The Three Month Vacation Podcast

Smaller lists work amazingly well, but there's a big task at hand You not only have to keep clients coming back, but prevent them from leaving as well. How do you do that? At Psychotactics we have many methods and it should give you some ideas as to where you can begin. If you have some ideas, do send them in. ---------- We'll focus on just three things that we can do with our tiny list 1- The first purchase: why you don't need thousands, or even hundreds of clients on your list. 2- How to willingly get clients to buy a second, third, fourth, even ten times in quick succession. 3- Monitoring the connectedness of your community. What makes a society feasible? No doubt, a lot of elements go into the making of a society, but two of the key components are: Are the rest a lot like me? Are they completely different from me? Our lists are small in comparison to most others in our field Our list now hovers around 25,000 people, and probably 5000 people open their e-mail. The membership site at 5000bc has just 600 members. Our workshops allow for just 35 people at a maximum, but often we'll have boutique workshops like the Landing page workshop, and admit only 15 participants. When you consider the size of other lists, and especially those who've been around as long as we have, you'll see there's a marked difference. But how come we're able to do this whole three-month vacation bit, take weekends off, etc. It's because of our belief in the small list, but there's a greater driving force We have community in the sense that's easier to manage when you're smaller. It wouldn't be over the top to state that we've personally met close to one fourth of our members in person. We've interacted with clients via e-mail several times, and on 5000bc, possibly hundreds of times. Even so, the community aspect only tends to work, if the client is willing to pitch in. And they only tend to pitch in, if their two questions are answered reasonably well. Are the rest a lot like me? Are they completely different from me? If the client feels socially overwhelmed, they will not participate in the community. Social overwhelm doesn't come from abnormally large groups. Instead, as one client told me: "I feel about 15 people is all I can manage". Which is why you need to keep your clients to smaller groups, and for our workshops and training, we might take 35 people on the course, but split them into groups of 5-7 people. That avoids the social overwhelm. Then, we give them structure to introduce themselves to each other and to get to know each other. They get to know the likes, the dislikes—and this reduces isolation. The reason why a society exists is because the group members don't feel extremely different from each other. This fosters a sense of identity with your tribe. And in doing so, it also answers the question: Are the rest a lot like me? When a group is small, and get to know each other, they tend to stay longer The more the connectedness, the more they're likely to pitch in and help one another. Whether you're in business online, or have an offline service—say a clothing firm, or a bakery—there's always a chance to get your audience together. Lulu Melon, the fitness clothing store, for instance, has yoga classes every weekend. Others like the lawyers I worked with, would have seminars and then cheese, and really good wine. And if you're sitting in a land of 64 million sheep, far away from the rest of the world, you can connect with your audience, as we have over the years. To make this work in small groups, we use a ton of methods. Methods we've used so far: A) Offline meet-ups B) Online meet-ups C) Courses online and workshops (but restricted to groups of 7 people) D) Taking Action forum and Cave Guides E) Chocolate from New Zealand A) Offline meet-ups The toughest bit about workshops is all the preparation involved. It's exhilarating for me, as an extrovert, to conduct a workshop, but it's also a fair bit of work because we promise skill, not just a seminar filled with information. Then, to make it harder for myself (and apologies for the "me, me, me") is I promise to give the notes a whole month in advance of the event itself. This sudden decision was only half the trouble. A workshop needs a proper venue, it needs catering, and because we're pedantic. We fly in at least three-four days in advance to make sure everything's just right. And yet, workshops are astounding at creating communities. Clients who come to workshops get a greater ability and tend to participate more in the membership site at 5000bc. And yet, as you can tell, workshops are well, a lot of work. Which is why we decided to have offline meet ups. B) Online meet-ups A meetup doesn't need a venue. Any cafe will do, though we go to extra lengths to get a nice venue, where possible. It requires no notes, little or no planning and I can sleep well the night before. Believe it or not, a meet up achieves a similar result as a three or five-day workshop when it comes to community building. The meet-ups are usually about three hours long where everyone (and we restrict the numbers to about 15 people) talks to the others, but then I get asked dozens of questions (and I answer them all). That session moves to a restaurant, where people spend two or three hours more, talking and enjoying the company of other entrepreneurs just like them. And in some cases, some have stuck around until dinner, and as you can see, it's a pretty long day for an introvert, but a glorious day for someone like me. Nonetheless, even if you were just to have a meet-up, as Dorothy