The Three Month Vacation Podcast

The hardest thing in business?or life is the factor of confidence. Whether you're in online marketing, selling products or services, or run a physical store, the confidence goes up and down. And yet, confidence is what creates sales. Sales, after all, is a transfer of enthusiasm from one person to another. So how can we create this enthusiasm without confidence? And where do we start looking? http://www.psychotactics.com http://www.psychotactics.com/dc ===== / 00:00:20 Introduction: Biryani Disaster? / 00:02:36 Table of Contents / 00:03:14 Part 1: The Root of Confidence / 00:08:14 Part 2: Getting Confidence Back / 00:12:59 Part 3: Confidence is a Rechargable Battery / 00:16:01 Summary / 00:18:25 Announcements: Book on Pricing + US Workshop-InfoProducts ===== Transcript: There are lots of things that I like doing: dancing, painting, cartooning, but one of the things I like the most is cooking.   Of course I invite people over to dinner. On this evening I'd invited one of my friends and I was making this very special dish. It's a multi-layered rice dish called a biryani. If you say the biryani to most people they get a little afraid because there's so much preparation involved, and you have to get so many things right.   Anyway, I got a few things wrong that day, but only I knew that I'd got those things wrong Andd yet when I went to serve the dish I mentioned that it was not up to standard. Now this friend of mine, he had never had a biryani before. He didn't know what a biryani was supposed to taste like, but what I said, it really affected him. My lack of confidence spilled over and he didn't feel that the biryani was up to standard.   For ages after that, whenever we met he wanted all the other dishes except the biryani What did I do wrong? The answer doesn't lie in the recipe for the biryani or the way the biryani was made that evening. What it lies is in a factor of confidence. Sales is the transfer of enthusiasm from one person to another, and that evening I wasn't transferring any enthusiasm, so I wasn't selling my dish. This is what we do a lot when we're at networking meetings, when we're at presentations, when we're selling a product or a product or a service to a client. We lack that enthusiasm. We don't appear confident, and then the client wants to think about it. They want to ask their mother, brother, sister about it before they decide.   Today we're going to talk about three aspects of confidence We'll start out with the root of confidence. Where does the confidence come from? Is it inbuilt or do we have something that we have to learn? The second is how to deal with this whole set of confidence issues when things don't seem to be going your way. The third and most importantly, to realize how confidence is like a rechargeable battery, how you need to charge it up all the time.   Let's start out with the first, which is the root of confidence Your background, that's the deepest, strongest root that you can have in confidence with anything. As you're growing up you don't realize it, but as you're sitting around reading some comics or watching TV and the adults are going about doing their own things, you get an education. When I was growing up my father ran a secretarial college and he used to train people to be secretaries.   I used to sit around; I used to eat; I used to read some story books, type on the typewriters because he had a lot of them. Essentially I wasn't doing anything, yet a lot was happening. A lot of the information was going into my head and I was getting confident about teaching, about speaking, about meeting people, about doing a lot of things that I didn't realize until it was much later.   Why am I telling you this? I'm telling you this because when you grow up in a different kind of family you have different experiences. If your family was largely job-oriented and it was about safety and not making mistakes and not taking too many risks, then it becomes quite hard for you to do that and you have to learn that confidence. If you grow up in a family where people are cooking, or they're painting, or they're doing some woodwork, what you're doing is you're getting the confidence just by sitting around. You're absorbing all that information but you also get information.   For instance, when I'm sitting with my nieces and there's my palette in front of me and I'm painting some cartoons, they're getting information about what yellow ocher looks like, how the sky is not really blue but it is blue at the top and then blue and yellow ocher in the middle and then yellow ocher towards the horizon. They get all this information so they get confident. When you don't have that confidence then you have to build up that confidence. Because sales is a transfer of enthusiasm for one person to another, all the things that you're selling depends on you being confident about it because you project that energy.   What I used to do is I used to go to networking meetings and I was quite terrified I was in a new country when we moved to New Zealand. I would play "Simply The Best." I had a tape player in my car and I'd play that over and over again. That gave me confidence. That just boosted my energy to the point where I could last the meeting and then go back home.   There are certain areas where you have confidence because you've grown up around that environment, that family, that atmosphere. There are other areas where you don't have the confidence. One of the things that you have to do is artificially boost that confidence somehow. Listen to some music. Listen to someone who is talking about confidence making you more confident. Because the lack of that confidence often leads to people not buying from you.   How does this confidence play out in real life? We don't stand in front of an audience and say we're terrified, but we say little things like, "Oh, I'm sorry but we didn't have a good night last night," or I would say things like, "Oh, that biryani didn't turn out as well as it should. It's missing these spices." Or right after making a presentation and getting an applause we'll say, "Thank you. It was so good, but ... " But? You use the word but. It's these little clues that give away the fact that we are not as confident as we should.   The moment we are confident people get this surge of enthusiasm from us and they're more interested in buying. Now sales is a lot more than just enthusiasm, but we doubt the confidence, it's almost impossible to sell anything. While some of us have our deep roots in confidence because we've grown up with that atmosphere, the moment we're thrown into an unknown space we have to get that enthusiasm building within us and not apologizing. That's how you get to a level of confidence. The moment you apologize it kills everything. Everything you've done just before that, it's dead.   It's like the song from The King and I: "Whenever I feel afraid I hold my head erect and whistle a happy tune so no one will suspect I'm afraid."   This takes us to the second part.   What do you do when things really go wrong? For about 10 years the musicians and rock star Sting was in what he called a writer's block. He wasn't able to produce any music, write any songs, and then he wrote this album called The Last Ship. Then they went to Broadway and they spent four or five years putting together everything.   The musical cost about 15 million dollars to just bring to the stage, and then about $625,000 in running costs; that is per week. Yet, they were losing. People weren't showing up for the play. You put in all of this effort, all of this time, and what happens? At this point in time it's very easy to say, "I'm a failure. I'm not supposed to do this." But it's not true. It's always a stepping stone for another learning.   We've had situations where our confidence has been badly beaten. I can remember the time very early in my career when I went to Australia. It was this kind of pitch fest and I was not used to pitching from the podium. Everyone around me were selling tens of thousands of dollars of product and when I stood there I couldn't manage anything. I think about 10 people bought the product. It completely shattered the confidence.   At that point in time you have to step back and reevaluate and say, "What did I do wrong?" Not "What is wrong with me," but "What did I do wrong?" Because more often than not it's got nothing to do with you. Back in the year 2000 if you published an article on someone else's site, on a big site, you'd probably get 200 subscribers. If you published it in 2010 you'd probably get 50 subscribers. Now you'd probably get 10 subscribers.   The point is that the distraction has increased tremendously You look at some of the bigger sites and you find that the comments have gone down. You find that everyone is having to fight the same battle. Because you're just starting out, because you're struggling you think, "It's me. It's got something to do with me. I'm not writing well. I'm not doing stuff well." That's possible, but it's possible the technique, which is what I found out on stage in Australia. I found out that my technique was wrong, so I had to learn from that technique. I had to build up that confidence, and then when we went to Chicago a few years later I outsold everybody in the room.   Now admittedly I don't do this pitching from the podium anymore, but in the early years I did a lot of it I had to get the confidence because it was very unusual for me. This is what you've got to understand. Most of the time there's nothing wrong with you. You probably don't have enough experience so you don't have enough confidence and you don't have enough technique. Of course if you're buy into hype from people who say that you're going to get hundreds of customers or thousands of customers, or Facebook fans, and you buy into the la dee da, that's your problem. At the very core of it it is about boosting yourself up, getting the technique, and that's how you get confident.   Because you will run into a whole bunch of potholes in your career, and every single time you have to pull yourself out. That's what Sting has done as well. He's gone on tour now with Paul Simon. You pick yourself up, you dust yourself, and you walk on. Because there is no option. When your confidence is battered it's no point staying in the mud. You just pick yourself up and walk on.   This brings us to the last part, which is the factor of how your confidence is like a rechargeable battery. Just yesterday I got an email from my friend Bryan Eisenberg. Bryan said he really liked the podcast. He mentioned how it was getting better and better with every episode. That's a charge. That would keep me going for at least two or three days, but just like there is a charge, there's also a discharge, and there are people around you all the time that don't exactly encourage you. They don't discourage but they don't encourage you. As soon as that happens your confidence starts to go down.   These might be people you love: your husband, your wife, your friend These might be people that are almost always in your favor, but in this one aspect they don't exactly encourage you. Like yesterday I was helping my wife do a handstand and she's been struggling with the handstand for ages. I said to her, "I don't think you're going to get there." In that moment she was quite angry, she was quite upset.   I realize today that I wasn't being helpful. If you look around you, in your house, in your friend circle, in your family, you will find people who are not discouraging you but they're not encouraging you, and you have to find people that will give you that charge. Because every single day that battery goes up and then it comes crashing down, and you have to have that charge.   We get confident because we recover from mistakes, we fix those mistakes. The icing on the cake is simply when someone says, "Wow, you made a great dish. That was a great painting. That was a superb podcast." If we're not getting this from our friends and our family, especially the family, then we have to find our source that will encourage us and get those batteries up and running.   When we do workshops, one of the questions that we ask is why are you attending this workshop. If you dig deep enough the answer is always confidence, always, always confidence. If you dig deep enough you will find that everyone attending your workshop, everyone buying your product, everyone getting anything from you is because they want to gain confidence. They want to get that charge from you. You've got to send out that confidence and you have to be enthusiastic. For that you have to make sure that you're not being discharged.   That brings us to the end of this episode. Let's do a quick summary. We started out today with the root of confidence. When you grow up in a family or in an environment where things are happening, you don't have to be part of it. You just have to be there. Of course it helps if you're given responsibility and taught stuff as you go along, but just being around makes you more confident than the average person.   The second element that we covered was what happens when you make mistakes. All of us make these mistakes. All of us make terrible mistakes, and really the only way to get over the mistake is to get up and make another mistake until you stop making mistakes. There is a technique, and people learn how to speak better, how to present better, how to write better. There is a technique, and what you need to do is buy into a system that promises you a lot of hard work instead of get rich quick or do this really, really quick. Because the quick methods, they lead to destruction. They don't work, and so your confidence goes down even further.   Finally, we looked at confidence as a rechargeable battery. If you find someone like me who's a scrooge who's saying, "You're not going to do that headstand," you're never going to do the headstand at least with me around. You know this one driving. You know when couples go driving? This is what happens. You want to find a source of confidence of inspiration because our confidence is so fleeting.       What's the one thing you can do today? The core of confidence is the ability to do something very quickly, like speaking a language. You get confidence from someone who has a method, a method that is slow, steady, that has tiny increments. The one thing you can do today is avoid anything that is super fast. When you see that red flag, someone promising you super quick clients, super quick this, super quick that, step aside and find something else that will truly build your confidence, truly build your skill, that takes a lot of effort. That's how you move ahead and that's how you get more confident in life.

