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

Many of us believe that smartness comes from learning the skills in our own field. And yet, that's only partially true. We can never be as smart as we want to be, if we only have tunnel vision. So how do we move beyond? And how do we find the time to do all of this learning? Amazingly it all comes from limits. Find out more in this episode. In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Learning all you can in your own field Part 2: Learning all you can in an area where you have no expertisePart 3: Working with limits ---------------------------- Last month I got an invitation from a group asking me to dinner. The dinner it seems was a group of startups. They wanted to spend the evening with Renuka and I and have a conversation about how to get started and to keep that momentum going. What they wanted most of all was the promise of the “Three Month Vacation.” Yes, they were start ups, but what would it take for them to get going and then not spiral out of control. What would it take for them to become successful wi

Did you know that landing pages fail almost at the headline stage? We’re all told to create landing pages. So why do they fail? The answer, it seems, can be found at any international airport. When planes land, they don’t land all at once. They land one at a time. Yet on a landing page, we scrunch the issues together. We throw everything at the page. That’s a mistake. And this episode tells you why it’s a mistake and how to fix it. Click here to read: How To Write A Sales Pagehttps://www.psychotactics.com/writing-sales-pages/

It might seem like perseverance is a good thing. We've been told to persist in the face of odds. Yet, there are times when you should stop. How do you know when to stop? And why bother to persevere when failure is waiting around the corner? Find out why perseverance can be a real pain, and when it can be a blessing. Click here to read: Why Persevere Even When Failure is Certain https://www.psychotactics.com/why-persevere-fails/

Resistance seems like an overbearing force in our lives We want to achieve a lot, but as soon as we get started, resistance kicks in. But did you know there are ways around resistance? Resistance loves a loner. If you’re working alone, you’re just setting yourself for an encounter with resistance. Resistance loves to play the game of winner. We need to put resistance in second place. Here’s how to go about the task of winning the game. Click here to read: How To Beat The Resistance Gamehttps://www.psychotactics.com/resistance-detests-groups/

There are two options in life: greatness or mediocrity. But greatness seems so elusive, even so pompous. How do you call your work “great”? How do you even know or benchmark “greatness?”. And can a small business achieve greatness or do you have to be a dominant player like Apple, Disney and Walmart? Click here to read: Good to Greathttps://www.psychotactics.com/good-to-great/

Whenever you run into tips on productivity it’s always this earth shaking advice You’re advised to make these monumental changes to improve your business or life. In reality all you need are tiny little tweaks. Important tweaks, but tiny ones. And some of these tweaks are slightly irreverent. Which is what makes these productivity tips even more interesting. You’ll enjoy this episode on productivity—gentle productivity—and here’s a tip. You may end up sleeping a lot more as well! Click here to read: How Gentle Productivity Gets Astounding Results https://www.psychotactics.com/gentle-productivity/

If you were to boil down marketing to a single word, it would be “risk”. When a client is ready to buy they still hesitate. Even when there’s a sense of urgency on their part, they still go through a series of steps before they come to a decision. What are those steps? Why do clients seem to back away at the last minute? Click here to read: How To Overcome The Hesitation Factor https://www.psychotactics.com/elements-of-risk/

Why do we learn so slowly? Is it because we’re not good learners? Is it age? Or is it something quite different? The problem of learning (and teaching) is dependent on the concept of Teacher vs Preacher. When you’re a preacher, you give the feeling of a ton of information, but there’s no true learning, no true application. A teacher, gets the student to apply the skills. When you’re creating info-products, writing books or articles, this is what needs to be kept in mind. Click to read: Why Learning a New Skill is So Difficult https://www.psychotactics.com/why-clients-struggle/

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. -------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Why your crappy name will bury your book/information product. Part 2: The critical role of the subtitle and what makes it stand out. Part 3: How to use a title and then add random interesting sub-titles. -------- My friend, Karen, was about to have her first child. As you’d expect, she was a bit apprehensive but also quite joyful. One of the reasons why she was so excited was the whole process of giving a name to her soon-to-be child. She had half a dozen books on “naming the child”. While we were visiting, we had a little conversation a

How do we get talented? Part 2 of “How To Get Talented” is a bit of a shocker. You realise that talent is only the stuff you can’t do. If everyone can do what you can, then it’s not really a talent. Ok, so that’s the spoiler, but listen or read anyway. ------------ In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Pattern recognition and energy Part 2: How can you achieve a ton of talents Part 3: Is all talent inborn? Read online: https://www.psychotactics.com/three-definitions-talent/ ------------ Definition No.2: Talent is merely high speed pattern recognition. What is 11 x 13? 143. What is 11 x 27? Yes, it’s 297. And just for good measure, what’s 11 x 45? If you said 495 in a flash, you’d have the right answer. However, the chances are you were slightly flummoxed by the questions You could clearly see that we were dealing with the 11 times table, but it made no sense whatsoever when you had to multiply these random two digit numbers with 11. And yet a 10-year-old could do it quite quickly. I know this to be true be

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). Additional rocket launch audio recordings used in this episode are courtesy of NASA (https://www.nasa.gov/) ----------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Our battle with talented people. Part 2: Is talent a reduction of errors? Part 3: What has “Austin’s Butterfly” got to do with talent. ----------------- 7 miles per second That’s what it takes for a spacecraft to break out of Earth’s orbit. Breaking free of the gravity of Earth and heading into space is called “Escape Velocity” and is easily one of the biggest challenges of space travel. The spacecraft needs an enormous amount of fuel to break free of