does, that alone is worth the trouble. Dorothy who? Dorothy Goudie, who founded Dorothy's Fashions in 1982, decided not to renew the lease on her Neville Street women's boutique and retired at the age of 78. Even so, when the store was going, Dorothy would have her meet ups. It wasn't anything fancy. She'd personally invite her clients to an afternoon of tea and snacks. And in that tiny little act, she managed to get her clients together and form a community. One of the best ways to get clients together is to have an offline meet-up, yet your clients may not be local. In which case, an online meet up is what's needed for sure. Online meet-ups We live in New Zealand, and yet we travel the world, so it's relatively possible to have meet-ups from time to time. However, the offline meet-ups were so well received that it made perfect sense to take the concept online. That way we could have clients from different countries and varying time zones getting to know each other. Think of a meet up much like a webinar, especially since you're going to be using webinar software anyway. Getting clients together to just talk to each other and interact with you, is slightly different from meeting over beer and coffee, but there's no reason why it can't be fun. Some clients will not turn on their video, some will not show up on audio either, but my guess is that almost everyone will say hello, at least on chat. To straddle east and west, we've had two separate time zones. This takes us to the third method of getting clients together—courses online. Most clients are delighted to meet in small groups. The bigger the group, the more they lurk. It's well worth having several sessions, rather than one big nameless, faceless group. C) Courses online and workshops Courses are a great way to get clients to interact. As explained earlier, we start off with a group of anywhere between 25-35 people, but they're in groups of no larger than 7. Why 7? Because if a couple of people go missing for a few days, you still have a discussion going between 5 people. If you have a smaller group, say of 5 people, and two go missing, it's just down to three. That's a bit too close for comfort, and hence 7 is a good number for a group. However, we've found that this number can then be pared down to as small as two per group. If you have a final couple of weeks, you can pair people off, and they work very well. A similar concept can be used for on-site workshops creating bonding between the group as well as between two specific individuals. Is it possible for someone to request a move to another group? Of course, it is, and it doesn't happen often, but it's easy enough to make a move, if needed. Which takes us to the Taking Action group in 5000bc. D) Taking Action forum and Cave Guides The big reason for joining a membership site like 5000bc is to get a consistent level of progress. Or in many cases, just to be heard and have someone to hear you out. That's what 5000bc's Taking Action forum is all about. Once again, it can become quite isolated, except for the fact that we pair up clients. Just having another person listening to what you've achieved helps you come back and get progress. And yet again, it's a bond that forms between clients. There are also the Cave Guides and the Elves. The Cave Guides are there for those who've just joined and need a helping hand around 5000bc. The elves, on the other hand, come out and volunteer when we go on vacation thrice a year. They keep watch over the place and pitch in if help is needed. E) Chocolate from New Zealand One of the most intimidating aspects of the Internet is the inability to connect with the owner of the site. It almost seems like you're interrupting them at some level when you write in. The chocolate bar sent with a hand written card, all the way from New Zealand makes a huge difference and a connection. Some people suggest we get a service to do this task. And perhaps print a card and send it off. Yes, all that advice is very efficient, but let's focus on why we're doing all of this in the first instance. It's about connection. The moment the client gets a chocolate bar, they usually write in. Clients send photos of their family and of course the chocolate bar (but often just the wrapper). You may sit around and drool at the thought of big groups In reality it's just that the grass looks greener on the other side. You can run a perfectly profitable and sustainable business. You get to stay close to your family, to travel when you need to, have lots of downtime and to run a business like that's not chasing its tail. Best of all you don't need a big group at all. You grow your audience organically and systematically. But most of all, fish at your feet first. Keep the clients you have and they'll help you grow as they grow too. That's pretty much it. Part 3: Why Smaller Lists Work Just As Well As Big Ones

Does a big list guarantee success? You know the answer to that one, already, don't you? Your small business isn't going to grow exponentially because you suddenly have a big list. Yet, in many ways, a smaller list has the potential to do better than a big list. Find out how to start ignoring the sound of "big lists" and work with a tiny list, instead. -------------------- Does a big list guarantee success? You know the answer to that one, already, don't you? Your small business isn't going to grow exponentially because you suddenly have a big list. Yet, in many ways a smaller list has the potential to do better than a big list. Find out how to start ignoring the sound of "big lists" and work with a tiny list, instead.