It may seem like article writing is very hard. And it is. Good writing needs structure, it needs skill and it needs one more thing: input. Without input, nothing happens. So where do we get this input? And why bother with bad input? Finally, what if you don't like audio learning? Can't you just stick to books? Knowing these answers can dramatically change the way you approach article writing. And yes, make you a better writer. For more, go to http://www.psychotactics.com For the fun workshop: http://www.psychotactics.com/dc For the Story Telling Product: http://www.psychotactics.com/story --------- Hi, this is Sean D'Souza from Psychotactics.com and you're listening to The Three Month Vacation podcast. This podcast isn't some magic trick about working less. Instead, it's about how to really enjoy your work and enjoy your vacation time.                         Imagine you go to the café and you're sitting there and the barista is making this fabulous coffee. The machine is superb, the barista has just won the championship. This is the top of the line barista and then you get your coffee. You take one sip and you think, "Something is wrong with you," because it can't be. It can't be this bad. How come this coffee is so yucky. It's very simple. Bad input. In coffee land, that is bad coffee beans. Either they're over roasted or under roasted, or just inferior coffee beans. Input is what matters and the same thing applies when you're writing an article or a book. The most important thing of all is input.                         If you were to ask someone to write a story about their life, they probably could manage it. You would have to narrow it down, of course. You would have to say, "Tell me about when you were 10." You would have to narrow it down further, maybe some episode at school, but eventually, they would come up with some story and the story would have clear ups and downs. It would have a storyline, it would have everything in place. How did they do that? How did they conjure that up from nothing?                         Nothing is a silly word to use here, isn't it? They already had something. They had the whole story in their mind. They have the concept in their mind. That becomes input and then it's a matter of structuring it in an article, and you have to know that structure, or structuring it in the form of a book. Then, you have your material. Most of the time, when you sit down to write an article, we don't have enough input. We have knowledge but we don't have enough input.                         In this episode, we're going to look at what is input, where do you get it, and why structured and unstructured input is very important. Let's tackle the first burning question, which is: What is input?                         The thing with you and me and everyone is that we already have the answers. The problem is we don't have the questions. We don't have that thing that prods us in the side and gets us to answer the question. That is our problem. It doesn't matter if you're a lawyer or in real estate or fitness or any business. You already have the answers. The problem is you're not getting enough questions. People don't ask you enough questions and so to get those questions, you have to go elsewhere. That elsewhere is really other books, other material, and that is input.                         To give you an idea of what my day looks like, I start off the day with going for a walk. Usually, I have a few podcast, different types of podcasts and my phone is loaded with audio books as well. I know a lot of people have aversion to audio and obviously, you're listening to a podcast so you don't have this aversion, but a lot of people think that they're not going to listen to audio books or they're not going to listen to podcasts because they're not going to remember anything.                         You're not supposed to remember everything. You're supposed to remember just one thing. That one thing is something that the author says and this could be something brand new, something that you've never thought of. That's input. Now, your brain is churning. Now, your brain is moving faster than ever before.                         What if it's old material? Old material, when listened to or read a second or a third time, is different from when it was read the first time or listened to the first time because so much has changed. You have learned so much in between and now, that seems like mundane material could be very exciting. Both old material and new material make a big difference. That becomes input. That becomes like the coffee bean. That becomes the great stuff that you can work with. That is your starting point. You want that ignition point and that ignition point comes from input.                         Of course, when we think of input, the input could come from a report, it could come from a book, it could come from audio, it could come from video. Why audio?                         Because you're always traveling somewhere. You're always going to the supermarket. You're always walking around. You're always doing something that is just dead time. This is when you want to get that input. You want to start making notes, get more input, make more notes, and all the time, your brain is readying for that moment when you're going to write. Book reading, on the other hand, is a dedicated amount of time. You probably sneak in 15 minutes before bed or 15 or 20 minutes in the morning if you're lucky.                         This dead time is there all the time for you. When you're waiting in the queue, when you're at the dentist, when you are picking up your kid, when you are driving in your car, there are literally hours in the day just waiting for you to get that input. If you think I'm telling you not to read and just listen to audio, that's not the point. The point is very simple: To be able to have output, you have to have input and to be able to have great input, you have to read great stuff or listen to great stuff and really crappy stuff.                         Crappy stuff? Why would you listen to crappy stuff? We know that when you are listening to great stuff, it really inspires you. It makes you feel on top of the world. You feel like you're going to write an article or you're going to write some chapters in your book. You feel that because that's what input does. It sends energy through your system. Why would we deal with crappy stuff? The reason why you're dealing with crappy stuff is because you want to see how badly people give advice because that also sends a charge through you. You get very excited. You get emotionally charged. You want to get rid of this rubbish that people have been spouting.                         That then generates another form of input, which is, "This is really bad, I need to fix it now." Crappy stuff could be just average information, but it also could be unstructured information. It might seem like, "Why do I have to listen to this?" Some of the great input comes from bad stuff. You can show people how to avoid that bad stuff, how to avoid that bad structure.                         However, there is a downside to input. That is we're all information junkies so we could be reading and we could be listening to endless amounts of stuff. The key is not to remember everything. I've said this before. I want to say it again. You just want to take away one idea. You will almost never get one idea. You will get more than one idea. If it's really crappy, you might get nothing. This is where the strategy of having several podcasts, several audio books, and several books maybe, if you're reading ... That's really why you need to have several of them, because then, if you're getting nothing for half an hour and you think, "This is rubbish," you can switch. You can switch to something else.                         I will listen to philosophy and psychology and marketing and all kinds of stuff on a single walk. It all becomes input. Most people think that article writing and content creation is about sitting down and writing. It's not. It doesn't matter that you have all the information in your head already. You still need an ignition point. You still need something to fire you up. You still need something to inspire you, something to get frustrated about. That is how you create great content.                         You can make coffee from any coffee bean or you can make coffee from great stuff. Even bad coffee teaches you a good lesson.                         That brings us to the end of this episode. What are you going to do? What's the one thing that you're going to do as a result? You definitely want to subscribe to this podcast. If you're on iTunes, you just press the subscribe button and therefore, you will get a lot of the content that is coming out on Three Month Vacation. Episode 5, 6, and 7 is about storytelling and one of the most critical thing in sales, in storytelling, in article writing, in book creation, product creation, is storytelling. You want to go back and listen to 5, 6, and 7. If you haven't heard it, well, here is a nudge again. Go there, subscribe, and that's your one thing that you need to do today.                         You want to stack your phone with lots of podcasts, lots of audio books. There is a ton of dead time. People say they have no time. No, they don't have efficiency. This is efficiency. Do it. Today. There is a series on storytelling. If you go to Psychotactics.com and search for storytelling, there is a really good series on storytelling. Yes, you have to pay for it, but it's worth it. It's all input and it will help you write better articles.                         There is also the article writing course. If you want home study for that, that's well worth it. We've been doing the article writing course since 2006 and we never promise that one person turned out to be a great article writer. Everyone turns out to be outstanding. That is because the article writing course is built on structure. It's built on a system. When you put those elements together, it's just fabulous. It's just amazing. You take the input, you take the structure, and you get great articles. You get great content and then you don't struggle anymore, which is the goal, isn't it?                         Finally, you know about the information products store, so that's on the East Coast of the United States, in Maryland. It's located at the Sheraton Silver Spring. It's the 5th, 6th, and 7th of May. We don't have 300 people come to our event and have 25 speakers. There is just one speaker and you spend 3 days actually working instead of just listening to more blah blah. We'll see you there. Bye for now.                         This has been brought to you by Psychotactics.com and The Three Month Vacation.  

Is the 10,000 hours principle true? And if it's true, what are your chances of success? And what are the biggest flaw? How do you take the concept of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 Hours story (He took it from a K.Anders Ericsson study) and reduce the number of hours? Is talent really attainable in fewer hours?   Have you ever watched a 16-year-old go for a driving test? He probably practices for two or three weeks, off and on, and then after that, he drives. Now, imagine they changed the rules of the driving test. Imagine they said that you needed 10,000 hours to drive. How many of us would be on the roads today? Several years ago, best-selling author Malcom Gladwell wrote a book called “Outliers”. Within that book, there was this concept of 10,000 hours, and the concept was very simple. It said that if you wanted to be exceedingly good at something, you needed to spend at least 10,000 hours. As you can quite quickly calculate, that’s about 10 years of very had work or 5 years of extremely hard work. The interesting thing about 10,000-hour principle is that two sets of people jump on it, the people that had already put in their 10,000 hours in something and those who hadn’t; but what if you hadn’t? What if you hadn’t put in those 10,000 hours? Were you doomed to be always untalented? Understanding this concept of the 10,000 hours is very important, especially if you want to take vacations. You have to get very skilled at a lot of things very quickly. If you don’t understand the concept, then you struggle for no reason at all. In today’s episode of the Three-Month Vacation, we’re going to cover three things. The first is, why is the 10,000 hours true? The second, what are the biggest flaws in the 10,000 hours? The third is, how do you go about shortening that process, so that you just do maybe a thousand hours?

If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing 70% right. You can always come back to do the 20% later. Yes, read it again, and no, the math isn’t wrong. If you’re going to build a website, a 70% effort is fine. If you’re going to do a presentation a 70% effort is fine. If you’re going to bake a cake, for that matter…do you need all the ingredients? The perfect cake? With all the perfecto ingredients? Or the cake with ’70%’ of the ingredients? Let's find out what the 70% principle is all about shall we? ==== LINKS: To subscribe: http://www.psychotactics.com To get to that amazing workshop: http://www.psychotactics.com/dc Storytelling? You want stories? http://www.psychotactics.com/story To subscribe to this podcast: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic ====  Hi, this is Sean D'Souza from psychotactics.com and you're listening to the Three Month Vacation Podcast. This podcast isn't some magic trick about working less. Instead, it's about how to really enjoy your work and enjoy your vacation time.  I was sitting in the café minding my business when this woman was sitting across from me. She looked up a few times and made eye contact. Then she summoned up courage and moved across and she spoke to me. Apparently she was a writer. She had written three or four books and never got them published, so I asked her why. You probably know her answer. She said, "Well, I'm a perfectionist."  This is the problem. We think that we are perfectionists, but everyone is a perfectionist. Everyone would like to do the best possible job, and yet some people get their job done and others don't. The reason why they do that is because of a simple concept called the 70% principle. This podcast is going to explore what is the 70% principle, how it helps you, and when you should stop.  Let's start off with the first one, which is the 70% principle. What is it? In 2004 we were headed out from Auckland to Los Angeles. It was the first time we were having a Psychotactics workshop internationally. Of course everything had been sold. We'd booked the venue. We'd got people to sign up. We'd printed the notes. We'd done everything. There was only one little hitch. We still hadn't got a visa from the US embassy. It wasn't because we were delaying or procrastinating. It was just that they were giving out visas just a week before departure. You can imagine the situation, can't you?  What if we didn't get the visa? What if something happened and the workshop couldn't go ahead? Life is full of so many what ifs. It becomes much simpler if you take a software developer's philosophy. A software developer's philosophy is very simple. It is get 70% right and come back and fix the rest later. So many of us don't complete our projects because we think that it's not good enough. Then having completed a project we don't sell it because, again, we feel somehow it could be improved. Of course it could be improved, but your 70%, the audience is already waiting for that right now. They're waiting for the information that you have and they don't care about the remaining 30%, not just yet.  We went ahead with our first workshop simply because we thought that's the best we can do, 70%. When I wrote my first book, The Brain Audit, it was only 16 pages. Today it's 180 pages. What's the real size of the book? To me I think it's about 1,500 pages. Well, not as a single book but as different courses and books. The point is that if you wait for that perfect moment, if you wait to get everything down, it never happens.  When you think like a software developer you go, "Okay, this is the maximum I can achieve." You go out there and you put it out there. Then you can come back and fix it. The brain audit started out with version 1 and then went to version 2, and is on version 3.2. Will there be a version 4? I don't know, but the point is very simple. You can always fix it later. We understand the 70% principle but why does it work? It works for a simple reason. That clients are waiting for your stuff right now. Your audience is waiting for your stuff right now. If you don't put it out there they still have to get it. They still have to get the information.  There's a story about Jack Johnson, Jack Johnson the musician. In a Rolling Stone interview Jack Johnson said, "A song like "Bubble Toes," I don't know if I would have written that song if a million people we're going to hear it." He said, "It was like a joke to my wife around the house. Then a couple of friends liked it and then people asked for it at shows, and it became popular." We're going away from the point. The point is the middle that comes in the middle of the song. It goes like this: la da dada da da, da dada da da da da, la da dada da da. Jack had been planning to put in words but when the time came to release the song there were no words, so he ran it as la da dada da da. Today that's the most endearing part of that album. In fact, if you just play the la da dada da people know that's Jack Johnson.  That's really what the 70% principle embodies. It embodies the fact that people are ready for your music as it is. It might be in version 1, it might be in version 2. It doesn't really matter. That whole concept of perfection, that's just a story you've been telling yourself. That's just another way to procrastinate. That's just another way to not put out that book, that song. That's just another way to hold yourself together. Exposing yourself with just 70%, that really works because your audience is ready for it right now.  The main point is that it's never going to be 100%. No one is ever satisfied with their work. When you look at a writer going through a book, by the time the writer goes through that entire book they have changed. They have physically changed. Something in their brain has changed. When they look at the first few pages it's totally different from page 200.  The late night comedy show Saturday Night Live, that runs on the 70% principle. They can rehearse all they want but then on Saturday night they have to go live. That's the best they can do. At this point in time they're in their 40th season just doing 70% of what they can do, and doing it by deadline. This brings us to the third part, which is how do you know that it's done. When do you stop? When is that 70% reached? The answer is very simple. We know that we've reached our 70% when the time is up. Let's say you have to write an article. You give yourself a couple of hours and at the end of those couple of hours you're done. You're doing a painting, you give yourself 45 minutes and at the end of 45 minutes you're done. Over the years I've wanted to write books on membership and pricing and presentations, and every single book I could have done better. Every single podcast that I've done I could have done better, but there is a deadline. When you have that deadline and it's an unshakable deadline, then the job gets done.  The reason why people call themselves perfectionists is because they never intend to put the book out. They never intend to have the la da dada da da out there. The ones that put it out there, they get the rewards. That's the one thing that you've got to do today. You've got to make sure that you have a deadline. Whatever you're producing, whatever you're creating, whether it's a book or an article or a song, or maybe you're just going to fix a tap or paint a ceiling, the point is you need to have a deadline and on that deadline it's done. It is absolutely incredible what a deadline can do for us. We would have never gone to that workshop in the United States if we knew in advance that the visa was only going to come at the last minute, but we had tickets. We had a deadline and we had to go. We had to go for the visa, and we got the visa. There's a happy story there. Sometimes you don't get happy stories, but if you take an average of just putting it out there like a software developer, you'll find that you have more happy stories than unhappy stories. That's what the 70% principle is all about. Get 70% done, have a deadline, and then you can always come back and fix it later.  That brings us to the end of this episode. For the last few podcast episodes I've been talking about the information product workshop. The most critical thing today is just how to put together information when there are so many experts out there. The goal isn't to get someone to read your stuff, but how do we get them to read right to the end and then come back for me. Most information isn't that compelling. The reason why it isn't that compelling is because it doesn't have a structure. When you have structure it goes flowing from one section to the other to the other and you get to the end. When you get to the end you want more. It's just like a meal. It's like an amazing ... You go back to the restaurant again and again and again. That's what we're going to cover at the information products workshop. It's at psychotactics.com/dc. All of this action is happening in the first week of May, so go to pscyhotactics.com/dc and find out for yourself. If you can't make it to the workshop, get yourself the home study and you can find this in the home study section at psychotactics as well.  That brings us to the end of this podcast. You want to hang around for one more story? Okay, we'll do one more story. Have you heard of the song "Second Wind" by Billy Joel? If you listen to that song, right at the end there is a flub. There is this mistake. If you just listen to the song you don't pay attention to it and you don't notice it, but of course Billy Joel knew he had made a mistake, and he was in the studio and he wanted to erase it, but that was the whole point of the song: to make a mistake. That was the 70%, so he kept it. Today if you listen to that song you can hear it. Now I'm going to play this piece of music because my wife absolutely loves this. Here we go.   

