck, a $20,000 course or a pizza, the principles are remarkably similar. You launch a product or service when it's ready. You get a few, possibly a fair number of sales. And then what? This article is about the “then what” that occurs right after you've done your launch And the reason for all that “pizza preamble” is because the example you're about to read about involves a digital information product, namely, The Brain Audit. When we launched The Brain Audit back in 2002, we had no clue what we were doing. To put things in perspective, Google was just four years old, YouTube didn't exist, and hardly anyone bought anything online, let alone an e-book that was twice the cost of a hardback that you could get in a bookstore. We launched The Brain Audit, then we waited. And nothing much happened. A similar concept might apply to whatever you're selling, whether it's a product or service. You'll launch the product and wait, but find that nothing seems to happen. How are you supposed to keep selling the product/service for years on end? Do you create scarcity all the time, or will it get old and tired? Will clients get fed up with your tactics? This series outlines the things we've done with The Brain Audit, just because it's our most enduring product However, just to give you a framework so that we're all on the same page, we've sold services too. We've sold consulting, both one on one, as well as group consulting. We've sold seminars and workshops, courses like the info-product course or the Article Writing Course. And as you'd expect, e-books, videos and audio—both digital and physical, as well as to sell a membership site like 5000bc. In short, while this story is mainly about The Brain Audit, it's really a “pizza story”. You can quickly and efficiently apply these steps. And they are steps. They take time, often months and years. But that's the reason you're reading this article, aren't you? You've created a product or service, and you don't want it to languish on the bottom shelf, do you? You want it to sell on an ongoing basis. Let's find out how we rolled out The Brain Audit. Let's go all the way back to 2002, shall we? Stage 1: You've launched the product; now what? The moment after the launch can often be a thud. Nothing happens, simply because nothing is supposed to happen. All the clients who intended to buy your product at launch stage bought your product or service. Those who hesitated, stay in the wings and what you're faced with, is an unreasonable amount of nothingness. This is true for any product, like software, a new kind of shampoo, or for that matter a workshop announcement. There's a bit of a spike at the launch, and then there's nothing. We were faced with this nothingness factor when we first sold The Brain Audit Except our launch was a bit different. We simply put up a sales page, and one person came along and bought the e-book. It took us totally by surprise. And so we'd sell a book here and a book there, often selling twenty or thirty books speaking at local events in Auckland. Nonetheless, the slow pace of sales can't be sustained forever. There are two primary reasons why an increase in activity is essential. The first and I think the most important is that a client that doesn't read your information will often go elsewhere. To me, getting that client to understand that information was far more important than just seeing yet another sale. Nonetheless, the sales matter too. Which is why both of these factors are vital. Your product partially brings a client into your “fold”, your way of thinking but it also helps create revenue. Even so, there's a lot of “nothing” that happens once you've launched your product. Which is why you need to prepare for both the drip and the next launch The drip is your newsletter or any method you keep in touch with your clients. At first, we'd send out one newsletter a month with an article. Then we changed it to twice a month and finally a weekly. We then moved it to twice a week, once on Tuesday and the other on Saturday (no, there's no logic for the days chosen). But to go back to the very start, all we'd do is send out the newsletter and then add a little blurb—an interesting blurb—at the end of the article. It would say something like: “Aren't clients odd? They nod at all the right times, agree with what you're selling, and then suddenly don't buy. Or worse, buy from someone else. What causes such behaviour? Find out what's going on in the brain of the client with The Brain Audit (and there'd be a link). That little blurb would cause the drip purchase. A few people would buy the product with every e-mail. As we increased the frequency of the e-mails, the sales of the product went up as well. Then we'd announce a bonus sale several times a year. We'd package The Brain Audit along with a few other goodies or bonuses and offer it to our list. The bonuses always did the trick. We'd get a tidy spurt in sales with every launch. Right from the very start, we tried to put ourselves in our client's shoes. We didn't want to be in their face all the time with all of these launches, which is why we'd send out an offer twice or thrice a year. If we went really nuts, it would be four times a year. And just for good measure, we'd pick days that were supposedly bad days. For instance, one of our e-mails would go out on Christmas Day. No one is supposed to be checking e-mail on that day, but our sales would be extremely high. A few launches like this for The Brain Audit and we were well on our