Is there really a cure for perfectionism? How can you make your work far superior in a shorter amount of time, often moving ahead of your peers? The answer lies in nature. In this episode we look at two different kind of plants: the monkey puzzle tree and the campion flower. The monkey puzzle tree stands for perfection, but the campion flower is able to make 120 dramatic changes while the monkey puzzle struggles with perfection. Interesting? Find out more in this episode and get rid of your perfection sooner than you think. Read the article online: https://www.psychotactics.com/use-procrastination/overcome-perfection -------------- You've probably heard of the Monkey Puzzle tree. The Monkey Puzzle tree is a conifer that grows to 40 metres (130 feet) and may live for hundreds of years. Yet, there's a bit of a problem because the tree doesn't reach sexual maturity until it's 40 years old. Compare the Monkey Puzzle tree with a Campion flower and the flower looks puny at just a foot or two. But here's where it all gets very interesting. The Campion flower reproduces within just four months. This means that while the Monkey Puzzle tree goes through a single generation, the Campion flower goes through 120 generations. And with every generation, there's a possibility of a genetic mutation. That mutation that may give it some slight super power to help it survive and thrive. The speed of the lifecycle means one very crucial thing: The species can adapt to rapid changes in the environment. There's a far greater chance of them getting better, hardier, different and possibly superior. Perfection, on the other hand, doesn't allow for speedy turnarounds Many of us like the idea of perfection, toiling away at our work, in order to reach a seemingly impossible goal. And like the Monkey Puzzle tree, we put ourselves at a disadvantage that's may seem hard to measure. But in reality, it's relatively easier to measure, and that's exactly what we've done on our courses like the Article Writing Course; or when training our niece, Marsha. We've seen speed work better when learning to cook or learning to draw cartoons. And yet this isn't a clarion call for shoddiness. In this series we'll explore the importance of speed vs. perfection, while also giving a nod towards really outstanding work. But is it all about speed? Doesn't a lack of speed play its role? All of this information is about to follow, so stay tuned, little Campion flower. How speedy progress reduces drain on energy Marsha, my niece, was struggling in maths in Year 4 and seemed to be almost at the bottom of the class. Four years later, she won a distinction in maths for being among the top performers in the class. This year (five years later), teachers routinely call on her to evaluate and help with corrections of tests, plus she often gets called to the board to demonstrate how she solves a problem. And you might have an inkling how Marsha was able to make this dramatic turnaround Yes, there's hard work, and there's good mentoring. In fact, on IXL alone (which is an app for maths learning), Marsha has solved over 18,000 problems. Staggering as that figure might seem, there are two ways to get anything done. The first way is to be slow and methodical. The second way is to beat the clock. In a Psychotactics course, clients are trained to beat the clock When you're conducting a live course at a venue, it's easy to monitor what clients are doing. However, the moment you conduct a course online, it's impossible to tell how much time and effort is being put into a project. You don't get to see the drafts, the cancellations and the huge volume of edits. All you ever see is the finished work. However, on Psychotactics courses, we have a simple bunch of questions that need to be answered every single day. One of the questions are: how much time did you take to finish this project? In order to answer the question, it's important for the client to monitor the time. Which is why it concerned me deeply when one of the clients wrote her answer, after doing her article writing assignment. "Three hours". Three hours? Three hours for an article? I'd imagined my instructions were clear enough. That you needed to get the job done as quickly as possible, but I wasn't counting on the perfection monster. It's not hard to imagine the state of that client.