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

Trying to come up with a suitable name for your book or info-product seems like a nightmare. What if you're wrong? What if the name isn't well received? However, there's a way to make your book really stand out. And guess what? It's not the title that matters. It's the sub-title. Find out why we've been tackling things the wrong way and how to get a superb name for your book or information product/course before the day is done.

Most of us know of the concept of the "guardian angel". They come into our lives and they take care of us. The "kicking angel" is quite different. The angel shows up just to push us over the edge and then he/she disappears from our lives. How do we know when we're being kicked? And what "kicks" do we pay attention to and what do we ignore?

Can you really double your sales of a product you've created a while ago? And why are satellite products so very useful to clients and profitable to your info-product business? In this episode we look at info-products as we'd look at a piece of software like Photoshop. Find out the magic that already exists within your info-product and why you don't have to keep crazily searching for newer clients all the time. Read it online: Double Your Sales With Versions and Satellite Products ----------------- Most people have never heard of the Knoll brothers, but they've certainly heard of the program the brothers invented. That program was Photoshop Developed initially in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll, it wasn't the sophisticated program like the modern version. Back then it wasn't called Photoshop, but was named “Image-Pro”. It was only when the Knoll brothers decided to sell the program in 1988 that they changed the name to Photoshop. As the story goes, no one was really interested in the program, except for Adobe.

When creating an information product is the client important? It might seem that a client is extremely important when creating an information product. After all, you're getting them to tell you exactly what she needs. However, more often than not, this method is a recipe for disaster. Even so, the client is extremely useful in another phase. So when do you include the client? And when do you leave her out? Let's find out in this two part series on info-product creation. Read online: Info-product Creation Part 1: When to Leave The Clients Out ------------------ In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: How to create an information product and when you need the target profile Part 2: How to go about pre-selling your  book Part 3: How to use the target profile to create info product versions ------------------   Did you ever wonder why evergreen trees don't shed their leaves even in freezing winter? The moment autumn rolls along, most trees in temperate and boreal zones shed their leaves. Every tree has chemical

When you create your business, product  or service uniqueness, do you need to test it? Incredible as it seems there's little point in doing any testing at all. In this episode you'll find out why testing is practically impossible and how instead of wasting time on research, you should follow three steps to make sure your uniqueness occupies a permanent part of your client's brain. In this episode Sean talks about Step 1: You have to consistently get the word out. Step 2: You have to state the position of the competition. Step 3: You have to state your own position. Read it online: How to Effectively Test Your Uniqueness ========== When you have settled on your uniqueness, how can you test it? What is likely to happen to a woman's bikini, when she's surfing? “If you're a woman, surfing with a bikini was slightly out of the question.You'd be out in the waves, walk out of the water and literally you've lost your bottoms,” said the business owner, Anna Jerstrom. So Jerstrom decided to create sexy, bright bikinis.

How do you position your products and services? Finding your uniqueness is incredibly difficult, yet some companies do it consistently well. How do you learn from their ability to position their products and services? Also, do you really need a uniqueness for every business product and service? The answer is “yes” and this episode will reveal why that's the case. ============ In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: How do you go about finding uniqueness for your business/product/service? Part 2: Do different products/services need their own uniquenesses? Part 3: When you have settled on your uniqueness, how can you test it?   Read in online: How To Quickly Create Your Uniqueness ============ A patch of grass, is a patch of grass, is a patch of grass, right? Take for instance the patch of grass near the volcano, Ol Doinyo Lengai in Tanzania Every year around February, the wildebeest calves are born, all at the same time. If you look at where the calves seem to graze, it's on one patch of grass—while completel

Information product sales don't always increase with promotions alone Often they increase by giving away content that you could easily sell. But shouldn't you stick to giving away tiny reports? What if you were told to give away a big product instead? Would that reap any rewards? Find out in this episode on giving as a strategy. ---------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Small value giveawayPart 2: Big value giveaway Part 3: How to structure the giveaway and how often Click to read online: https://www.psychotactics.com/giveaways-increase-sales/ ---------------- n South Africa, there's a flower that only one insect can access. Orphium flowers don't contain nectar. Instead, they provide bees with pollen. Yet, not every insect can access the pollen. If you look closely at an orphium flower, you'll find the stamens are twisted and this, in turn, prevents the pollen from being stolen by visiting insects. Only one insect has access to the pollen in the Orphium flower. That insect is the female carpen