way to creating the leverage we were looking to achieve. The key is not to get too predictable If you know there's going to be a sale or some goodies, would you buy something earlier and forfeit the goodies? Which is why we kept the announcements of such sales, unpredictable. It ensured that clients bought through the year in small batches and then we'd see a spurt in sales. However, there's a bit of a downside to this strategy as well. If you don't put in the dates in your calendar, you'll see the months fly by without the bonus sale happening. We'd often “wake up” to find half the year gone and we'd forgotten to announce a bonus sale. We now have the entire year planned to make sure this kind of periodic amnesia doesn't recur. There's a little note about the bonuses too When we began, we only knew what we saw around us. And everyone would pile up a ton of bonuses. Monkey see, and monkeys do, so we did the same. In time, we realised that a single bonus is enough. However, there's a significant point to consider, which is to have a must-have bonus. Every product or service has must-have items, yet they're often included as part of the package. Unbundling the item from the product or service and offering it as a bonus, is an excellent first move. However, you then have to take the time and effort to describe the bonus in detail, almost as if the bonus were the main item; almost like the primary item doesn't exist. We weren't always brave enough to keep one bonus over the years. For instance, the Article Writing Course has many bonuses, just as a matter of legacy. We put it there, and now we haven't removed it, but by and large, when announcing the bonus sale, a superior move would be to choose or create one bonus and then push that bonus to the hilt, so that the client must have the bonus, no matter what. And all, or most of this selling is done through your own channel, most often your e-mail newsletter. Your newsletter is easily the most powerful way to drip sell and to sell a bonus version of your product or service. However, it's not the only way. The other way is to get onto someone else's platform. Let's explore how to sell via someone else's list, without making a big hullabaloo about it. 2: If you have a podcast or videos or anything, keep repeating the name of ONE product over and over again. Many years ago when I first started in advertising, I read a book by David Ogilvy. Ogilvy was a master at promotion, but he came about it the hard way. He had to sell products door to door and work out what caused customers to buy. One of the things that he seemed to underline to aspiring copywriters was an idea of consistency. And my memory is a bit hazy because I read those books back in 1990, but it went something like this: You'll need to follow up about nine times. And it's not because the client is not paying attention. It's just that she or he is lost in their own problems. Which is why repetition is a must in your newsletter, but it's easy to go off track in other media When you're sending out a newsletter, and if you do it on a frequent basis, you're going to think about including your product. You could either add the links to the product as part of the editorial, below the editorial (right at the end) or do a sales pitch several times a year. However, when it comes to other media, that factor of repetition might not be as consistent. Take the podcast for example. When we started the Three-Month Vacation podcast, I'd mention products, courses and workshops right at the end of every podcast in the section called, “What's happening in Psychotactics land?” However, the choice of product or service being offered would not always be consistent. Then at one point we decided to create a format of sorts Every podcast would talk about 5000bc, no matter what else was trying to hog the spotlight. Let's take the Houston workshop we're conducting in the last week of October. That would need to get into the podcast, but even so, 5000bc would be mentioned, even once the Houston workshop promotion ceases. In short, you want to get the same message over and over and over—and over again. But do you say the same thing? Essentially, yes. I always say “5000bc is filled with introverts and that I'm the extrovert”. However, the tone or the message may change from time to time. At times, there may be an example from 5000bc or a story that's related to 5000bc, but the core message of “introverts” and “5000bc” stays doggedly on target. You too need to change the angle but keep the story consistent. Let's take an example of The Brain Audit If you were to drive home one message from The Brain Audit, it would be about “hesitation”. It's about why the client gets hesitant. Why at the last minute she goes from being not sure and not buying your product or service. That concept of hesitation has to be drummed in, over and over again. However, let's take a chapter from The Brain Audit. Let's talk about the concept of “uniqueness”. How does the concept of “uniqueness” and “hesitation” relate? Or what if you picked a chapter like “objections”. How do “hesitation” and “objections” relate to each other? Did you buy a 99c app online? Did you spend 3 hours and possibly six days wondering if you should buy that app or not? What caused you to hesitate? With 5000bc, the message of introverts represents “a safe place”. All the messaging about 5000bc has to be about it being safe. And what does “being in a safe zone” mean to most people? It means it's different from other