—let's call her Candidate No.1. Perhaps she started the assignment at 9 pm, after an incredibly hard day. At midnight, the article is still not perfect, but she's too tired to argue with her drooping eyelids. She hits "publish" and the article is done. On the other hand, we have Candidate No. 2 who rigidly follows instructions and stops typing the moment the clock strikes the 90 minute mark. Whose article will be superior? The article of Candidate No. 1 or No.2? The answer is that they're both not very good. When you're just starting to learn to draw, write, dance or draw cartoons, you know approximately where your ultimate goal lies. As broadcaster, Ira Glass says: You have style. You know what the finished product looks like but there's this gap between what you would like to see, and what you can produce right now. Hence, both the articles are usually very early versions of a good article and nowhere close to amazing. Yet one person has taken three hours while the other has stopped diligently at 90 minutes. Who's going to be more tired? Who's going to make more mistakes as the fatigue sets in? Who's going to be struggling both at work and to complete the assignment the next day? And what about the day after next and the day that follows it? The Campion flower comes to mind, doesn't it? It's all very fine to aspire to be a Monkey Puzzle tree and soar at 100 feet or more. However, the Campion flower concept is what we all need to get there. Which is exactly what Renuka did with Marsha's maths tuition. Instead of considering her situation, which was pretty dire four-five years ago, she simply gave her an assignment and used a timer. Invariably the mistakes would soar at the start, but all the mistakes were made in a precise amount of time, giving Marsha, a chance to recover. The brain learns a lot while doing the task, but the downtime is just as, if not more vital, in the learning and implementation process. Whether it's cooking a meal or completing a project, you should be a Campion flower This goal is important, because it allows you to make a huge number of mistakes. Skill, or talent, is really a reduction of errors, so you need to make the errors and then reduce or eliminate them completely. If you take your time over a project, you can only make a fixed no. of errors. Which is why, on a course, on in a workshop, I encourage clients to do their assignments quickly, rather than perfectly. Which means that if a client were to do their assignment early in the morning, they could get a correction, possibly many corrections within an hour or so. By their break time they could fix their minor errors while having a cup of coffee. Then at noon, another correction later, they could fine tune their errors (after I corrected their third or fourth tweak of the assignment). By tea time they could have gone through four or five drafts, and with every submission, they'd have fewer errors to fix. However, only the first submission would be lengthy. The submissions through the day would be shorter, and we'd be tweaking nuances which don't take too much energy or focus. Now compare this with ol' Monkey Puzzle client The client who waits all day, mulling and toiling over his work. When he finally submits it, late at night, he misses out on all those nuances, but more importantly from an evolutionary point of view, he's barely budged at all. Ironically it's the speed that has created more errors, more genetic modifications to the skill. If you're trying to be perfect, your Monkey Puzzle submission is the worst possible way to go about it. Energy is crucial when working on any project Creating versions, or tiny bits, to a fixed deadline and moving on to the next version might seem like a pretty idiotic method to go about your work. However, the main point of this article is that your work will not improve dramatically if you put 200% more time, or 300% more time. If, on the other hand, you create more versions of the same job, you will almost always see a fairly dramatic improvement. Even when we are struggling to learn or implement something, we are almost always able to come back and do the same thing better, the second time around. Let's say you're recording a YouTube video or a screencast. Not one of us is surprised to find the third or fourth version to be superior. If you're asked to take four different pictures of an object, you'll find yourself composing the picture a tiny bit better in the second, third, or fourth round. Even in the movies, they do many takes, not because they have money and time to blow, but because the versions improve with every take. Instead of trying to labour onwards with your first version, it's almost better to move on to the second and third and fourth—and to a deadline. The