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

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

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