Clients aren't always keen to accept our ideas?no matter how brilliant or workable. And we have the same problem with product or services. The resistance is much too high and we struggle to get things moving. So how do we overcome this resistance from clients? How do we overcome the objections? / / 00:00:20 Introduction / 00:03:12 Part 1: Creating Expertise On Your Site / 00:04:48 Part 2: Pointing Clients To Existing Material / 00:06:48 Part 3: The Power of Demonstration / 00:11:33 Wrap Up + Information Products Workshop: Washington D.C.   I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the story of the white pants of Sara Blakely. Sara’s product was an undergarment. It smoothed out the contours of a woman’s body making your clothes more flattering, more comfortable but Sara was not able to sell the product. Yet as the legend goes she was at the store at Neiman Marcus in Dallas and she was wearing these form fitting white pants. She invited the buyer to join her in the lady’s room. At this very unusual place that Sara proceeded to show how those white pants looked with the undergarments that she was selling which were called Spanx and then she proceeded to show how they looked without it.  Sara didn’t stop there she went on to sell to Bloomingdales to Saks, Bergdorf-Goodman and today that brand is worth over $250 million, but what was Sara really doing there? Was she selling a product or was she doing something different? Sara was actually fighting resistance. Often as we go about our day to day business selling products and services we run into clients who are convinced that they are right and often they’re wrong. We then try to get into this debate, this mini argument as it were and that’s not the way to convince a client.  The way to convince the client is to show them proof. How do we go about this proof? In today’s podcast we’ll cover 3 ways in which you can get a client over to your side of the fence without any of that mini argument or debate. We’ll talk about 1 the proof that you create, 2 the proof that other people create and finally irrefutable proof demonstration. Let’s start off with the first type of proof which is the proof that you create.  Let’s say for instance you are a web designer and you’re completely convinced that responsive sites are very, very important for clients. Responsive sites as you probably know are sites that you view on a mobile or on a tablet and they readjust to fit the width and the height of the mobile or the tablet. There you are in front of the client and the client is old school. They built their site in 2005 or 2007. They’re not that keen to switch over to something that readjust their entire site. What are you going to do?  The first thing that you need to have is you have to have content of your own because clients have objections and usually they don’t have a lot of objections. They’ve had maybe 6, 7 different kinds of objections over the years and what you need to do is you need to put together information. A good form of information is a bunch of articles. You could have a booklet, you could have any kind of information that you’ve written and it’s very important that it comes with your name attached to it because that makes you the expert. As the client is battling a bit not a lot but just a bit with you, you can point out that information on your website or maybe you’ve got a booklet that you can hand out to them.  Now it’s easy to think we’ll I can just tell them. I can just speak to them right on the spot they are sensible people but a conversation doesn’t have the elements of an article or a booklet that has structure and form. You can’t just put together anything on a website. You have to have structure and form and you have to build that argument as it were. When they go and see that structure and form and it’s signed with your name because it’s on your website or your booklet that makes you the expert. That makes a big difference to have the client perceives you because now you’ve anticipated their objection and you’ve answered their question. That’s only 1 way to do it.  The second way you want to think of is external proof. Let’s say the client decides that “Hey it’s your website. You wrote all the information that’s nice but I’m not convinced.” At that point in time you’ll have to have external proof. The external proof could be again booklets, could be books, could be information on other websites and this becomes third party proof. You may say “That’s exactly the same as what I’m saying.” but it’s not. The moment it comes from a third party automatically it gets relevance. If it’s already published in a book it has even more relevance.  Even if you direct them to an authoritative site you will find that it’s relevant enough and what you’re doing now is bringing down that resistance. That’s really all you’re doing. The client has resistance and you’re bringing down their resistance. When we assume being … see the same thing over and over and over again it becomes true for us. Suddenly that client is no longer seeing the fact that you said that they need to have a responsive website could now suddenly google is sending out notices to website owners saying “Hey you need to have a responsive website.”  Suddenly everything is changed but it’s not likely [it’ll 00:05:54] just show up and expect the client to buy into your idea or your product or service. There’s huge amount of resistance and it’s only when you have these couple of things together your own proof and external proof that makes a big difference.  Imagine you're Sara Blakely. Imagine you don’t have any of your proof. You don’t have any external proof .You just have this product that you want to sell and no one has ever seen it before except maybe your friends, maybe your relatives. No one has ever seen it before how do you sell that’s when the power of demonstration comes into play. That’s the third part which is demonstration, actual physical proof right front of the buyer. Three’s a story about Corning glass. You’ve probably heard it. It’s about how they tried to sell Corning glass many years ago. Now Corning glass was unbreakable at least this kind of glass was unbreakable and all of the salespeople were talking about how the glass was unbreakable. One of the salespeople was doing better than everybody else and so much better that the management called him in and said “What are you doing?”  What he was doing was actually demonstrating that the glass was unbreakable. He’d take the glass, put it in front of the buyer then get a ball-peen hammer and swing the hammer towards the glass. As soon as he did that they would go back in horror because you’re about to smash glass and he bring that hammer down on the glass and it wouldn’t break and that was proof. That was irrefutable proof and that is through demonstration. You’re thinking “I have a website. I don’t have glass and I don’t have hammers.” You can have a before and after and it doesn’t matter which business you’re in. There’s always a before and after.  If you’re selling an article writing course, there is a before and after. If you’re selling a microphone, there is a before and after. If you’re selling Spanx like Sara Blakely well there is a before and after. The before and after is probably the most powerful instant demonstration you can get through anyone and the moment you do that whole resistance comes crashing down. Not the whole thing but most of it. Sometimes all it take is 1 demonstration but sometimes you need all 3 of these back to back.  You’re going to need articles or a book or a booklet that you have written that makes you the expert then you’re going to have some external information that some other expert has talked about that points exactly to what you’re saying. Finally there is going to be a before and after in your business. There’s always got to be a before and after an when you stack all 3 of these back to back, it’s very, very hard for a customer not to be convinced and that is because you’re prepared.  When you’re prepared, you’re full of confidence and the customer can see that confidence. They can feel that confidence. It’s not you just coming up there and refuting some objection. You’re actually prepped. That’s the kind of person you like to buy from, that’s the kind of person I like to buy from.  However there are situation where a customer will still argue with you. You can show them all the proof, you can give them all the information, you can do the demonstration and they still won't buy from you because they want even more proof. At this point in time we tend to back away and say that customer is really stupid. Is it just the customer being difficult or is the proof not as compelling as it should be? You’ve got to check this out with your target profile.  In the Brain Audit which is our book we talk about target profile in great detail and essentially it’s this. You want to go out there and speak to a single person. You don’t want to make up all these things in your head and they will tell you whether you’re communicating or not. You need to have this kind of audit from your customers especially when it comes to your own information. Especially when it comes to your own demonstration, you get rid of all the holds and then you get a story like Sara Blakely’s. It’s perfect.  Everything is engineered including the master stroke of going to the lady’s room and not selling in the boardroom. That’s all engineering and that’s what it takes to reduce the resistance and to get the customer to be convinced to buy from you and only you. As we jog to the end of this podcast, what is the one thing that we can do today? It’s very simple. Find a before and after. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling there will be a before and after syndrome. Your product or your service or even your idea it’s solving a problem so there has to be a before and after. Look for the before and after and start there and that will make a huge difference in convincing clients and reducing that resistance.  If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, where do you listen to it? Can you email me at sean@ psychotactics.com. Tell me, do you listen to it when you’re walking? Do you listen to it when you’re exercising or do you just listen to it in the middle of the day somewhere? Email me at sean@ psychotactics.com and let me know where you’re listening to this podcast.  On another note we’re having an information products workshop in Silver Spring which is just outside Washington DC in the United States. It’s in the first week of May and if you want to come Psychotactics workshop is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. We have a party. We have a great time and you learn a lot. You spend 2/3 of your time outside the room and that’s where you really learn. It’s not this blah, blah, blah that you have inside the room you’ll find out for yourself. If you’ve been through a workshop you know exactly what we’re talking about.  If you haven’t been to a Psychotactics workshop you should come and the reason why should come is it’ll show you how to construct information in a way that is extremely powerful. We have [inaudible 00:12:26] information and people are putting more and more information together and the information products workshop shows you how to put together less not more information and make it more powerful for your clients so that they consume it and come back for more.  How do we do it? We have a system that involves the planets, the sun, the moon and the lunar surface and if that sounds bizarre, it’s a lot of fun. You learn how to put together an information product that is very sound and customers love and they come back for more. Just like you do with a lot of Psychotactics product, you keep coming back to buy more and more. What is it that holds it together? What is that glue? That’s what we’ll cover at the Psychotactics information product workshop.    Information products have made the difference for us in our lives. It was the Brain Audit that started us on this journey and it’s what enables us to take our 3 month vacation. All the products then lead to clients buying and to consulting buying [inaudible 00:13:24] courses and we’ve made friends with many of our clients through the world. We travel with them, we enjoy ourselves and I wish the same for you. If you would like to come to the workshop the link is at www.psychotactics.com/dc. This podcast had been brought to you by psychotactics.com and of course the 3 month vacation. Bye for now.   