problem is we often look at projects as a whole For instance, you see yourself as writing ONE article, doing ONE podcast, writing ONE book. However, the bigger picture is far more important. What if you had to write an article a day? Or a book a month? What would you do differently? The changes you'd make would all be energy-dependent. You'd work in short, intense bursts, improving as you went along. And you'd proceed to create a greater volume of work, and far, far superior work than your peers. Doesn't painstaking work count? Yes it does. You want to do outstanding work and take loads of time over it. However, just working as a perfectionist, means you're going to just manage a single version of your work. If two people: Person A and Person B were to start the same assignment on the same day, the person that lavished more attention to their work would have a much better result. However, that advantage would not stay in place for long. Within a few weeks, Person B would be far ahead of Person A. And just remember one thing. What you consider to be imperfect is often just your own perception. If the client or the person receiving your work is happy with it, there's really not a reason in the world to be a perfectionist. If you truly want to do outstanding work, you have to be Person B most of the time, occasionally slipping back to your Person A perfection level. The greater the output, the better your work is going to be, especially if you take feedback as you move along. Marsha moved at a high speed, but the program always gave her feedback. The students on a course move quickly and they get feedback just as rapidly, thus allowing them to make big changes. The painstaking work is great when you have the luxury of time. Ironically, that time never seems to be on the horizon, so we have to improve even as we battle deadlines. One more point and we're done I really struggled to write this article. I wrote one version, then cancelled it. Then another version, and that too was deleted. In fact, I ditched well over 1000-1500 words including some really nice stories because I realised they didn't fit. However, I had a deadline for this article. And right now, I'm seven minutes over the deadline. Which is why I must stop. In short, you make your revisions, learn from the feedback, but then there's a deadline that you can only overshoot by a tiny margin. After which you have to hit "publish". And that's exactly what I'm going to do in about three seconds. Three, two, one… Epilogue Let's face it. If you consider yourself to be a perfectionist, well, you'd have spent almost all your life being told, or telling yourself that you're a perfectionist. You're probably trying to shake that habit, but it's easy to see why it's easier to stay in your comfort zone. Well, here's what psychologists suggest If you want to break out of your comfort zone, you stretch yourself ever so slightly. If you're labouring over a single article for several hours, how about spending half the time getting to the same goal? Your work may not be as perfect as you hoped, but it gives you a chance to get feedback and to improve your next article. If you're struggling to do one cartoon (correctly, of course), how about drawing just two, getting feedback and drawing even more in the given time? It's easy for an article like this to suggest that you need to take a big leap That massive jump may not be possible. Instead, take a smaller one—just a slight stretch goal. Set yourself the time in which you'll complete the job, stop, and get feedback. Then, tomorrow, do the same. If you follow this simple formula you'll find yourself less exhausted and with more energy. However, the biggest benefit of all is you'll become far better and far quicker at what you're doing. And that's what you wanted anyway, didn't you? You wanted perfection! So there you go! P.S. Oh, and print a picture of the monkey puzzle tree! Stick it on a prominent place where you can see it, just in case you forget. And don't look for the perfect picture. Any picture will do. Next Up: How to use procrastination to your advantage

Are habits a matter of routine? You'd think so, wouldn't you? Yet, there's a bigger factor in play that goes beyond a cue and routine. It's called the Reward. There's just one problem: how do you put a reward? And how do you know it's the right reward? What should you do if you want to motivate a client, instead? All these answers wait for you in this episode, plus a hidden factor that goes beyond cue, routine and reward. Check it out.