How do you maintain a high productivity level when switching tasks? How do you get the brain and body to handle the transition? And how do you manage the transitions with a minimum amount of fuss? Read online: https://www.psychotactics.com/high-productivity/ =============== I was asked in e-mail: I am curious to know, since you do so many tasks in a day, how do you deal with context switching? I can do a task for 60 minutes, but doing something different immediately, requires some time for the brain and the body to handle the transition. How do you manage these transitions? The approximate formula is: High Intensity > BREAK > Low Intensity Notice how it goes? High, BREAK, Low. Then BREAK > High > BREAK > Low. When you first see the switching formula, it seems like it's just a transition from high to low. But as you can tell from the emphasis above, the break is pretty critical. If you just go from high to low or even low to high, the brain doesn't get time to recover. And recovery is what's important when you

Even if you have the best business idea in the world, analysis-paralysis can stop you in your tracks You feel frozen, not sure what to do. So you research. Then you do some more research and educate yourself even more. But that doesn't get you very far, does it? Even famous people like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo would get stuck in this mode, just like you. But they still went on to create great art. So how do you create great “art” as well? Find out and beat the analysis-paralysis once and for all. ----------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Two ways to validate your business idea Part 2: What makes a viable product? And how do you validate it? Part 3: How to deal with analysis paralysis? Click here to read online: https://www.psychotactics.com/validating-business-idea/ ----------- How do you go about validating your business idea to give yourself the best chance of success? Can you think of a TV series that's generated over US$ 3.1 billion so far? If you answered, Seinfeld, you're perfectly

How do you know whether your business idea is good or bad? Is there a system of validation for your info-products, courses and workshops, or do you just go with the wisdom of the crowds? This episode shows you exactly what causes one business idea to fail and the other one to succeed. This series is about the validation of your business ideas. We will explore what  is important when you’re about to embark on a new business idea. ------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: How to distinguish between your own voice of fear, and voice of reason Part 2: Good ideas can't be left on the bench; they need to be consumed right away Part 3: The big picture is usually the biggest problem Click here to read online: https://www.psychotactics.com/validate-idea/ ------------- Imagine if you invented a set of tyres and they were ridiculed. That is precisely what happened to a vet from Belfast, Ireland. This vet, named John Boyd Dunlop, watched with a bit of angst as his son, Johnnie, as he bounced madly while ridi

How does tolerance play a role in small business? It might not seem like tolerance is the root for success, but if you dig deeper, you'll find that small businesses struggle without the core concepts of tolerance. So how does tolerance play a part in something like a successful artwork, or music, or the next product or course you produce? Let's find out in this podcast. ------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: The Tolerance for Success and Failure Part 2: The Tolerance to Learn Part 3: The Tolerance for the Long Haul Read it online: https://www.psychotactics.com/lack-tolerance-effect/ ------------- In September 2013, Renuka and I were headed to Cape Town, South Africa. Whenever we leave, we always ask our nieces, Marsha and Keira what they'd like as gifts. Keira was pretty clear about her gift. “Bring me an elephant”, she said emphatically. Now Keira was just four at the time, and an elephant seemed like a pretty plausible gift. She wasn't taking no for an answer, even when we told her that the

"I wasted too much time getting angry". So said world-famous tennis champion, John McEnroe. McEnroe and arch-rival, Jimmy Connors had similar temperaments on the court. Both were easily provoked. Yet both of them managed to get to the No.1 ranking in the world for many years consecutively. Yet McEnroe was gone from the tennis scene by the age of 34. Connors, on the other hand, was still around at the highest level, even at the age of 40. So what happened? ============= In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Work-Rest Ratios Part 2: What Depletes EnergyPart 3: The Power of a Backup Battery Read online: https://www.psychotactics.com/increase-energy/ ============= Performance psychologist Jim Loehr was on a particularly difficult mission. He wanted to understand what kept the world's top competitors head and shoulders above their competition. He watched hundreds of hours watching live games and followed up by poring through taped matches. Despite the rigour he put into this research, he ran right into a brick

In a small business, strategy and tactics often go wrong. Yet all you hear about is success, success and how someone made it big. This episode is about some bad judgment calls and also about plain pomposity. It's taught us to be better marketers and better people. ============ In this episode Sean talks about Story No.1—The Internet Marketing Conference Fiasco of 2003 Story No.2—A Mess In Wellington: Why Extreme Personalisation is Not A Good Idea  Summary: How our minus two learning has helped us To read this podcast online:  https://www.psychotactics.com/psychotactics-mistakes/ ============ I remember one of the early events in my speaking career Renuka was sitting in the audience. When I finished my speech, I came back to my seat and asked her how she found the speech. I gave you a minus two, she said. Speaking hasn't been easy for me, and I struggled a lot not knowing what to say when in front of an audience Luckily, almost at the start of my career, I ran into Eugene Moreau and his 13-Box Speaking system.