For most of us life is about work, work and more work. And no matter whether you have a small business, are in the online marketing space or in consulting, you feel rushed and hassled. This podcast is about how to slow down using the three concepts of "meditation, relaxation and vacation".   Sean:Hi. This is Sean D’Souza from Psychotactics.com, and you’re listening to the Three-Month Vacation Podcast. This podcast isn’t some magic trick about working less. Instead, it’s about how to really enjoy you work and enjoy your vacation time. Did you know that “medication” sounds a lot like “meditation”? Well, I didn’t know that, and I’ve been playing around with it in my head, “Medication, meditation. Medication, medication, meditation.”   When we talk about the three-month vacation, it’s very easy to just think of going away; but as you know, we don’t have to leave the desk to go away. We could just be here. Should we go away, or should we stay? Do we really have to choose? As you know, it’s summer in December here in New Zealand, and there’s a lot of time because we take time-off around December the 20th, and then we don’t get back to work till almost February, and this is pretty much the whole country. Imagine the entire country going on vacation.   As you walk around on the streets of Auckland, well, there are no people around or very few people around. My wife, Renuka and I, we never go away when everyone else is going away because what’s the point? Everything is more expensive, there are bigger crowds, you have to wait a long time in restaurants, so we stay back and we sit on the deck, get some beer. We have a good time, and we read. When I was reading, I ran into this book by author/speaker Pico Iyer. First, just to backtrack, before I ran into the book, I ran into his TEDTalk.   In the TEDTalk, he was talking about how he started to meditate, how he started to relax. In his talk, he gets you to imagine gong to the doctor, and the doctor is saying, “Well, your cholesterol is up. Your blood sugar is up, etcetera, and you’ve got to exercise.” He says, “Most of us will go to the gym. Most of us would go for a walk. Most of us would do stuff like that, but imagine the doctor said, ‘You need to slow down. You need to take time off and meditate.    Take about half an hour, maybe meditate.’” It’s unlikely that any of us would feel the urgency to meditate, would we? I mean, we have so many things to do already. Really, that’s what I’m going to talk about today. Three things, meditation, relaxation, and vacation. All the “tions” together.   Now, of all these three, mediation is probably the only stuff I know of because it seems like you have to sit in one place or stay in one place, and then just be quiet; and so what I’d do is I’d go for a walk, and I’d hum the same song over and over again, almost like a chant. I was happy doing that, and I thought, “Well, that’s meditation;” and it probably is. I don’t know, but I found that with TheEndApp, it was much easier to do this, and that is to just clear your head of all the thoughts. I’m not very ambitious to begin with, and I don’t suggest you get too ambitious because it’s very, very hard to meditate.   If you’ve ever tried meditating, you know exactly what I mean. It is extremely hard. The moment you decide, “Well, I’m going to be very quiet and clear my mind of all the thoughts,” every single thought comes rushing through. It’s like as if you opened the door and started screaming, “Come on, guys. Bring in all the thoughts.” That’s how meditation is. It’s so weird, and yet time and time again, you read about it, and you’re not sure how to go about it. I ran into this website at Calm.com. That’s C-A-L-M-.com. They had a lovely app. It’s free, and they also have a website.   You don’t need to have the app. You can just have your computer on, and they take you through a guided meditation. It’s very hard at first. It’s just this emptying out of your brain. Not sleeping, not dreaming, not doing anything, just completely blank. Just like looking at the clouds, one cloud after another, after another. Just completely blank, and so I’d recommend that you start there. What I started doing was every day, before I go for a walk, I meditate for 10 minutes. I just lie on the floor, and I go for 10 minutes. Then, I go to the café, and my wife started this. She says, “Okay, let’s be quiet for two minutes.” We close our eyes and sit at the café, and you can hear the coffee.   When your mind is that quiet, you can hear everything. It just screams through, and it filters out those thoughts. It’s very cool because in a day that’s completely chaotic, we need to have these moments of meditation, and it’s good for your brain. I mean, this is about business, but it’s also about taking that time off, just those few minutes in a day. That brings us to the end of the first part which is mediation. It takes us to the second part which is relaxation.   When you think of relaxation, you probably think, “Okay. I’m just going to lie on the bed, or I’m just going to lie on the safe, and read a book, and relax.” That’s nice, but what it doesn’t do is it doesn’t take you out of the house. What I found is that as long as you’re in the house, you’re not as relaxed as you could be. What we started doing was taking a day or two away. We don’t go very far. We could go just half an hour away from where we live, but we go away from our home, and this is very important.   Once you go away from home, everything about your home is left behind like the clothes that needed to be folded, the garbage that needs to be taken out, the coffee blender that needs fixing, the … Whatever issues you have, and there are many of these issues. The moment you leave home, those issues stay behind. Suddenly, you start to relax, and you find that this level of relaxation starts the moment you head away from home. What we found is that in about 24 hours, we feel like we’ve been away for a week.   By the time you’re away for a couple of days, it seems like you’ve been away forever, and most of don’t do that. In fact, right after we got married, we didn’t go anywhere. We didn’t go anywhere for a long time, and then we decided that’s what we’re going to do. A lot of these comes from planning. All of your work comes from planning, but even the vacation, the time away, the meditation, the relaxation. Everything comes from planning. It doesn’t just show up like that. We have to sit down at the start of the year and work out when do we have these bouts of relaxation away from home and when we do we have the vacation which is a long way from home and for …  Along the previous.   The thing about relaxation is that those 48 hours can change the way you continue to work, the way you work with your clients, the way you deal with issues when you go back, and so having those little spots makes a big difference. Like for instance right now, we have the article writing course, and this is the toughest writing course in the world. It is very demanding for both the students and for me. You can be sure that once four weeks have passed, I’m going to need a couple of days off.   It’s very easy to say, “No, no, no. We don’t have that kind of time.” Just like we do with meditation, “We don’t have that kind of time. We don’t have two days off. We have to do this, and we have to do that.” The moment you allocate that time, it changes everything. The funny thing is that it changes your mindset even if you’re on vacation. This summer, we started out not checking email, not doing all those kinds of things, and you would think, “Well, it will take a few days, and you’ll be fine.” It wasn’t fine.   A week passed, and I was still waking up at 4:30 in the morning. I like to sleep a lot in the afternoons, especially on vacation. I’ll sleep two, three hours even, and I wasn’t able to sleep more than half an hour. I was still wound up, and it’s only when I got to Waipu, which is about a couple of hours from here that I relaxed. Two weeks into a vacation, the moment I stepped away from home, and I think the same thing applies to you as well. What we need to do really is stuff for ourselves because we’re always doing stuff, but it’s not stuff for ourselves, and it’s definitely not this relaxation that we desperately need. This takes us to the third part which is vacation.   Vacation has always been a big part of my life, but planning the vacation was what I learned from my friend Julia. What Julia would do was she’d book the vacation at the start of the year, and then they had to go. Everything was booked. I remember the year that we went to Japan, the year they had the tsunami, and I wasn’t keen on going there even though we were going several months after the tsunami; but it was booked, so we went. We had a really good time. We learned so much about a different culture, ate different foods. Something I might not have done if we hadn’t booked everything in advance.   Here I am, preaching to the choir as it were. We already know that mediation, that relaxation and vacation are good for us. We know that, so why doesn’t it work for everyone? Why don’t we end up feeling on top of the world? Why is it that we feel like we’re more tired than ever before? There are reasons why it doesn’t work, and the first reason and probably the most important reason of all is email. I have a friend, and she goes on vacation, and she say, “Well, I only check email and work for three hours in a day.”   No, no, no, no, no. You can’t do that. Vacation is nothing. It’s like mediation, nothing. It’s like relaxation, nothing. No email. Get someone else to check your email. You’re not that important. That brings us to the second point, of course, which is, “I’m the most important person here. Nothing can happen without me.” I have a very simple philosophy, and that is, “I can spend time at the beach or spend time in hospital,” and I choose to spend time at the beach. Sure, you’re important, but why are you earning all these money? Why are you doing all these stuff? It is to enjoy yourself.   If you’re going to have this self-importance that no one else can do the job you’re supposed to be doing, well, you’re a bit in trouble, and you need that vacation. Of course, the third one is the most obvious of all which is too much activity. You can’t go on vacation and see 300 cathedrals. You just cannot. They’re boring after a while, and they all will start to look the same. We have a vacation philosophy, “We’re called the five-monument people.” That means we look at five monuments or five places we’re interested, and we’re done.   If we go to Istanbul, five things, and we’re done. If we go to Washington D.C., five things, and we’re done. Friends who know us, they will drive us fast on some of these monuments and go, “There you go. One, two, three, four, five. We’re done. Let’s go to eat.” Of course, that is crazy, but you get the point. You don’t want to have too much activity. If you have all of these stuff packed back to back, you never get relaxed. You never get to nothingness. Nothingness is amazing, but only once you start to get a hold of it.   To me, a three-month vacation, not all three months together, one month at a time is part of my work. It helps my work get better. It helps me relax. It makes me want to do better stuff. I think that if there’s one thing that we could do today is to meditate. That’s one thing you can do at your desk. Go to that website, Calm.com, C-A-L-M-.com. Download the app or just listen to it on your computer. I think that will make a big difference. Five minutes, you can start off with five minutes. You can go with 10 minutes, 20 minutes. It’s up to you. It’s a much easier way to meditate.   I think the second thing, and here I am breaking my own rules saying one thing and telling you about two things. The second thing is just book a couple of days somewhere close by, 20 minutes away, 30 minutes away. Just go. Leave home. Leave the garbage. Leave the coffee grinder. Leave all that stuff home. Of course, leave your email for two days. I’m sure someone can manage it, and you will find that while you may not, at least at this point, make a three-month vacation a reality, that’s where you’re headed. You want to start right now. You want to start today, and you want to relax.   That brings us to the end of this podcast. Before we go, where are we headed for our monthly vacation? We’re going to Sardinia, Italy. We’ve been to the mainland before, and I know Italy is a big place. You can never get enough of Italy, but Sardinia seems to be a completely different space altogether. We’re going from one island to another island. We hope the coffee is good. Before that, we have the info-product workshop, and that is in Silver Spring, just outside of Washington, D.C.   It’s about information products. It is how to create powerful information products, whether it’d be a webinar, or a workshop, or a presentation, a book. The reason why it’s so important today is because there’s so much junk out there. This workshop isn’t about showing you how to write or create that presentation. It is the structure of what makes compelling information, how do you put everything together, so that customers go from one end right to the other end, and then come back for more.     That’s why it’s different. It shows you exactly what you need to do to make information structure compelling, so that you can take whatever you know, all of that knowledge, and package it in a way that customers consume from one end to the other because once they do, they come back. This has been brought to you by Psychotactics.com and The Three-Month Vacation. Now, if you haven’t been to iTunes and left us a glowing testimonial, then this is your chance, so please leave that testimonial because I’d really appreciate it. Bye for now. Bye-bye.  