How do you make your articles or sales letters more interesting? Analogies and stories always increase the drama and attention span. Yet, it's hard to find and craft interesting stories on a regular basis. Or is it? Find out how you can use three simple and effective ways to craft a ton of great stories and analogies. ======== Writing Salesletters or Articles? How to Ditch The "Tired" Analogy I remember how I always groaned when my father started to tell his story of "how he drew a kingfisher", when he was just a boy in school. I loved the story, but I'd heard it so many times, that the thought of escape always crossed my mind when he'd start up that story. The reader experiences a similar "groan moment" the minute you start up on an analogy that they've heard before. Analogies like how you learn to ride a bicycle, drive a car—these are tired analogies These analogies are boring for the reader, no matter if you use it in a sales letter or in your article. So how you decide when to ditch the analogy? Or better still, how do you improve it so it's not so "tired" after all? Let's take an example In the book, The Brain Audit, there's an analogy of standing near the airport carousel waiting for your bags to be unloaded from the flight. So what's interesting about that situation? Well, for one it's not something that you hear about a lot. It doesn't have that ring of "when you learned to ride a bicycle". And so, by merely changing the example, your analogy becomes slightly more interesting. But what if we wanted to make it even more interesting? This is where the power of the personal story comes in. Imagine yourself waiting for the bag. What happens? What happens next? What ups and downs do you go through just waiting for those silly ol' bags? In The Brain Audit, the bags aren't just bags—they're "red" bags. And there aren't just "red" bags, but there are "seven red bags". And the story rolls out where one of the bags goes missing. As you can tell, this isn't just some tired analogy, but something that's slightly riveting. You want to know what happens next. You want to know how all of this then reconnects to the story. So the key to writing better analogies is to write a personal story first Put yourself at the airport. What did you do? What happened next? And next? And yes, I know I said this already in the last paragraph, but can we have some ups and downs as well as you're relating the analogy? In fact, the moment you dip into a personal story, even a tired story of riding a bicycle comes to life. About the best way to sidestep a boring analogy is to use a personal story. In fact, let's take an example of a personal story. Only an idiot would learn to cycle like me. Most people find the safest, flattest area to learn how to cycle. Not me. I decided to learn on slopes filled with red mud. Every time I fell—and I fell a lot—the mud would graze me badly. And of course, learning on a slope means you're tempting gravity all the time. Yet, long after the wounds have healed, the learning of how to ride the bike has stayed with me. But what if you don't want to tell personal stories? Well, turn the personal story into a "YOU" analogy instead. Tell the personal story but without using "I". So the story would work like this: Why would anyone be insane enough to find the most difficult cycling course? Most people find the safest, flattest area to learn how to cycle. But imagine you decided to learn on slopes filled with red mud. Every time you fell—and you do fall a lot—the mud would graze you badly. And of course, learning on a slope means you're tempting gravity all the time. Yet, long after the wounds have healed, the learning of how to ride the bike has stayed with you. Notice how the analogy isn't tired, isn't personal and still seems like an amazing analogy? If you're ever reaching for a tired analogy, the first recourse would be to simply find something that's unusual—like the "seven red bags" story. However, an even better strategy is to write a personal story because personal stories have this inbuilt oomph factor. Should you feel shy about revealing the personal story to your audience, all you have to do is simply tweak it a bit. Put in the "you" into the story and you have a great analogy. Analogies can be used not just in articles, but also in books, presentations and sales letters Some of the best writers and marketers know the power of the story and analogy. And they use it very effectively to drive home several points throughout their marketing or editorial material. And they mix it up a lot with analogies and stories, while the amateurs simply write yucky, boring stuff. Tired analogies are for lazy writers. Be not sloppy. Be not boring. Put in the power of story in your analogy and let the "groan" go away, today! Next Up: The Power of Story Telling Do you know how to put that Zing-Kapow in your articles (with story telling)? Find out right here in this three-part series on Storytelling! .