places online where there's hacking and hustling, pimping and pumping. It's the polar opposite of people trying to climb over one another to get noticed. It's a place where you can be heard and treated with respect. Both 5000bc and The Brain Audit have a consistent message as do most of the products and services on Psychotactics. All of the consistency comes from “one wordWhen you examine your product or service, it will almost always seem to represent more than one word. Take The Brain Audit for example. It could be about hesitation, but it could also be about “speedier conversion”. If you have a service like a yoga class, you might achieve mindfulness, flexibility, injury-free. You could end up with three, four, even a dozen ways to explain your business. The big mistake most people make is they use two or three, and in the process, they don't get a single message across. A single message sent out repeatedly is what sticks in the brain of the client. And that's what you need to put in your podcast or video. I say video, or podcast, but the application doesn't matter You might be using webinars, speaking to live audiences, or getting your message through social media. The consistency is what is going to bring you repeated sales. The consistency of the “one word/one idea” is the ONLY thing that's going to cut through the clutter. When the client runs into flexibility issues, they're not thinking of mindfulness. Drum home that one message and you'll get the point across. Then take the same message into videos, podcasts, speaking, webinars or any medium that you're going to employ in the future. However, it's not enough to do a sales pitch. In almost every situation, you also need to embed the product or service within your content. Let's find out how. 3: Embedding the information within the editorial Russian dolls. You've seen those Matryoshka Russian dolls, haven't you? Also known as nesting dolls, it's a set of wooden dolls inside each other. You open one doll to find another smaller doll within, the smaller doll reveals yet another smaller doll, and so on. It's like one doll embedded into the other. When it comes to selling your product or service, it's a lot like embedding the information within the editorial content, with one prominent difference. The embedded information doesn't necessarily get smaller. If you do it right, you can take all the time and space you need to get your point across. Let's get right to the example, shall we? If you've been following this series, you'll notice that there was an entire discussion about 5000bc, our membership site. You got told how 5000bc was for introverts and got other bits of information about 5000bc. Then, there was a follow up of The Brain Audit, which is also a product being sold on the Psychotactics site. In effect, you were introduced to two products, and if you paid close attention, the sales page/landing page workshop was brought up as well. Yet, you may have also noticed something else. You didn't resent the information at all. If you're already a member of 5000bc, you are happy that your decision to be a member has been reinforced. If you've already read The Brain Audit (thrice as suggested), then you don't resent the information. And the workshop: that too would have caught your interest if you wanted to attend a Psychotactics workshop in October. In short, the entire piece in part 2 was embedded as a form of a sales pitch, as well as the information you just read in the past paragraph. What makes it so non-confrontational is that it's giving you information that is useful to you. If you imagine a photographer conducting a workshop, you'll know exactly what I mean. Let's say that photographer is a stockist for some lenses. And during the workshop, she can either talk about the lenses and give you the prices, or she can do something quite sublime. She can introduce you to the lenses, let you see them, play with them, even use them on your camera. Not everyone will be captivated, of course, but some will. And in embedding that information, she's got prospects who move over to clients. Think of that yoga class we mentioned earlier What could you do in the yoga class? Maybe you're having a weekend session. You could say it during the class itself. It's possible you are selling some new yoga books that you've sourced. Often enough you don't even have to mention the books. You could simply display them on a stand, and you'd get clients wanting to buy the product. However, not everyone notices or gets why one book is better, or why they should join one membership site over the other. And it's why editorial is so very crucial. When you explain concepts using the editorial format, the client gives you lots of time to drive home your information. Try doing a sales pitch as long, and many, if not most of the clients will tune out immediately. However, there's one more point to pay attention to when bringing up your product or service You can't merely keep the spotlight on yourself. Notice that Psychotactics doesn't have yoga classes. It doesn't sell photography lenses, either. Even so, you ran into those examples and for two good reasons. The first big reason is that more examples let the client get a better picture. If you're embedding examples of info-products and courses, for instance, a lot of clients may not make the leap. But as you add more examples, like yoga and photography, you're creating depth in your presentation. You're giving them examples of both products and services, and