When you sit down to write a book you and I can waste a lot of time, if we don't take time to outline But what are the elements involved in outlining? And how can we make sure we don't make any silly mistakes? If you're about to write a book or plan to be an author sometime later, this information is for you. But even if you've already published books, you'll be amazed at how this information speeds up your process and gets better results. In this episode Sean talks about Element 1: How many points do you cover in your book outline? Element 2: Why deconstruction is important. Element 3: Understanding the purpose of the book. Read online: Outlining Your Book: The Three Crucial Steps -------------------------- Around the start of 2010, I was very upset with myself. I'd pre-sold a workshop and as I always do, the notes for the workshop are sent to the attendees a whole month in advance. Since the workshop was being held earlier in the year, I had been thinking about the notes right through my summer break in lat

Why do some landing pages work while others fail? The core of a landing page lies in picking a target profile. Yet, it's incredibly easy to mix up a target profile with a target audience. And worse still, the concept of persona comes into play. How do we find our way out of this mess? Presenting the target profile mistakes we make and how to get around them quickly and efficiently.  In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Target Profile Blind Spot Part 2: Person vs. Persona Part 3: Target Profile Questions To read it online: https://www.psychotactics.com/landing-pages-fail/ ------------------------ In Mexico, there's a beach that goes by the name of Rosarito. The rocks on that beach made advertising executive, Gary Dahl over 6 million dollars back in 1976. Those rocks were a smooth stone that was soon better known as Pet Rock. These rocks were marketed as if they were live pets. They had their own cardboard boxes, straw and breathing holes for the “animal”. People buying the Pet Rock knew fully well what the

Why do great inventors, business people, and a ton of smart people have in common? They have many traits, but one specific trait is the ability to crack a problem. When everyone else has given up, these people are able to figure out what no one has done before. How do they do it?   This article shows you how to increase your learning speed by using deconstruction. It shows you how to crack puzzles that seemed too difficult by others.' ---------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Where to start your learning journey Part 2: How to find learning patterns when there's no one to help you Part 3: How to stack the layers and accelerate your learning To read it online: https://www.psychotactics.com/speed-learning/   ---------- How to deconstruct complex topics (and accelerate your learning) What can a single video on YouTube contain? If you were to look at just six minutes of a NASA video, it might put you off ocean currents forever. In exactly six minutes, the contents of the video contain some of the follow

The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere This is an elaboration/review of the book by Pico Iyer. How do you slow down?  What do you mean by going nowhere? And how can we slow down with our busy business and family life? Sean says, ” I still have the same day I used to have before. But somehow it's different. Now, I have more time.” ---------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: The Passage To Nowhere Part 2: The Charting of StillnessPart 3: The Internet Sabbath To read it online: https://www.psychotactics.com/losing-momentum/   ---------- 4 am is the most difficult part of my day. And it's not for the reason you might be thinking. It's not difficult because it's so early in the morning. For me it's quite the opposite. For close to 20 years I've been rising at 4, sometimes a bit earlier, without the need of an alarm. The sound and feel of 4 am is embedded in my system and I instinctively know when to wake up. Which is where the problem begins. Within seconds of waking up, I'm completely awake I

Part 2 of how working with a partner can be both an upside as well as a downside. How do you cope? How do you take it to a whole new level, without all the drama that goes with partnerships? Find out how to run a two-engine business instead of depending on flying alone. 

How easy is it to work with your spouse or partner? What are the upsides and downsides? These are questions that are asked all the time and there's a good way to know if you're going to work well together. Here's Part 1 of a series of 2 episodes.  --------------------- https://www.psychotactics.com/insider-story-psychotactics/

Everyone loves a fabulous year, but the best years for us are those that aren't terribly great. We learn more, and go through a revolution in such "difficult" years. That was 2016 for me. Life took me on diversions I hadn't expected and to me that became the most interesting element of all. Now I look forward to the diversion. Find out how you can be calm even when life takes you off route. And how the off route can be the one thing you look forward to time and time again.  In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Why Goals Are Not Enough (And Why Pacing Matters) Part 2: Time Management vs. Energy Management Part 3: Dealing With Seemingly Closed Doors  To read it online: https://www.psychotactics.com/power-diversion/ ----------------------- In February 2016, I took a rather interesting vow. I vowed to stop grumbling. Now let's get one thing straight: we all grumble. Some do more than others, but I'm one of those people who are easily disappointed, and so I'm relatively more prone to grumbling. Why I decided t