The Three Month Vacation Podcast: Online Small Business|marketing Strategy Plan| Sean D'souza | Psychotactics

What causes clients to keep coming back? Is it information? Or could it be entertainment? For too long we've treated teaching and learning as an activity that needs endless slides, pages and work. But what if clients get better results having fun? And what if you had a ton of fun as well? Let's find out how to speed up client learning with some pretty minor tweaks in your e-books, courses, presentations and webinars. Click here to read the transcript on the website:  #166: How To Speed Up Client-Learning With The Incredible Power of Infotainment ===================== When my mother-in-law, Preta, was in her twenties, she was teaching at Sunday school. Like most Sunday schools, the kids were there to learn about the Bible. However, my mother-in-law decided to teach the girls how to sew tiny dresses for their dolls. Within weeks of her starting up, all the girls wanted to be part of her class. Ironically, this made the other Sunday school teachers jealous. They complained to the “higher authorities”, and Preta

Procrastination is bad, right? Well, not quite. If you break up a project, you're likely to find most projects have five distinct sections. To get to the end of the project, you're going to need a form of managed procrastination. But how do you go about this form of procrastination? And why is it seemingly better to keep you focused? Let's find out in this episode, shall we? Read the transcript online: #165: How to use procrastination to your advantage --------------- Imagine you're sitting down late at night to get ready for your presentation the next day. And you find your slide deck is empty. That's precisely what happened to me when I was conducting a workshop in California many years ago. Usually, I'm very thorough, making sure everything is in order at least four-five days before we board the flight. This time, however, I'd somehow put off what I needed to do, confident I'd have enough time when I got to the U.S. When preparing for workshops, I go through my slides anywhere between 10-15 times, and comp

Some days you just feel fed up of your work. You know you shouldn't. You love what you do, but you can't shake the feeling. You almost have to drag yourself to work and you don't know how to turn the day around. That day can quickly turn into a second day. Before you know it, the week is a puddle of frustration. But there's a way out of this mess and it's incredibly simple. You can turn your day around in 30 minutes. Let's find out how. You can read the transcript on the website: #164: How To Transform A Miserable Day Into A Happy One, In Under 30 Minutes ---------------------------- How to turn a miserable day around in 30 minutes: Episode 166 Some days you just feel fed up of your work You know you shouldn't. You love what you do, but you can't shake the feeling. You almost have to drag yourself to work and you don't know how to turn the day around. That day can quickly turn into a second day. Before you know it, the week is a puddle of frustration. But there's a way out of this mess and it's incredibl

How do you get clients to return? One of the most underrated tactics is often right under your nose. Yet most people having events don't realise the mistake they're making and have to work a lot harder to get clients to come back. In this episode we look at what every business should do: not just get a client but get the client to come back repeatedly. Read online: How to Get Clients To Return To An Offline Event ============ If you head down to the South Island of New Zealand, you'll run into a little French town called Akaroa. The story goes all the way back to 1838 when the commander of the French whaling ship Cachalot what can only be called a slightly questionable purchase of the land around the area. Then, the French colonists left France to sail to New Zealand to establish a French colony. The French did get to Akaroa but found a treaty had been signed between the Māori and the British. The whole of New Zealand was officially a British colony. As the story goes, the French were just a wee bit late. The

Most of us dream of having an online business We are led to believe it's fine to just start up a blog and the audience will show up. Reality is a lot different. It takes time for an audience to appear. And when they do appear, it takes time to trust you. So how do you speed up that process of client acquisition and trust? Welcome to the land of offline events. In this episode we'll see why you should have the event and how to get your clients. Read the transcript online: Why You Need An Offline Event to Boost Your Chances of Success =========== I don't like Microsoft Excel. However, my wife, Renuka does. She can spend hours, even days tinkering with that “weird” program and come up with some statistics that are plainly astounding. One day as we sat down to lunch, as we do every afternoon, she announced the results of her morning escapade with Excel. “Guess what percentage of our income is derived from workshops and offline events?” Before I could answer, she revealed her statistics. The income we earned from

How do you redefine the term “passion”? A definition shouldn't be a barrier to your progress, should it? Yet, the moment you hear people talking about passion, you're stuck. And that's because their definition is all wrong. How do you redefine the term “passion”? And what does one-buttock have to do with passion? Let's find out. You can read this episode online: One Buttock Passion ------------------ In a TED Talk that's been watched over 9 million times, the conductor of the Boston Philamornic, talks about a seven year-old child. And this is what conductor, Benjamin Zander, says in his speech. He talks about a seven-year old child and what he sounds like when he's pounding on the piano. Clearly, the sounds that emanate from the piano border on pain. Even so, if that seven-year old practices for a year and yes, takes lessons, he's now eight. And the piano isn't screaming out in terror any more. Benjamin Zander goes on to talk about how the child sounds when he's nine, then when he's ten. At which, point, Zand