Clients can be great?or monsters! And once you have a client who's a monster, it's easy to blame them for all the issues. Often, the problem lies with us. We don't put things in place, in advance, and then get into all sorts of trouble.   To get hidden goodies, go to http://www.psychotactics.com/magic To also get the coolest headline report on "why headlines fail", go to http://www.psychotactics.com TimeStamps 00:00:20 Start 00:01:35 The Riot Act 00:01:56 Part 1: The Barrier 00:06:57 Part 2: Your Philosophy 00:12:20 Part 3: Firing the Client 00:14:25 Summary 00:16:08 Your Action Plan 00:16:30 Final Comments + Psychotactics Workshop  Transcript Sean D'Souza:The year was 1998, I think 1999, and I had a massive headache. The reason for my headache was that I wasn’t being paid on time. Just to get paid, I had to follow up several times and then I was lucky if I got the full amount. These are clients that drive you crazy and often the question is, what are you going to do with clients like these? Whose fault is it? Our natural instinct is to say that it's the clients' fault. Really, is it? I think it's just our fault. Why is it our fault? How do we decide when do we get rid of the client? Shall we get rid of them now? Should we get rid of them 6 months from now? We're not very sure but The Riot Act puts everything into perspective and it saves you from the trouble that I had. I not only had headaches but I had hypertension and all kinds of things and I was not even 30 years old. If you want to avoid that kind of thing, you will need to know how to use The Riot Act. There are 3 parts to The Riot Act. The first is the form or the barrier, the second is the philosophy, and the third is the right to fire the client. Let's see how this all pans out. The first part of The Riot Act is the barrier. Without the barrier, without the form, nothing happens. When I started my career, I started out as a cartoonist and the clients always have the upper hand. I was just a teenager out of university; in fact I was still in university. At that point in time, the newspapers would tell me what to do and they would decide when they had to pay me and so I would spend a lot of time in this follow-up just trying to get my payments, just trying to get the jobs, just trying to just go crazy doing what I thought should have been easy and pleasurable. You get into this rock you think that there is never going to be another way. Then one day, I was sitting at the dentist and the dentist gave me a form. Here I was doing a transaction. I was going to pay this guy to drill my teeth. He wasn’t going to do it until the form was filled. Later, I went to a yoga class that is several years later. They weren’t going to allow me to the yoga class until I filled in this form and agreed to sit in a number of classes. I thought, "Wow, this is really cool." What's happening here is the expectations are being set right at the start. The barriers are being put in place. I thought, "This is incredibly powerful. I wonder if I could use this in our business." As you know, Psychotactics is mostly about books. It's about workshops. It's about training. What we had at that point in time was a consulting program. Because I live in New Zealand, this consulting is done by a telephone. Still, I got people to fill in the form. They had to fill in our big form and then get back and then we went ahead with the consulting. The same applied with the protege program. This was a year-long program. Again, they had to fill in a form. Because it was more detailed, more intensive as it were, they also had to go through a 45-minute interview. Think about it for a second. You are sitting there and you're about to take money from a client but you're putting them for a barrier. Would they agree to such a barrier? The answer is yes. When you look around you, most of the successful businesses have some contracted place. At that point in time, we only had a single document, a book called The Brain Audit and so we made that our biggest barrier. If you wanted to go to workshop, you had to read The Brain Audit. If you wanted to join our membership at 5000bc.com, again, you had to read The Brain Audit. You had to buy, you had to read it. At that point in time, I was still doing one-on-one consulting. What we had to do was put together a barrier and the simplest barrier of all is a form. You get the client to sit down and go through a whole bunch of questions. They answer the questions. They qualify themselves and that becomes the first barrier. That’s it that dawned for the relationship. You may not want to have a form. You might want to have some other kind of barrier in place. Maybe they have to read through a couple of pages of something. Maybe they have to listen to an audio. It doesn’t matter what it is. Having the barrier in place gets the client to qualify themselves and that is the first step towards getting rid of that headache. You know what's the sad thing? The sad thing is that we haven't always taken our own advice and sometimes we've let the barrier down. For instance, once we were having the workshop in Washington DC and we said, "It's The Brain Audit workshop. Everyone has read The Brain Audit. They're going to be here and we don’t really need to have any barrier in place," and we let that barrier down. Someone slipped through the net. She was just disruptive, asking all sorts of crazy questions, not participating in the group sessions properly. She drove us crazy. We had to send her home after a couple of days. This is not something you want to do in the middle of a workshop. The first step in your Riot Act is to make sure that, "Hey, you've got a barrier." This takes us to the second step which is the philosophy. Do they buy in to your philosophy? Do you know if they're buying in to your philosophy? Because if they don’t buy in to your philosophy, it's getting into relationship where you don’t the other person at all. Second thought, philosophy. What is so important about the philosophy and how do you get this across? You don’t have to write a book or have something sophisticated about your philosophy. Most of our philosophy is embedded within our documents, whether it's a report or a book or an audio. The philosophy is there. People have to listen to something specific before they join. This is the trickiest thing to achieve when you're in consulting, because the client is very eager to get ahead with the job and it almost seems like you're slowing them down. Getting them to read even a couple of pages or listen to something is very critical. Maybe you get them to read just a few pages of your website or maybe a single page. Having that philosophy in place makes a big difference. For instance, ours is a 3-month vacation philosophy, which is that we work for 9 months and then, of course, we go out for 3 months in the year. This doesn’t fit really well with clients if they don’t know this right at the start. Let's supposing you're a member of 5000bc and you join and you think, "Sean is going to be there right through the year." I'm not and I go on vacation for a whole month at a time and should I go back into 5000bc I get thrown out. I get thrown out by my own members because they go, "You're supposed to be on vacation." This is a complete fit of philosophy. They understand where you're coming from. You understand what you need to do. Unless you get this message across right at the start, you're going to run into a clash and you're going to lose. The client is going to get upset with you. They're going to recall your money. They're going to give you all kinds of trouble because they feel that they're in the right. You haven't let them know right in the start what your philosophy is all about. Let's take an example of this yoga class that I visited in South India. Their philosophy is very simple. You had to be part of that yoga class for a week, not for a few days but for a week. You had to be vegetarian for the entire week. You had to spend an hour or so in meditation every day. That was part of their philosophy. If you didn’t agree with that, then you couldn't be part of their group. When we do our courses, which is training which is different from a service like a yoga class, we do something similar. The philosophy is about tiny increments. It's not about big jumps. It's not about instant success. It's not about get anywhere quickly. It's about very, very tiny increments. For this to happen, the clients have to show up every day. They have to agree to this philosophy. They have to agree that they're going to be there 5 days a week going forward step by step as we go through the whole minefield of information and getting things implemented. In a way, a philosophy is your way of life but it's also the rules that you put together. While it's quite easy to put it, you're offering a service or training. It probably is a lot harder when you're selling a product. What do you supposed to do if you're selling shampoo or soap? There is a philosophy. If you go to this site at EcoStore.co.nz, you will find that the owner put together a philosophy and you can see the philosophy in the website. It's very clear. They do not want anything to do with chemicals so all their soaps, all their products are made without any chemicals whatsoever. They spend thousands or tens of thousands or probably hundreds of thousands of dollars to make sure that it's absolutely pure that it doesn’t remove the oils from your skin that it doesn’t affect you in any way. They don’t say it but I think you could drink some of their soap. That’s their philosophy. Your philosophy is the core of your business. It is why you started out in the first place. It is everything. If the client doesn’t get a complete dose of this philosophy, they don’t know what do you stand for. You get into this relationship not knowing how it's going to work out. That’s not a good thing. You want to make sure that the client reads or listens to this philosophy and make it short. Don’t punish them. This takes us to the third part, which is the right to fire the client. You probably don’t think of firing the client very much, do you? The client pays your bills, sends you on vacation. They're there for your benefit and yet you need to fire the client. When most of us start up in a relationship, we don’t outline the exit plan. In most cases, especially in personal relationships, it's not necessary. In a business relationship, it's very important that you have some exit plan in place. In the very first meeting, what you need to do with the client is sitting down and tell them that they have the right to fire you. They have the right to fire you if you don’t meet with the obligations, the specifications of the contract. Then you tell them that you in turn had the right to fire them if they don’t meet up with the scheduled payments, if they don’t behave like normal people should. When we do this, we are very clear about the fact that it's an equal agreement. Nothing is ever equal that’s always the shift-in power balance but even so, you're not making it so unequal that it causes you trouble. It also sets the benchmarks so you know that, "Hey, at this point in time, I have to get paid. If I don’t get paid, we're walking. We're firing you." If I had these systems in place when I first started out, it would have saved me a lot of grief. In a lot of cases, I didn’t get paid anyway. In other cases, the trouble of trying to recover the money, the hassle of having to deal with clients that suddenly reduced the font size from 17 to 3, it was not worth the trouble. When you set this whole agenda in place, it makes it much easier for the relationship to continue and to be very, very respectful. If you were just selling a product online or a physical product, yes it cost you money but it's not as damaging as training or consulting. Especially if you're in training or consulting, you want to make sure that you have this Riot Act in place. Let's go over the 3 parts of The Riot Act. The first part of The Riot Act was simply the barrier. You've got to have some barrier in place. This could be that they have to read a booklet or a book or filling a form or do something. The second step is simply to have a philosophy. This might be a short document. It might be a single page. The client has to know your philosophy and, of course, you have to know your philosophy and put it down so that they agree with it. Finally, you have to make sure that right at the start the client knows that they can fire you but you can fire them. This sets a benchmark, were you going to paid at this time, you're going to get this at that time. It sets this whole relationship right at the start and prevents all the hassle that most of us have had at some point with the other. We've run Psychotactics for almost 13 or 14 years now and we've had only 3 or 4 clients that have been toxic clients the whole time. That’s a very long time to not have clients that are real thing. The reason for that is very simple. For most of our products, our services and whenever we do consulting, we make sure that we have the system in place. You'll find that work is an absolutely pleasure, which is the way it should be, not being pushed around all the time by someone else, so put The Riot Act in place. The simplest thing you can do today that’s the one thing that you can do today. What is it? The one thing that you can do today is put a barrier in place. Even if you don’t have your philosophy in place, even if you don’t have the guts to go up to the client and say, "We're going to fire you," have the barrier. Small barrier, big barrier, whatever barrier, have a barrier in place. When the client gets over their barrier, they qualify themselves and that makes the big difference. With that, we are shuffling towards the end of this podcast. I just want to tell you, if you want more goodies, which are not available in the website, you can go to psychotactics.com/magic. On another note, we're having a workshop on information products. It's interesting but a lot of the stuff that you see free on the internet has very little value because there's so much free stuff. It is more efficient to get clients through workshops or training, something that they pay for and yet structuring a book or a workshop or a webinar is critical, how you make it so exciting that people want to come back time and time again and then buy more stuff from you. That’s what we're going to cover in the information products workshop where we show you how to reduce the amount of information and yet get clients to come back. This is nothing sleazy. It's what we really need at this point in time in our history. That’s happening in the first week of May 2015. We'll have more details on the podcast and on the website, so be part of the newsletter at psycotactics.com.   Finally, I'm writing a book on pricing, yes pricing, and how to get better prices without losing customers. That’s it for now. That’s me, Sean D'Souza saying bye from the Three-Month Vacation podcast and psychotactics.com. If you haven't already gone to Psychotactics, go there today. Bye for now.    