you're doing something even more critical. You're moving the spotlight away from you for a little bit. Once you've embedded your information, it's time to move on and give other examples, just to level the playing field a bit. Clients don't feel like they're stuck in an unending sales/editorial sequence. Embedding sales information in your product isn't hard to do Once again, you can use it not only in your articles but also in your video, podcasts, webinars and every other media. Even a casual social media post can show a bunch of camera lenses or photo equipment. Or it can mention a workshop that you're thinking of having in New Zealand. Whatever the eventual goal, you don't have to get stuck with just trying to sell. You can also use plain ol' editorial to keep selling products through the year. You may not sell in huge volumes when mentioning the product or services through the year. Your sales won't see any great spike. However, that doesn't mean your clients aren't paying attention. These embedded pieces of information are getting through, and when you finally do your sales pitch or your sales email, all of this hard work will pay off. There's really no downside to embedding like a Matryoshka doll. You've created great content, have sound examples and have moved strategically towards greater sales of your products and services. Next Up: Find out the magic that already exists within your existing info-product and why you don't have to keep crazily searching for newer clients all the time. Find out how  you can really double your sales of a product you've created a while ago?

How do you sleep in an exceedingly noisy environment? How do you beat jet lag? These are some of the questions we've had for years. This episode shows you how we've stumbled on a few nifty tricks to make travel so much better. Read online: https://www.psychotactics.com/travel-tips/ =========== My friend loves egg curry And though I've learned over the years to make complex Indian dishes like biryani, peeling a humble hard-boiled egg seemed to be beyond my control. So here's what I did. I tapped the egg dozens of times so that it looked pretty much like a parched field. Six eggs probably had six hundred fragments with that insane tapping of mine, and it took me about half an hour to peel six eggs. Then I went on YouTube and found that all you had to do was tap the egg once on the kitchen bench and roll it forward and the entire peel would unfold in a matter of seconds. That's tip. A nifty tip. And since we travel so much every year, we've picked up some of these goodies along the way. Let's take on four of them. Some of them we've been using for years, and some we picked up just on this vacation to Sri Lanka and India. Here are the four, all in a row. 1: How to entirely sidestep jet lag 2: How to sleep soundly in extremely noisy environments (without earplugs) 3: A travel app that sorts out your entire sequence (especially if you have a complex set of journeys) 4: Why travel agents are invaluable (even though you can book everything on the Internet). 1: How to completely sidestep jet lag In 2010, we conducted a series of workshops based on The Brain Audit. It seemed simple enough. The first three- day workshop was in California, the second just outside Washington D.C and the third in Vancouver. There was just one problem. All three workshops were in a span of approximately two weeks. This meant that we had to fly economy (we fly exclusively business now, but back then we flew economy) from Auckland to California. That's a distance 10,492 km and 12 hours. We conducted our first three day workshop in Campbell, California and then flew to Washington D.C. You see the problem unfolding, right? The time difference between Auckland and California can be between 3-5 hours. You land in a different time zone, have little or no time to get used to the difference and you're off to Washington D.C, which is three hours ahead. And Vancouver? Yes, Vancouver is three hours behind. All of this meant that we were zipping back and forth between time zones, and bear in mind we had 3 workshops to conduct and no time to get used to jet lag. Except there's where our first nifty trick comes into play It's called No-Jet-Lag. They're tiny little pills you take every two hours on the flight. So if our flight was 12 hours long, we had to take 6 of those pills for the journey. There's just one problem: homeopathy isn't supposed to work. The dosage is so tiny in any homeopathic prescription that most doctors will tell you that it's a sham. Do we care? Of course not, because for years we've been having these pills on flights, stepping out on the other side and getting right into the time zone. To give you an extreme example, we were speaking at an event in Sweden in 2017 Sweden is the “polar opposite” of time zones for us, because there's about a 12 hour difference. We flew from New Zealand to Copenhagen, Copenhagen to Stockholm and the entire trip, if I recall, was 39 hours door to door. The day after we landed, I was to give an hour-long presentation at around 3 pm. If you do your calculations correctly, that's 3 am New Zealand time (plus you do have to wake up, shower and go through some practice runs). We don't have the time or the energy to argue with whether homeopathy works or not All we know is that we travel a lot every year, crisscrossing the globe for work, but mostly on vacation. International travel is tiring and No Jet Lag won't help you with the tiredness. It's like being in a