Most of us are told to start up a business doing what we're passionate about. There's just one problem. We don't know what we are passionate about in the first place. How are we supposed to find something we know nothing about? Let's explore the concept of passion and how to stop looking for it, and get it to find you, instead. Read the podcast on the website: Passion:Let it find you ---------- Imagine a person who can sniff a perfume and instantly identify the brand That person is my wife, Renuka. She can quickly work her way through as many as 150 fine fragrances. Fine fragrances are perfumes made in the classical style, by companies such as Chanel, Givenchy, Estee Lauder, Calvin Klein, etc. If you asked her if she's passionate about perfumes, her answer is clearly, yes. She worked in the perfumery industry for well over ten years, spending as much as half an hour to an hour each day, just tuning her nose to the subtleties of every perfume. Would that count as passion? It should, shouldn't it? All your life

How many books do you read in a year? Most people boast about how they read hundreds of books a year. That's what I used to do as well. Until I found that I wasn't really absorbing any information. So is speed reading a bad idea? Well, not entirely, but you need to know when to use it and why. Find out how speed works for you and more importantly, when it fails. Read it online: Mental Barriers Myths --------- Mental Myth: You need to speed up your learning (and there are systems to go faster) If you looked at the About Us page on the Psychotactics site, it used to say that I read 100 books a year. Well, that was true when I started out in business. I didn't have many clients, hence loads of time. It was also the very early days of the Internet. There were still millions of pages online, but blogs barely existed. Youtube was non-existent. Facebook was years away. If you wanted to get those 100 books, you had to physically make your way to the book store or the library. Nothing online was particularly instant o

Do you have a bad memory? Well, so does the memory champion of the US Memory Championships. How's that possible you may ask? But that's exactly the point. We have misconceptions about learning and memory that need to be wiped out and replaced with accurate representations of how our brain works. In this first episode we look at two of the mental blocks that cause us to stutter, if not fail. And we transform them from failure to success. Let's find out how. Read online: Business Mental Myths --------- As late as the 1970s, women's brains were considered to be inferior to that of men, and especially so in the game of chess. Chess is a game that demands a high level of spatial awareness, among other skills, and it was erroneously believed that women could never equal men at the grandmaster level. In fact, not one woman had made it to grandmaster level until Susan Polgár came along. Susan's father, László Polgár, didn't believe in inborn talent. He wrote a book about genius, and in it emphasised the fact that “Ge

Whenever you have a deadline, somehow you're able to stagger towards it and get the job done. But other tasks never seem to move forward. You fall behind on your reading, your fun projects, even that movie you'd promised yourself. In life we need to complete projects that are urgent, but also projects that are good for the soul. How do we get these projects going and how can we sustain them over the long term? Let's find out in this episode. Click here to read it on the website: How To Avoid Overwhelm (And Systematically Complete Projects) -------------------- I remember lying in bed on a Sunday morning and realising I was a hypocrite. My niece Marsha says she loves reading, which is why we bought her the entire Harry Potter, the Percy Jackson and the Kane Chronicles. She stuttered through the Harry Potter series but made her way to the last book. And as of this moment, she's been stalled on the first book in the Percy Jackson series. When I ask her if she's been reading, she always nods happily, but she's ba

Writing a report for your website can be quite a nightmare How are you supposed to put 20-30 pages together? And what system should you follow to get great results? That answer is remarkably simple, and plainly effective. And instead of just one way, why don't we look at three ways you can put together a great report! Let's go into report-land, shall we? Read this episode on the website: Three Ways To Write A Stunning Report Overnight ---------------- Rice. Curry. Meat, Fish. Papad. Pickle. Vegetables. Many, if not most of the meals we'd have when I was growing up, consisted of a what you'd easily call a well-rounded meal. But as a teenager, I couldn't wait for dinner. I was ravenous by the time I got back from school at 4 pm. I'd head to the pantry, and pick out my favourite noodles: Maggi Masala. Boil the water, toss in the noodles and the tastemaker and “two minutes” later, I'd be well on my ate to satisfaction-land. When creating information, it's easy to get lost in a “rice, curry, pickle, papad land”. H

Competition? That's the enemy isn't it? Why would you sell or worse, give the competition your ideas? It doesn't seem to make sense at all and yet it's a very solid business strategy—and especially for small business. In this episode, you'll find three solid reasons why competition can change your life for the better. Right click here and ‘save as' to listen to this episode. You are read the transcript on the website too:#155: Why Selling Strategies to Competition Is a Smart Idea ================ Approximately every month we take our nieces, Marsha and Keira for dinner, but Keira always does something very curious. Since the girls were little, my wife Renuka and I have taken them to dinner After dinner we head to the mall, where they buy themselves an ice-cream. The first thing Keira does when she gets her ice-cream is offer me the first bite. “Not too big a bite”, she'll always say. But yes, I do get the first bite, before she continues to devour the rest of the ice-cream. In doing so, Keira is sharing what