Whether you run an online or offline business, there's a point where the business will take control of you. And then it doesn't let go. All those marketing strategies and "four-hour workweek" formulas are totally useless. So what works? And why does it work? Here are three core steps that will get you out of the muck and back on dry land. And yes, on the road to the three month vacation.   00:00:00 Introduction: Getting More Control in Business 00:02:22 Element 1: Learning Core Skills 00:06:44 Element 2: Flying Solo is a Problem 00:12:19 Element 3: Input and Output 00:18:02 Summary 00:19:35 Ending Notes    ===== Sean D'Souza:Hi, this is Sean D'Souza from Psychotactics.com, and you're listening to the Three Month Vacation Podcast. This podcast isn't some magic trick about working less. Instead, it's about how to really enjoy your work and enjoy your vacation time.  If you go to a restaurant, just about any restaurant, and if you go to sit down you would notice that some days the restaurant is absolutely full and on other days it's completely empty. What's really happening here? What you're noticing is the lack of control over the business. It doesn't matter whether you own a restaurant business or a gym or you just have a service, you have to have control over your business. How do you have this control over your business? I didn't have to answer to this several years ago. I'd run a cartooning business since I was in university and I ran a business for about ten or 12 years without any control. I didn't know where the next client would come from. While I did some amount of promotion, sometimes I had enormous amounts of work so I wouldn't get any sleep. At other times a whole month could pass and I'd have nothing to do.  The only way to have complete control over your business is to use the concepts explained in the three prong system. Now if you didn't listen to episode number two then that's where you need to go right now, or just after you listen to this episode. That's because the three prong system has stood the test of time. When you look at all the religions of the world that have lasted 2,000 years they use the three prong system. When you look at businesses that have done really well over the years they too use the three prong system. You want to go back to episode two and listen to it.  The three prong system brings strategy but to your business, but on a day to day business you need to some strategy as well. This episode talks about the strategy that you need on a day to day basis. As usual, we're going to cover three things, and the first thing we're going to cover is the factor of core skills. The second thing we're going to cover is about how to get help or why you should get help, and the third is input is equal to output.  Let's start out with the first, which is learning the core skills. What is this all about? The biggest problem that we have and the reason why we can't earn more or take more time off is because we spend so much time not learning core skills. Let's say you were a golfer and you wanted to get really good on the golfing circuit. What would you do? It's pretty obvious, isn't it? You'd go out there and you'd practice and you'd get a coach, and you'd work that so that you were very good at golfing. Otherwise, you'd just your Sunday golfer, go there, hit some balls, and hope for the best. In a business, hoping for the best is not a good idea. It's not your hobby as it were. This is your passion. When you're passionate about something you have to be like Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo. When you're passionate about something you have to have that core skill in place. You know it's in place because you can do it exceedingly well and exceedingly quickly. For instance, if you had to write an article, say 800 to 1,000 words, how long would you take to write that? I'll tell you how long it used to take me to write it. I used to take two days. I'm not kidding. I would start on the first day and then write, and then stop and edit and write and stop and edit and write and stop and edit.  By the end of the second day I was not really sure that the article would be any good. I was a cartoonist, not a writer. I spent a lot of time just trying to get into that writer mode, because I knew as a small business owner that's what I needed to do. I needed to write books. I needed to write articles. I needed to get the word out there. Article writing, which wasn't my core skill, had to become my core skill. I had to communicate that way. I got all the material I needed to study. I got a lot of information that I was deconstructing, and then that didn't help me at all. I still had to write the articles.  Luckily for me, at that point in time there wasn't as much content on the internet. A website called marketingprops.com, they wrote to me and they said "Can you send us some articles?" Then every week the publisher would bug me and say "Can you send me some more articles?" Even though I was not keen on writing the articles I had this person nudging me all the time and so I was forced to write the articles.  Today I can write an article in 45 minutes, but not just an article, but a very, very good article. This is what you've got to do. You've got to figure out what are those core skills. Sit down and work out what are the things that I have to get very good at, and then you proceed to get very good at it. Another core skill, to just be updating your website or knowing more about your website. A lot of us have websites, and of course we have web designers and programmers and stuff. That's very important. We have that too, but you also need to know enough to fix your pages, to put in graphics, to do whatever you want to do. Because having to wait on someone for a day or two days, it slows you down. It frustrates you, and you don't get the results. While it's all very fine to say outsource this and outsource that, you have to also remember that there are certain core skills that you have to learn, and unless you get very good at these core skills you remain an amateur. You continue to be someone for whom the business is just a hobby. I'm saying hobby; I know it's not your hobby but that's how it ends up being. For me, that key component towards my three month vacation, and your key component, is going to be getting control over your core skills. You have to make a list of the few things that you want to do, not run after every shiny objective that comes your way - because there are lots of shiny objectives there on the internet - and develop your core skill.  This takes us to our second topic, which is about getting help. Our business is incredibly small. It's run by just my wife and I. When I started out it was just me. Then my wife Renuka came along and people said "I wish had someone like Renuka. I wish I had help as well." This is what I tell them at that point in time. I said at the point that Renuka joined Psychotactics she was earning $85,000 a year. By quitting her job what we were doing was talking a hit of $85,000. Remember, at that point in time I wasn't really earning a lot. I was probably earning about $1,500 a month in marketing. This is very important because you might think that you can't afford to get any help and it's just impossible to run a business all by yourself. There are far too many things to do, far too many things that you have to juggle if you're going to be running a business by yourself.  Now the first obvious thing to do is to outsource some of the things, and then you start outsourcing more things. At some point in time you just have to have someone on a consistent basis that does consistent jobs so that you don't have to do everything yourself. The biggest problem with a business is just that you lose too much energy. I've spoken about this before. It's not about time, it's about energy. Once you do task one and task two and task three and task four you're getting very, very tired. At the end of the day you may still have some time, but you just don't have the energy.  Think of it as a plane. Now if you ask a pilot, they don't need two engines to friendly that plane. But if one of the engines quit it's not such a good feeling. You can friendly your plane with one engine but it gets very frustrating, and there are times when that one engine fails and then it's more than just frustrating. I know this is hard advice to give. How do I give you this advice? How do I say to you: Go out there and find someone. Go out there and pay for the services. But the problem with trying to do it all yourself, this flying solo business, it just doesn't work in my opinion.  We've run our business now at Psychotactics since 2002. I really thought that it would get easier over the years, and you know what, it might have got easier if we were doing exactly what we were doing in 2002, if we were earning exactly what we were earning in 2002, yes. But given my aspirations, given the things that I want to do, given the books that I want to write ... and these are just passions. This is less about the money that we're going to make. I'm really fascinated with writing about pricing. I'm really fascinated about writing about talent. I'm really interested in doing something about Photoshop.  This is why we started a cartooning course even though it was free. We started out a cartooning course even though I'd been a cartoonist for 15 years. People knew about my cartooning, and it was free. Without that support that Renuka brings it would be impossible. It would be completely impossible for me to do the things that I really want to do. Over the years we've added bits and pieces here and there. We got someone to do our blog, as in post the information to the blog. Then we got someone to put together the reports, so I write all the information, I do the cartoons, but someone puts it together in an InDesign file and I showed them how to do that.  This is what allows me to do what I want to do. It allows Renuka to do what she wants to do. It gives us time. More importantly, it gives us that energy that we so desperately require. That's all I can say. This advice is like a halfhearted, half-baked advice, because I don't know how you're going to do it. I just know that you have to do it. If you want more control of your life you have to get that second engine. Don't go up in the air with a single engine because it's just too much. Yes, I can go on and on about how we take three month vacations but this is the big secret as it were.  The first thing is that you need to have core skills. You need to be able to do stuff that is critical to your business and do it very, very, very quickly. The second thing you definitely need is that second engine. I don't know how you're going to get it but you need it. The third thing that to me is critical is this whole concept of input is equal to output.  The other day I was in an interview and I was being asked how to be a good writer. It's very tempting to keep talking about the techniques and the methods and the secrets, and all the stuff that goes into great writing. I don't believe that to be true. I believe that the writing part is the execution of what goes in in the first place. I believe that input is equal to output, or at least input really helps the output. To me, reading is more important than writing. Or should I put it another way: it's equally important.  Without the reading part of stuff it's probably not going to end up with great writing. People make a mistake with input. They take in too much information, and that doesn't really work to your advantage. That just sends you scattering in every direction. Now don't get me wrong, at the same time that I'm learning how to use my camera I want to learn how to use InDesign and I want to learn how to do character design in cartooning, and lettering, and all kinds of things. Those are hobbies, and there is my work. When it comes to my work I'm doing something completely different.  My input day goes like this. I start out the day and I go for a walk. I make sure that I'm listening to stuff that is interesting to me or important to me. Ideally I don't listen to podcasts. I know it's ironic since you're listening to a podcast, but I don't listen to podcasts because a lot of people ramble on endlessly, so I listen to an audio book. I listen to a course where I know they're not rambling on. Mostly audio books because they're structured, they're edited, and there's less chance of this ramble. I'm not trying to remember. This is the mistake that a lot of people make with audio. They don't treat it like radio, and you should treat audio like radio. You shouldn't really try to remember anything. It's all sitting in your head bit by bit. Listen to one book and another book and a third book. Soon enough, all the thoughts become input; they sit in your head. Again, I'm not saying that you should not make notes. I'm not saying that you shouldn't make mind maps. I'm not saying you shouldn't do anything you do not want to do. I'm saying that there is so little time in the day that when you're driving, when you're walking, you need input. Then you get back to your office, your place of work, and then it's time for output. Over the years I've found that just by increasing the input and also cross-pollinating the input, so I'll listen to a whole bunch of different things on the way in. Then we get to the café, we discuss what we've learned along the way, and maybe we've not learned a lot, and then we turn round and come back. Then I will probably listen to something lighter or learn a language.  That's it. That's the input equals to output. If you want to become a great writer you have to listen to and read great writing. If you want to become a great artists you have to go to galleries. You have to look at art books. You have to do all that stuff. That's all the input part. The same thing is with business. If you're going to go chasing after some guy that promises you a lot of money, some guy that promises you a lot of customers and you think that's a good idea, well it might be a good idea but often, and especially if you're listening to a podcast like this, you probably not going to fit in. That input is wrong. That input signal becomes erroneous, and therefore you don't get the output. All you get is frustration. Control your input signals and then you start to get better output signals. The output is important as well. Every time I put out a book I'm not really sure that someone is interested in it. Every time I do a course I'm not sure that someone is interested in it. I do it for myself. I think that it really matters. I think that when you put your passion into it you then need to sustain it. It's the same thing with this podcast. I don't know if you've realized it, and I probably mentioned it before because I've been mentioning it to everyone, but it takes about 20 minutes to record a 20 minute episode, or 15 minutes to do a 15 minute episode. But it takes about two and a half hours to then put the music. The only reason why I continue to do this and will continue to do this is because I'm fascinated with it.  I'm listening to podcasts where they have great music and I'm listening to stuff where they have great content and great interviewers, and that becomes my input. That's why you're getting this output. Let's wrap up today and let's summarize. We started out with control. You have to know the things that are important. Writing is important. Being able to tweak your website, that's important. Your sales letters, what's wrong with it, what's wrong with your email, understanding that whole sales thing. I think these are critical for a business. If you don't have those critical elements at the tip of your fingers then you're struggling. The second thing is just an energy factor. If you don't have enough energy at the end of the day then it just becomes one mindless, endless loop. You have to get that second engine. How you get that second engine, whether it's by hiring someone or getting someone in your family to help out, that's something you have to figure out and figure out quickly. You can't friendly solo. I can assure you that. It's very, very, very hard.  The third thing is input is equal to output. The quicker you realize that you don't have that much time in the day and you need great input, the quicker you realize that there is no shortcut and all these guys who offer you this quick route to success, you need to get off that input because it's driving you crazy. It's distracting you. Listen to stuff that is important. Read stuff that is important. That is your key to a sensible future. That is your key to the three month vacation.  That brings us to the end of this episode. We're now on episode 15. Wow, that was quick. Anyway, if you haven't already subscribed ... I've said this a million times before and I'm going to say it again. If you haven't subscribed to iTunes, go there, subscribe; and yes, leave a review. Please do leave a review because it really helps us. I read the review everyday. If your reviews not there then I'm looking out for that review.  The second thing you want to do is you want to go to psychotactics.com/magic because even if you are subscribed to iTunes or Stitcher or anywhere else, the magic that's where you're going to get your stuff. There's a form there. Fill it up and we'll occasionally send you some magic from there. Finally, if you're not already part of Psychotactics, then get to Psychotactics. Get there and subscribe to the newsletter. It's really cool stuff. It's stuff like this, except it's written down. That's me, Sean D'Souza, saying bye for now. Bye bye. Oh, I almost forgot purpose of one thing that you had to do today. Yes, the one thing that you can control today is input. I am sure you can go out there and get someone over time and get control over all the things you do, but input, you can listen to stuff like this or you can get an audio book or start reading. Have that input every single day, 30 minutes of learning every single day. It will make a big difference for your life. Get rid of those idiots that promise you the world. Yep, that's it. I'm done, really done. Bye bye.    