car. If you travel 12 hours, it feels like 12 hours. However, you don't feel like you've changed so many time zones. For me, especially, this is important, because more often than not, a Psychotactics workshop will be three days long. It's one thing to get on stage and give an hour long speech, but quite another to be on your feet (and awake) for three whole days. There are no doubt, many methods to beat jet lag One ex-air hostess said she doesn't eat or drink anything on the flight. Sorry miss, but we love our champagne and the food helps us pass the time on these very long trips out of New Zealand. We've used No Jet Lag since 2004, and it's worked just fine for us, so we'll stick to our weird little formula. There's one downside, however No, it's not to do with the ingredients. Instead it's more to do with keeping to a plan. Before I leave, I set alarms on my phone to go off every two hours until we reach our destination. That way I can be sure we don't miss the two-hour cycle. Apparently, you can take it every four hours if you're asleep, but not many of us sleep for hours on a flight, hence the alarms keep us on track. The instances where these tablets haven't worked is when we've been sloppy and popped them whenever we feel like it. Like this trip, returning back from India. We didn't keep to an alarm plan and we were waking up at 3 am for about a week. Do your due diligence and you're likely to still be exhausted, but at least nicely ensconced in the new time zone. No Jet Lag is made in New Zealand, so pretty much every medical store and travel store has it on display. If you go to their website at http://www.nojetlag.com/where-to-buy-No-Jet-Lag.html, you can find out where it's available. Try it. And that's it. Our first nifty travel tip. The second one is pretty cool, though because noise is just part of travel. How do you sleep soundly in extremely noisy environments (without earplugs)? Get ready for a story that you're just not expecting. 2: How to sleep soundly in extremely noisy environments (without earplugs) Let's assemble some speakers, shall we? Let's take a speaker, the size of your desk. Then let's add another speaker on top. Then just for good measure, let's add two more huge speakers on the other side and turn them on at full blast. Do you think you'd be able to sleep through the night? When we travelled through Sri Lanka, we ran into some exquisite hotels and villas However, nothing was quite as nice as Apa Villa. A huge mansion-like villa, it seemed to be surrounded by forest. Almost without fail, as you were seated for breakfast, you'd have wildlife of all sorts not more than 50 metres away. Monkeys, peacocks, monitor lizards and the occasional mongoose, they all were part of this jungle scenario. And in the middle of it was Apa Villa, in all its luxury—but mostly, quiet. Quiet that we luxuriated in. Then on the last day something happened that would shatter that quiet The place had been rented out for a big, noisy party that would start at 9 pm and go on until 7:30 am. And those speakers, that wall of speakers, was aimed right towards our room. And where there's a party, there are people drinking, talking and getting louder every minute. Except for the fact that we mostly slept through most of the noise. The secret is white noise The moment this concept is brought up, most people nod and smile. They know what white noise is all about. It's a sound created by say, the hum of an air conditioner. Or the sound of the sea. However, most people don't think of battling noise with more noise. Instead, what they tend to do is try and reach for earplugs. Which, if you're someone like me, is a pointless exercise. Not only am I a light sleeper, but I damaged my right ear, using cotton buds when I was younger. I can't sleep with anything in my ear as it just hurts. Enter the white noise app We turned it on loud, to the sound of rain. At first, it might seem too loud for your ears, but your brain soon adjusts to it. And in doing so it tunes out the rest of the noise almost completely. Think of it as being at a party. Someone across the room mentions your name and your attention is instantly focused on that person, instead of paying attention to the discussion right in front of you. White noise—and yes, there's an app for it—does exactly that function. It helps your brain focus on the rain—or whatever sound you prefer, and tunes out the rest. We slept through the party in Sri Lanka We slept through the noisy clatter of feet in Leiden, in the Netherlands. We even slept with a jackhammer going outside our hotel window in Goa, India. Few hotels in the world have true soundproofing And the more you travel, the more you realise how much you crave silence on your vacation. Well, there you have it. Battle noise with white noise and you'll have a restful sleep. In fact, don't just use it on vacation. You can even use it at home when your neighbour has decided to create his own wall of speakers to party through the night. 