Take time off? Doesn't everyone want that? So how are you supposed to achieve that force of business? How do you get to downtime? And what about the passion projects you've been putting off for so long? In this episode we wrestle with the remaining two forces of business and start on a journey that's been put aside for much too long. ====== Read the article online: Passion Projects: How They Can Completely Change Your Business ====== In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Fourth Force of Business—Passion Projects Part 2: Fifth Force of Business—The Power of Down Time ====== The fourth force: Passion Projects In 2010, I got this dazzling idea to do a series of stock cartoons. As you probably know, I'm a professional cartoonist, and my fascination for Photoshop has lasted for well over 20 years. It seemed like a very good idea to create a unique set of cartoons that clients could use for their blogs, e-books, webinars or presentations. Then, seven years sneaked up, and now it's 2017. The cartoons aren't done.

No one thinks running a small business is easy But even so, there are forces that pull you in all directions. These five forces almost seem to tear at us as we go through our daily work. It's not just a question of coping with the forces. We have to somehow make them part of our lives. Let's find out how. ============= Read Online: How To Cope With The Five Forces of Business: Part 1 ============= In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: What are the five forces of business? Part 2: Why it is a question of management? Part 3: What sucks up the most time in business? ============= In December 2015, I attended a workshop in Nashville, Tennessee. The workshop itself was very tedious. There were endless slides, countless examples of TV commercials and no breaks. However, there were these long lunch breaks that spanned almost an hour and a half. With little else to do after lunch, I’d wander around the lobby looking at the signs posted on the walls. The signs were quotes from prominent American politicians. One of

Articles can be mundane or enthralling. But what makes an article stand out? The short answer is enthusiasm. Yet, it's not easy to know how to create enthusiasm in an article, is it? In this podcast, we learn how to step through the three phases that makes your article pack a rollicking amount of enthusiasm. ========== Read the article online:  #152: How To Write Enthusiastically and Avoid The Dull Article ========== In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Why you need to outline and how to keep it fresh Part 2: Why you need to feel very strongly about the issue RIGHT NOW. Part 3: Why you need to be able to deviate from your script a bit and make it messy. ========== What is the definition of sales? There's are probably a lot of definitions, but back in the year 2003 or so, Canadian-born American motivational public speaker and author, Brian Tracy came to New Zealand. I loved Brian's work and got to know him personally. One of the things I really liked was his definition of sales. “Sales is a transfer of ent

How do you find a good coach? We've all done courses that have been a waste of time, money and energy. Yet, finding a great coach isn't easy, is it? There doesn't seem to be any way to know in advance how good (or bad) a coach will be. Or is there? There are a few benchmarks that make the difference between average and special coaches. And strangely, your first point of due diligence is located right on the sales page in the testimonial section. In this episode Sean talks about Factor 1: Look for the “End Point” in the testimonials Factor 2: Why you need to focus on the next play Factor 3: The Rollercoaster Design Training System Read it online: Unusual Methods to Find Outstanding Coaches ------- I wanted 200 gm of coffee. The Russian behind the counter was only willing to sell me 50 gm. My idea of a great coffee, was instant coffee, Nescafé to be precise. At which point I was introduced to New Zealand's amazing coffee culture. To improve my coffee taste buds, I first  moved to a slightly fancier brand; a D

The biggest problem with article writing is the exhaustion factor. It's write, delete, write, delete and the endless cycle goes on. So how do you go about article writing? Can you really write articles and not get exhausted? In this series you get to see how I went from getting really frustrated, to writing 800 word articles and then 4000 word articles. What's the secret to such an enormous output? And how do you do it without getting exhausted? Let's find out how spacing the writing and the timer play an incredibly important role in writing.

Why do others seem more talented than we are? Is talent innate? Is it just practice? Or is there something else. Incredibly the key to talent is in the way you define talent. Change the definition and you see it in a whole new light. In Part 1 of this episode on talent, you'll see how mere definitions change the way you see the world of talent (and how it can get you talented faster than before).

Envy isn't something we talk about, or even to admit to openly. And yet it's the one thing that all of us feel. We feel that others are going places and doing more than us. We even feel we need their spot and somehow that spot belongs to us. So how do we overcome this intense envy before it kills us? Find out how even the superstars of the world have to deal with envy. Yes, even people who seemingly have unimaginable wealth and success.

The leap may seem physical, but it's mostly mental. In your head you don't know if it's the right time to jump into being an entrepreneur. What about the mortgage, the family and the bills? And how do you deal with the fear? How do you stay steadfast to your vision? And what about focus? These are the questions that spin in your head over and over again. This episode isn't an answer to your question. No one can answer the questions, but you. However, it helps you understand how to keep true to your vision, how to keep your focus in a distracted world. And then, how to take that leap.