Getting things done isn't as easy as it looks. So what gets in our way when we run our small businesses? Do we simply run out of ideas? The Three Month Vacation Podcast examines how to get out of your own way and get your online?or offline business working smoothly. The key to getting things done is the trigger. How do you create and sustain that trigger in your small business? To get hidden goodies, go to http://www.psychotactics.com/magic To also get the coolest headline report on "why headlines fail", go to http://www.psychotactics.com Time Stamps: 00:00:20 Getting Things Done: 00:02:08 How Do We Make The Trigger Work? 00:04:03 Table of Contents 00:04:24 How To Activate The Trigger 00:09:29 How The Trigger Builds Momentum 00:14:33 Summary 00:17:47 Final Transcript: When I was little my uncle gave me a game. It was called Snoopy Tennis and it was a little console, a video game from Nintendo. All you had to do was play tennis. Lucy from Peanuts and Charlie Brown from Peanuts as well, they would hit the ball towards you and you as Snoopy had to return the service. Lots of people played those games. Millions of kids played those games across the globe, but mine was different, mine was unique. My console had a crack in it. It had fallen at some point in time, so I can see the ball heading towards me and I have to listen for it. It would go beep, beep, beep, and then I had to push down on the red button that would ensure that I hit the ball, got the service back over the net as it were.    What was interesting was that I wasn't looking for the visual anymore. I was listening to the sound and responding. That sound was a trigger. One of the biggest reasons why we can take as much time off as we do is because we have these triggers in place. Without the triggers it's very hard for us to get anything done. That is because as adults we have so many things to do and so many responsibilities that when we try to do something, when we try to finish a book or write an article or do anything at all, we struggle. We struggle because we don't have that trigger in place.    What is that trigger and how can we make it work for ourselves? Let's start with the things that I don't like very much. One of the things that really bug me is having to exercise. As I've mentioned before, I don't care much for exercise, and yet you'll notice that I'm reasonably fit. This is because I end up doing between 80,000 to 100,000 steps a week. You have to ask yourself how does someone who doesn't like exercise doing such a lot of walking. Well, I use a trigger. In fact, two triggers.    The first trigger is just the coffee. that is when I get up in the morning I am not headed for a walk, I am headed for a coffee. I'll wake up, I'll get my iPhone on, put on the audio, and then head towards the café. When I reach the café that's my reward. What's really happening here is that the walk is not something that appeals to me that much. However, the coffee does appeal to me. That sense of reward, that carrot and stick as it were, is what helps me.    That's the trigger.    The second trigger that I have in place is I have a little pedometer called Fitbit. I have other friends who are also high achievers who do 70, 80, 100,000 steps a week. I want to compete against them so that becomes my second trigger. What I'm saying here is that I don't care much for walking. I would rather sit here and do a podcast and do some music and draw some cartoons, and do all kinds of stuff. Yet no matter what the weather, whether it's rainy or windy or hot or cold, I end up going for a walk - and that is because of the trigger. Triggers work both ways. They work for good and evil.    What we are covering in today's episode are three things. The first is how to activate the trigger. The second is how it helps you build and sustain momentum. This is very important. The third thing is what happens when you go offtrack. How do you get back on track? Let's start off with the first one, which is how do you activate the trigger.   Now in a normal day what I have to do is I have to write articles, I have to draw some cartoons, I have to do a whole lot of things. While a trigger might seem like a reward, because I was talking about coffee earlier, well it's not necessarily a reward. It's just that beep beep headed towards you. How do you install that beep? One of the things that I found very useful for me and to get things done is to keep things open. Now I draw a daily diary in my Moleskin diary.    I do a painting every single day, and I've been doing this since 2010.    How do I achieve this? It's a very busy day. It's quite easy to put it off. It takes a lot of time to do it. What I do is I don't keep the diary in my bag. I don't keep the paints in my bag. I don't keep the pencils in my bag. They're all ready on my desk and they're open. Just before I sit down for breakfast, every single day I will say "Well, let me just sit here for five minutes. Let me just do a little wash. Let me just paint a bit." I'm always trying to fool myself there.    The thing is that the diary is already open, the paints are already there, the water's already there. If I were to spend just a few minutes trying to find the paints or the diary or the pencils and the pens, that could distract me enough for me not to do that painting for the day. I've tried this. I've kept it in the bag, and just that little distraction, that tiny distraction can slow you down.    Slowing you down often leads to complete derailment. It's the same thing when I'm trying to do a podcast for instance. At the end of the day I don't have much energy but I do have energy to keep my Garage Band, which is my software, ready and open. When I show up here at 4 in the morning, and that's just me, it's already open. Before I check any email I'm looking at Garage Band staring at me in the face. The moment I see that I know you've got to do this podcast now, and then you can do the other stuff.    This concept of keeping things ready and open seems almost remarkably too simple and yet it is a trigger. It is a trigger that helps you get things done. This is what successful people have known for a very long time. I once read a book by Twyla Tharp, and she talks about getting into a taxi.    Now Twyla is a very famous dancer and choreographer. She needs to practice. When you wake up in the morning you don't feel like practicing. What she does is just get dressed and gets into a taxi. Often she says "When I'm in the taxi that's when I realize I have to practice." The taxi becomes that little trigger. It's like that beep beep beep.    The mistake that we often make is we have our to-do list and we don't realize that the to-do list is not what gets things done. The to-do list is almost t end point. What gets things done is the trigger that leads us to that to-do list, the trigger that gets us on the bike, the trigger that gets us for the walk, the trigger that gets us to pick up that racket and hit the ball back to Lucy and Charlie Brown.    If you want to get things done you have to isolate that trigger. You have to figure out what is the thing that comes in between me and the task. What is that one thing that will start me off and get me to that task? Then you have to put the trigger in place.    to activate the trigger we have to have that isolation point. We have to figure out what is that one thing that comes in between that will help us to get to the trigger. It will be different for different things. We know email is a trigger. We know Facebook is a trigger. These are triggers that are designed to get our attention. That's why they flash on our phones. That's why they show up on our screens.    Because once we have that trigger we are forced to go to the next step. If these distractions help us waste time in the day, well there is a good chance that you can use the trigger to your advantage as well. It works for good; it also works for evil. Harnessing it for our good is probably the better way to go, isn't it?   That brings us to the end of the first part, but the second part is what is really critical, and that is the factor of how the trigger builds momentum. When psychologists look at how to improve your memory what they realized is that something that is not done takes up an enormous amount of energy. What they did was they took two groups of people and they gave them tasks. One group was supposed to finish their tasks and the other was not supposed to finish their task. At the end of the exercise they were supposed to write down the tasks that they had completed.    The groups of people who had completed the tasks didn't have such a good memory, as in they forgot some of the tasks that they had completed. But the groups who had not completed the tasks remembered stuff. What did they remember? They actually remembered the stuff that they had not completed. You see, in the exercise these people were given the tasks and then almost as they were completing the tasks, the tasks were taken away from them. That stuck in their head. Later on when they had to fill in the form they remembered the tasks that they had not completed.    What was happening was those incomplete tasks were taking up an inordinate amount of energy in the brain. They had to remember those tasks even though they were not trying to remember any of them. This is what happens to us all the time. For instance, I came back from the information products course that I had in Vancouver and I had to write a tiny little booklet about something. I can't even remember now. I've completed the task. It was a tiny bonus, and usually that would take me about a day, maybe two days if I was really slow.    But instead it took me a month. Everyday when I went for my walk that's all I could think of: I have to finish this bonus. I have to finish this bonus. I have to finish this bonus. What that was doing was killing my momentum. Because I couldn't complete or wouldn't complete that task it was draining all my energy for all the other tasks, so it was like a game of dominoes. It was one task not being done, that was dropping into the next and the next and the next. When we look at the reverse thing, which is when we have that trigger in place and we get the task done, then the next task moves along and the third moves along, the fourth moves along.   One of the reasons why I go for a walk in the morning is because I complete so many things. I get my exercise. I listen to the audio. I talk to my wife. We also learn a language and we drink coffee. Before 8:00 in the morning a lot of stuff gets done, but then that leads to the second task and the third task and the fourth task. When people say "I'm not getting a lot of stuff done because I don't have enough time in the day," they probably are referring to not time but energy. Time is different from energy. The lack of completing one task leads to a depletion of energy, which then spills onto the second and the third and the fourth and the fifth.    You know it's energy because sometimes you have the time and you spend that time on Facebook, and you spend that time just lying there on the sofa saying "I'm so tired." That is a depletion of energy, not a factor of time. When you get stuff done, when you use triggers to get stuff done, your energy level is so much higher. You know this; I don't have to tell you this. Your energy level is just bouncing and you get more done.    This brings us to the end of the second part. The third part is just as important because often we go offtrack. Supposing you've gone on vacation for instance. The moment you get back you're offtrack, or say there's been some kind of problem or urgency and now you're offtrack. How do you get back on track? I wish there were a magic pill to tell you how to get back on track, but I've struggled with the same issues. I'll stop painting and then before I know it a week has passed or two weeks have passed and I haven't done a painting. I say I paint everyday. Yes I do but only if the book is open.    I have to go back to the same concept, which is what is that trigger. If the book is open then I'm going to get it done. If the program is open I'm going to write t book. That's just how it is. I wish there were a simpler way. I wish there were a magic button but there is no magic button. The magic button is to isolate the trigger. Whatever that trigger is, you have to isolate it.    This brings us to the end of this episode. In this episode what we covered was just the whole factor of activating that trigger. We activate that trigger by isolating it. We saw how the coffee motivates me, but it's not just a reward. It is any sort of trigger. Just keeping the book open makes a difference. Just keeping the program makes a difference. Just getting to the taxi makes a difference.    You might get on a bus or in a car and when you get in that car you switch on, not the radio, but listen to some audio that helps you learn instead. That's your trigger. That trigger helps you get smarter. You go to your networking meeting, you go to your meeting, you go to your office. You know more, you feel better, that sets off the other triggers, the other tasks that get better and better everyday.    This is the key to getting things done. A lot of people think that getting things done has to do with the to-do list, but it doesn't. The to-do list is at the end of the rainbow. Now you saw what was happening there. I had the trigger. That was my trigger to go for a walk. That was my wife calling up and I'm off right now. Even though I might feel like finishing this podcast I'll have to come back to it and complete it, because that was my trigger.    Just before we I go I want you to know that I'm not always like this. I'm not always hyped up, ready to go. There are some days when I'm just lazy, and that's okay to be that way. Not because I'm saying so but because it's okay to just have down time. Just know that when you're working, work out the trigger that gets you to work more efficiently. That is probably the best thing you can do for yourself. That's the one thing that you can do for yourself: find that trigger.    Here we are at the end of this episode. If you're keen on learning more about planning, then I have a book there for you. It's called Chaos Planning. I find that most people plan without taking chaos into consideration. It details how we go about our three month vacation and how we plan stuff, and why is it so important to plan with chaos in mind. Now chaos is your best friend. It may not seem like that but if you make time for him then he does help you out a lot. Look for Chaos Planning.   Now if you're ever wondering how do I get this podcast on a regular basis, we have it on iTunes, we have it on our website, we have it all over the place. There's one central point; that is Psychotactics.com/podcast. It doesn't matter whether you're on iTunes or off iTunes or any other way. You can get all the details on that page, so go to Psychotactics.com/podcast today. And yes, send me questions. If you have any questions I'd be more than happy to take them on, and feedback. Whatever you'd like to improve, whatever you'd like to see, send it to me at sean@psychotactics.com. That's it from the three month vacation land. Bye for now. Bye bye.   