3: A travel app that sorts out your entire sequence (especially if you have a complex set of journeys) Many people go on vacation from Point A to Point B. If that's the case, you don't need much help, do you? However, if your travel plans are a bit like ours, you're going to need a bit of help. And incredibly, that help is free in an app called TripIt. The app works like a really efficient secretary. As you book hotels, cars, and other elements on your vacation, you tend to get an e-mail with the confirmation. All you have to do is forward that e-mail to TripIt The moment you forward it, it will collate all the information from that e-mail and order it sequentially in the app. This means if you're headed to Auckland on Thursday, via Air New Zealand, then staying at an Airbnb, and picking up a car at 2 pm, the app will slot all of these activities in chronological sequence. All the details, booking numbers, directions—anything contained in the e-mail will all be put in neat little sections so that you can dig deeper into your reservations as well. If you've forgotten to book a room, TripIt pays attention As soon as you open the app, it nudges you with a paid link. You are likely to ignore the paid link, but it's enough of a red flag to get you book your accommodation for the night. If you choose to opt for their paid service (which isn't much at $45 or so, per year) you'll get a lot more features that all help the frequent traveller. If you're not a frequent traveller and just a complicated traveller like me, then the free version works just as well. But what about your privacy? Obviously all of this information is sitting somewhere in a server. Someone could get all of this information and use it for nefarious purposes. They know where you're going, what you're doing, etc. Isn't that dangerous? Yes, it's dangerous, but if someone really wants to track where you're going; if they're really motivated, there are many ways to get that information. The moment you start booking things online; or rather the moment you went online fifteen or twenty years ago, your privacy was private no more. There's always the option of keeping all the information in a printed format with your passport, but if you're into digital apps, this is the way to go. That's nifty trip no.3. Shall we go onto 4? 4: Why travel agents are invaluable (even though you can book everything on the Internet). Travel agent? Isn't that a profession from the last century? That's what I thought until I ran into a travel agent at a party. We got talking and later when I got in touch with him, I realised that the Internet wasn't the friend I thought it was, after all. For years, Renuka and I have been booking our air tickets and hotels online. Imagine my surprise when I realised I'd been paying a lot more by going online. Granted, our trips can be extremely complex, but even so, I was shocked at how useful the travel agent happened to be. Not only was he able to save us money, but help us avoid a lot of needless arguments A single vacation can involve several hotels, connections etc. And if you're zigzagging, it's not easy to find connecting flights or even airlines that you prefer. These days, all I do is e-mail the travel agent, and a few hours later, with no work whatsoever, on my part, he shows up with all the flights I need. Just to make things easier, he knows we hate to catch early morning flights because it means you've got to wake up even earlier. Many of our flights take off around 11 am or noon, or even later, depending on where we're headed. In short, the travel agent's screen is entirely different from the one you have at home. Instead of burning through an entire evening trying to get the flights and hotels you want, an agent takes over all the hard work for you and gives you a quote. Agents know you have Google They know they can't randomly throw in high quotes. At first, we got some incredibly unintelligent agents, but in time we did run into one who understood our needs and was able to make the bookings quickly, effectively and at the prices that worked well for us. This agent also looks at my schedule and will make suggestions. For instance, he told us to avoid spending more than a couple of days in a city in Europe because the city was boring (it was). It's the little bits and pieces, the little suggestions that make a good travel agent worthwhile. Plus if you get stuck, things change, while the other passengers are lining up, a travel agent can quickly make changes for you. Walk into a travel agency today if you're planning a trip. You might be amazed at how much time and energy you save in the future. And at no extra cost either. And there we have it, our four nifty tips. 1: How to completely sidestep jet lag. You do it with No Jet Lag. Remember to set your alarms before you leave. 2: How to sleep soundly in extremely noisy environments (without ear plugs). Get a white noise app. Most of us would sleep soundly to the sound of falling rain. 3: TripIt is a travel app that sorts out your entire sequence (especially if you have a complex set of journeys). Every single part of your journey is mapped out in handy screen. No need to dig through a dozen e-mails. And you can often use the information on TripIt when checking in at airports. 4: Travel agents are invaluable (even though you can book everything on the Internet). You may never have considered a travel agent recently, but I am totally hooked. Our travel agent has saved us hours of needless searches, gotten us out of boring places, made bookings in places where everything is seemingly full and done it all without any extra charge. I don't know about you, but that's magical. That's pretty much it. Bon Voyage! Next Up: No one thinks running a small business is easy But even so, there are forces that pull you in all directions. These forces almost seem to tear at us as we go through our daily work. Find out the answer here: How do you cope with the forces of small business?

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