Which is the most frustrating part of an article? Yes, it’s the First Fifty Words. We get so stuck at the starting point when writing an article, that it’s almost impossible to go ahead. But what if there were not just one, but three ways to create drama in your article? That would be cool, wouldn’t it? Well, here you go. Not one, but three ways to start your article with drama and get attention. ====== In this episode Sean talks about—Three ways to get your readers attention. Part 1: The power of story Part 2: Disagreement with your premise Part 3: How to create intrigue with lists You can read it online here:  3 Ways To Create Instant Drama In Your Articles ========== In 1974, New York had a problem that didn’t seem to go away. No matter where you rode the subway in New York, there was graffiti painted both inside and outside the trains. Young men with their spray cans covered the city’s trains with their version of art and soon the subway came to be seen as a symbol of a city on its way to the gutter. The

What links thousand year old organisations with a bike company like Harley Davidson? What do football teams have in connection with businesses owners that can take time off? It’s all here in these free set of goodies (yes, 36 audio files) and a PDF. You’ll love how you can implement much of this information right away. Learn Why Marketing ‘Doesn’t’ Work. And Why You Need Structure In Your Business! http://www.psychotactics.com/bam ========================= You will learn in The Brain Alchemy MasterClass: 1) The Spider’s Secret: How to get customers to call you instead of you chasing them. 2) The Three Prong System: This tool will change the way you look at your business forever. Ignore at your risk. 3) How to create a huge demand for your product or service: This secret is over 10,000 years old and works every single time. And most businesses don’t use it. >>Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer. >>Here is the link to get: The Brain Alchemy MasterClass Free (Yes, all 36 aud

Envy isn’t something we talk about, or even 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. In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Is Envy Good or Bad? Part 2: How do You Cope With Envy? Part 3: How To Stay Motivated—And Happy. Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer. =============== No one I know is free of envy We all, at some level, are envious of others and even more so in our field of endeavour. If you were to look at my inbox every morning, you’ll notice about 60-70 e-mails. Then as the day progresses, another 60-70 will stream in. And yet not one of the e-mails is from some one in the same profession as mine. As you probably kno

How do you write intensely curious headlines—even if a deadline is looming. When writing headlines, you often get stuck. Can grammar come to the rescue when under pressure? Find out how grammar class helps you write outstanding headlines in a jiffy. --------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: What has grammar got to do with writing headlines. Part 2: Why you need to break up your headline writing process Part 3: What’s the one thing you can implement today in your headlines You can read this online here: https://www.psychotactics.com/headlines-three-ways/ --------- Every year, 20 billion bottles of wine are produced. And 80% of those bottles are closed with a single substance. A substance called cork. The cork, as you’d suspect, comes from bark of the cork tree The bark has to be harvested, and then you get the cork for those 16 billion bottles. But there’s no hurrying the process of cork production. A tree must be at least 25 years old before the bark can be harvested. After that, it can be stripped

Imagine a client walked through the door and you could give them the power of X-ray vision. Would that client come back for more superpowers? Of course she would. So how do you create superpowers that attract clients? What three elements need to be in place for the superpower to work? Find out in this the third part of this series on "how to stand out even when the competition is outstanding". 

AirBNB was struggling? Was it just start up problems or was it something else? Find out how AirBNB, Zappos and other now-famous brands had to dig, or even stumble upon the biggest problem before they got their business off the ground. And yes, what you've got to do to find the biggest problem as well. It may seem like we know the biggest problem we're solving for our clients, but we're very far from the reality. Find out why this is the case and how to rectify the problem right away. 

If there's little or no competition, it's easy to be top dog. But what if there's oodles of competition? And what if the competition isn't just average, but utterly outstanding? What do you do to stand out in such a situation? Can you even make a mark? The answer is quite surprising

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. In this episode Sean talks about How do we know when we’re being kicked? And what “kicks” do we pay attention to and what do we do. Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer #112: How Kicking Angels Help To Jumpstart Your Business =========== You’ve heard of a guardian angel, haven’t you? But what on earth is a kicking angel? Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s an angel that does the job of giving you a swiftie on your rear. We got our first swiftie in the year 2002 We’d just set up Psychotactics. And we were looking to sell our products on the Internet. Um, did I say products? I meant ‘product.’ But as most of us do, we were waffling. We’d been busy tweaking our website. We had been searching for a merchant provider for a month or two.

The moment we sit down to write an article, we need to do a fair amount of research. Case studies, stories, they’re all needed to create a solid article. Yet that very research causes us to spend so much time on our article, that we’re exhausted. Is there a way to research without getting tired? In part two we explore the techniques I use to write extremely detailed articles. Let’s find out how to go about a strategy that works every single time. -------------- Stage 3: Never research when writing the article If you were to put all the energy drainers together and pick one of them, the biggest of them all would be research. You need research to prove your point, or to get examples, or even just to get the First Fifty Words going, in your article. The only time you should not be doing that research is right at the point you’re writing the article. I have to admit, I’ll still occasionally do some research when I’m writing the article I want to make a great start to the article, so I’ll go looking for a story. A