When we set about creating a new product or service, we look for a catchphrase. And while a catchphrase or slogan is very useful, it's not a lot of use when it comes to driving home our uniqueness or positioning. So how do we create that USP or uniqueness? The best way to go about this exercise is to avoid the line completely, because really, your clients can't remember it any way. What you need to focus on, is the story. But how do you create this story line? What's the secret link between storytelling and uniqueness?  ---------- Time Stamps 00:00:20 Uniqueness and Story: Introduction 00:02:11 Table of Contents 00:02:25 Element 1: How The Story Helps in Uniqueness 00:07:57 Element 2: How To Create The Story-Emperor 00:11:40 Example: Psychotactics Article Writing Course 00:14:39 Example: Golden Moon Tea 00:16:19 Element 3: Why Is the Story More Important Than The Slogan? 00:19:01 Summary 00:20:25 Final Resources + Goodies   ---- Speaker 1:Hi, this is Sean D'Souza from Psychotactics.com and you're listening to the three month vacation podcast. This podcast isn't some magic trick about working less, instead it's about how to really enjoy your work and enjoy your vacation time.  When someone tells you their name, do you remember it? Often when we meet someone they introduce themselves, we introduce ourselves, and then later we cannot remember their names. We think we're really bad with names, but as you know, that's not true at all; no one is good with names. The reason why we don't remember names is either because it's not important or we don't have a story. How important is this story when it comes to uniqueness?    What I'll do right now is I'll read out a whole bunch of slogans from airlines and see if you can remember which airline they come from. I bet you won't remember any of them, or very few of them. That's because they don't have a story.    Here it goes. Number one, making the sky the best place on earth. Number two, the proud bird with the golden tail. Number three, world class, world wide. Number four, we really move our tail for you. Number five, something special in the air.    You're getting that blank feeling aren't you? It's like when you meet that person again and you can't remember their names. That's because there is no story to it. The key to remembering someones name is to assign a story to it. That's exactly what you have to do when you're creating your uniqueness. If there is no story, it becomes impersonal and you can't remember it. More importantly, your client can't pass it on to someone else.   In today's episode we'll cover three points, as always, and that is: how does the story help, how to construct that story, and finally, why it's so important because  it needs to be passed on to someone else.   Let's start off with how the story helps. One of the worlds best know slogans is simply, "Thirty minutes or it's free", and that came from Dominos Pizza. That sounds like just a line, doesn't it? When you think about it, is it just a line? There is a story behind it.    there is a story of this pizza guy desperately trying to get the pizza ready right after you've put the phone down, and then getting across to you and ringing your doorbell at the 29th minute. Then you hoping, somehow, they'll miss it by a couple of minutes and then you'll get it free.    Notice how easy it is to tell this kind of story to a friend. The reason why this whole slogan seems to work is because the try is unfolding in your brain. You can actually see this story unfolding even with that single line. The line doesn't really matter, what really matters is the story behind the line.    Let's take a product like ioSafe. These are indestructible, or seemly indestructible, hardware - external drives that you use for your computer. They sell for a lot more than the drives that you get anywhere else. What's the story behind it? It's boiled down to this one word, which is indestructible. I don't think they have a great line, but their story is really powerful.   They take the drive to a shooting range and shoot at it, they take a road roller and run it over, they take it and throw it in the swimming pool, they do all kinds of things that would normally destroy the data in the drive. Yet that data is completely secure.    We may not remember the line, and who cares if we remember the line or not, because we're now telling the story to someone else. We're telling them why they should buy this product or service.    Every morning when I go for a walk I usually have an umbrella; it's a red umbrella. It rains a lot when I go for a walk, so I have to take an umbrella. What's different about this umbrella? For one it costs about $100, when the other umbrellas you can get them in the story for about 10 or $15. Why buy and umbrella for $100 when you can get one for $10?  The answer lays in the uniqueness. Because New Zealand is a set of islands and it's pretty narrow, we get storms and winds and often the umbrella just turns inside out. Not the Blunt Umbrella.    To test the Blunt umbrella what they did what run it through wind tunnels. A wind tunnel will probably demolish your $10 umbrella; it will go to pieces. Often you'll find umbrella in garbage cans all over the place. Just thrown always because  people are so sick of them. They're twisted, broken, absolutely useless. The Blunt Umbrella has been tested so that it works under crazy wind conditions and doesn't turn inside out.    You may say that's a lot to pay for an umbrella that doesn't turn inside out, but as you look on the street more and more people have a Blunt Umbrella. More and more people feel the need to stay dry in the rain. It's not so weird after all, is it?    I'm pretty sure that you will agree with me that all of theses three products are pretty unique. Let's go back and look at what their slogans are.    We start off with Dominos Pizza, and everyone remembers that it's "thirty minutes or it's free." that I can remember. What is the slogan for ioSafe? It is "Disaster proof software." It's less on the memory scale, but I can still remember it a bit. Finally we go to the Blunt Umbrella. Their slogan is, "The worlds best umbrella."   You see the problem here, don't you? The slogan doesn't matter at all, does it? It's the story behind it that makes all the difference. You remember the story about the Blunt Umbrella, and how those windy conditions and the wind tunnel makes all the difference. You also remember Dominos offer of giving you a free pizza if they're not on time; that's another story. Iosafe dropping their hardware from a height, or throwing it tin a swimming pool, or getting a road roller to go over it.    What you remember is the story. This gives us a clue as to how we should go about creating our uniqueness. The slogan doesn't matter; what matters is the story behind it. Now that we know the story is more important, how do we go about creating that story?  I personally don't think that any of the great stories come from an advertising agency. If they do come from an advertising agency, it's because someone in the advertising agency had the sense to actually look at the product or the service and figure out, "Hey you guys, this is what you're doing really well."   The story can come from you, the business owner, the creator of the product or the service. You do this by playing emperor.    When you look at the story of Dominos, it was back in the '70s, and if you ordered a pizza it could take and hour or more to get a pizza. What they did was they decided that they're going to have a pizza that wasn't the tastiest or the spiciest or the biggest, it was just the fastest pizza delivered to your door. That got peoples attention, but they decided that. They decided that we're going to set up this system that is build around speed.    When you look at ioSafe, which is that indestructible hardware, it's the same thing. External hard drives have existed for a long time, but now we have this hard drive that is just so indestructible. In effect, they're trying to find ways to destroy it.  While nothing is completely indestructible, they come pretty close to showing you what would happen if you had a fire. What happens when you have a fire? For starters you're hardware is toasted, then right after it's toasted the ire brigade comes in, the fire truck comes in and then they pour water all over it. That toasted hardware is now soaked as well.   Do you think any of the data is going to survive that? Yes, it's find to say you can do an online backup, but what about those big files that you wrote to your computer just 30 minutes ago? They're all securely backed up.   What they're demonstrating is how indestructible it is. The way the go about it is to say, "Let's create something like this." Rather than, "I wonder what we can find in our product or service that's unique."    We look at the third example, the Blunt Umbrella, we get the same scenario. The scenario is someone got sick of umbrellas that had to be tossed away every time the wind blew a little harder. They create a great looking umbrella, but predominately an umbrella that could withstand a wind tunnel blast.   This doesn't solve your problem, does it? You're still wondering, how do you play emperor? Imagine this situation, imagine that you are standing on the edge of a cliff and that was your city sprawled before you. At this point in time you're supposed to ask yourself, "If I could change this city, what would I do?" Naturally you would come up with a list of things, maybe the list would be 10 things, or 15 things, or 2o things. What you want to do is you want to whittle that down to 5, and then to 3, and then to finally the one thing that the city desperately needs.   The same thing applies to your product or service. Let's way you're about to create a product or a service, you have to ask yourself, "How would this product be completely  different from any other products or service?"   For instance, when we create the article wring course, our article writing course was approximately the same as every other article writing course. It wasn't the same, but from the outside work it was just another article writing course.    we had a lot of trouble filling up those courses. It would take 3, 4, 5 weeks to fill up a course. When you think about it from a business point of view, that's a lot of energy that you have to spend just to fill up a course.    We got lucky, the first thing that happened was one of my instructions was misunderstood. In earlier courses clients would write four or five articles for the duration of the entire course - which meant for about 12 weeks. In this course one of the participants misunderstood the instructions and they thought that they had to write 5 articles a week. They started writing 5 articles a week and then others in the course looked at what he was doing and thought, "That's what I have to do", so they followed along.    Soon enough it became very very hard. Try writing one article a day, five days a week - in this case it was 6 days a week. You will know what I mean. It's very very hard. By the end of the course one of the clients who had done the course said, "This is the toughest course I've ever done. It's almost like having a baby. There's a dog level course, a cat level course, a baby level course."    There was the story in plain sight of us. There was the cat level course when you don't have to do much, just like cats; they take care of themselves. then there's the dog level course, where you have to go out with the dog for a walk; there's more maintenance involved in having a dog. Finally, a baby level course, where you kept up half the night, you don't sleep very much for three months - that's how the Psychotactics article writing course became the toughest course in the world.    That slogan is not as interesting as the story of the dog level, the cat level, and the baby level toughness. That's the part that you remember, that's the part that clients remember, and that's why our courses fill up in probably half an hour or 45 minutes.    you'll say, "wait a second, you didn't come up with whole scenario", and sometimes you don't. In this case the client came up with the scenario. We had a whole bunch of happy misunderstandings and we got a great story from it. Then we ran with that story and it had run ever since.    While my advice is always, play emperor, sometimes it just pays to listen to what the client is saying and how they perceive the product, or the course, or the service to be. Then use it as your story line.   Another good example of this is Golden Moon tea. This is run by Marcus Stout. Marcus is a friend and client of mine. When he started out the tea company it was just like any other tea company, but he decided to play emperor.   A couple of years ago he decided that even in the tea there were so many chemicals. You can get away with a lot with the label "organic"; you're actually allowed to put in a whole bunch of chemicals, even if it's organic. He decided to make his teas chemical free.    This took a lot of work because you can't just say, "Hey, this is chemical free." You have to be there at the farm, figure out stuff, you have to travel a lot. He wanted to create a tea company that he could be assured he could say, "Yup, this tea is chemical free. There's not a trace of chemical in it." Not 3%, not 5%, not nothing, just chemical free.   Do you know how hard it is to find tea that doesn't have some kind of chimerical, genetic modifications, artificial flavors, or toxins within it? That's the tea that we've been drinking all this while.    By playing emperor, Marcus has decided this is how it's going to be. Now you don't care what his slogan is, you don't even remember his slogan, what you remember is the story behind it.    This brings us to the end of the second part of this episode. In the first part of today we covered how does the story help. Then we went on to, how to construct that story and how to ignore the slogan completely if we need to. Now we move to the third part, which is why is this so critical, why is so important that we create a story before we create any kind of slogan, if we create a slogan at all. I think you already know the answer to that question.   The answer is just that it's memorable. You don't remember peoples names and you don't remember slogans of airlines because they're just words strung together. Sure, every now and then you get a slogan that's memorable like, "thirty minutes or it's free", but for the most part, you don't remember it. Yet we spend hours, and days, and weeks, and some people spend thousands, and tens of thousands of dollars coming up with a slogan that no one remembers.   The story really helps because it's helps people to transfer the message across. It helps people to tell people why they buy this product or service over the next product or service. When you're buying a $100 umbrella instead of a $10 umbrella, you need to know why you're doing that. More importantly, you need to justify to someone else who's going to laugh in your face when they see you with such an expensive umbrella.   The story really makes a difference. You feel like owning an ioSafe because you know someday there might be a fire at your place, you know that you're out with that umbrella, you know that you drink tea and you would prefer to have tea that has no chemicals - not just organic, but no chemicals whatsoever.    It's the same story that drives people to buy into the article writing course, even though we sell it 6 months in advance and at a reasonably high price. This story takes a lot of time to create. Once it's in place, you get better customers, you get higher prices.    Of course all of this adds up in the sense that you can now put all that money and time towards your vacation, which is critical. Vacation is not just something you have to do because you can do, it's something that enables you to calm down, to relax, and to just come back fresh so that you can tackle your work with even more gusto. it's not just going eating, drinking, it's also just relaxing your mind and coming back refreshed.    Let's get back to today's topic. The three things that we covered today are: story helps, we figured how the story helps and how it's more powerful than those terrible slogans that you heard at the start. We also very briefly connected with the construction of that story line. Whenever you're coming up with a product or a service, play emperor and create the story line rather than some slogan that no ones going to pay attention to. Finally, we saw the importance of this story line. It enables people to pass it on, to justify what they bought, and get better use out of it as well.   That brings us to the end of this episode. What is the one thing that you can do today? The one thing that you can do today is to play emperor. Make that list; make the list as long as you need to then cut it down to 10, then to 5. Then you'll really struggle because you'll want to talk about everything, but then cut it down to three, and then finally to one thing.    What is that one thing that you really want to do for this product or service. Do this every time you start up a new product and service, because every product or service requires it's own uniqueness. Play emperor, or get a client to play emperor, and you'll be amazed how that very same product or service gets an enormous amount of power and clients are immediately attracted towards it.   Now it's time to close the episode, so if you haven't already done so, go to Pyschotactics.com/magic. That's where you get some magical stuff and some goodies that we won't offer anywhere else. Go there, there's a form, fill out the form - it's a very short form. It's Psychotactics.com/magic. If you've already started the year and you need to do some planning, you're frustrated with goal setting, there is chaos planning which is built around chaos.    Go to Psychotactics.com and there in the product section you'll find a product called chaos planning. It's very unusual, and I think you'll like it.   I'll say bye for now, and thanks for being on the show. Bye bye.    Are you still listening? You remember that thing about not remembering peoples names? You can remember peoples names if you assign a story to them. To try and find some new people to meet today and see if you remember their names - you'll do very well. You'll find that your memory isn't as bad as you though after all.