Why do clients leave? It seems odd, doesn't it? When you ask a client why they join, they seem to suggest it is all about information and content, but then they inexplicably leave. They seem to suggest they need either better content, or they need time to implement the content. But that's rarely the case, as we've found out. The need is far greater and we've all experienced it. Clients leave for a very obvious reason that you're never going to find in analytics software or surveys. Listen to find out more. Read the podcast online: Why Clients Leave. --------------------------------- Ok, so it has always bothered me why clients leave. And when that thought crossed my mind, I was sitting in the cafe—the very cafe I'd been avoiding for well over a year or more. So now I had two thoughts: why do clients leave? And why did I return to the cafe? In case you're wondering, the answer is not "coffee". And if wasn't the coffee, then it had to be something else, right? But let's leave the cafe for a second and go online—say to a membership site, instead Let's say you belong to a membership site and the membership fee comes up for renewal. Why do you stay? Or why do you leave? The obvious answer is: it's the product or the service, right? And yet when we look at membership sites all over the place, there's really no shortage of content. No matter how grotty the site, there's usually way more content than you can browse, let alone consume. Videos, audio, articles, reports—they all swarm around you with increasing intensity. If the content were really the problem, you have no problem, do you? So let's take another angle There's too much content, and you really can't absorb it all. You've had your fill, and you now need to buckle down and focus on your business. Even if you have received advice and answers to your questions; even if your business has indeed gone ahead, you still need some breathing space to implement all of that information. We say it, but we don't mean it, do we? None of us has time. We didn't have time yesterday, or last week, last year, or even in the last decade. Time marches on to the sound of a jiggling rumba beat, and there's no way we can stop that time parade. So it can't be the focus or the time off, because the moment we've left the site, that information will cease to exist, but some other stuff will replace it. And that's when I finished the foam of the coffee, and I got my "bfoto" Yup, that's short for "blinding flash of the obvious". People, clients—they don't leave because they need time to focus; or because they're not getting enough content. Most of the time they don't even leave because they need the money. Unless the relationship with the site or the coach is just crappy, it makes more sense to get good advice and pay the fee. If it's not the money, or the content, or the time, what is it? It is the "people". To get back to the cafe story above, we were regulars at the cafe about two years ago. However, back then, we knew a lot of the people at the cafe and by people I mean the staff. Then the manager, Justine, left and took some of the staff with her. Suddenly the place wasn't so appealing, even though nothing much had changed. Two years slipped by, and we avoided the place. One day early this year, the current manager invited us in. She assured us we'd get great service and the coffee we were used to. And suddenly we're home again. We got to know the current staff, they know us, and it's like nothing's changed. The bfoto—or blinding flash of the obvious is just "people" When asked why we buy products or services, we often give a logical reason. We reel out the features or the benefits, but in reality, it's the people. It's the reason you and I have a preference for a particular petrol station, when all petrol stations have the same product, at approximately the same price. It's the reason why we don't care for rotating hairdressers or barbers, choosing as far as possible to go to the same one every single time. I know it's evident that people matter, but how does this play out when you consider the field of marketing? And what are you supposed to do if clients are starting to leave even when you're doing your best? The plot thickens. Stay tuned. We noticed something very odd in the courses we conduct online The online courses, like the Article Writing Course, is remarkably difficult, and rightly so. You're trying to compress a skill that usually takes years, into just 12 weeks. This intensity means you're going to have several sleepless nights, have to do assignments, interact with the group. Wait, interact with the group? Isn't learning about the teacher and the student? What's this group nonsense about? And if you look at the data, the data speaketh plainly. It says: those that interact with the group do two things consistently. The first being they finish the course and show a far higher skill level than those who don't interact with their group. The second point is that clients, having done one course, then show up for a second course; then a third; buy many products and services; come to offline events, and so on. The ones that don't interact with the group, and merely do their assignments don't exactly fall off the face of the Earth, but they're—and I hesitate to say this—less skilled and more likely to leave, or find it harder to go on (for some reason or the other). Africans knew this a long time ago In Africa there's a saying: If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a group. However, when you look at the saying, or the course, or the cafe, what you see repeatedly is the interaction with people. We are really like a herd of elephants that want to travel together, as far as possible and not some lonely leopard sitting by itself on a tree in the middle of the Himalayan foothills. We want to be together, or at least to know each other. The blinding flash merely is that if you don't get people to become part of the group, they will get less of a benefit, pick up fewer skills and finally find they need to leave. We've found this phenomenon to play out repeatedly in our business If clients come to a workshop, they meet. And at Psychotactics we don't have this thousand person, 150 session seminar. We have boutique workshops, which means you don't take notes; but instead, you work on your project and the projects of the group (yes, here comes the group again). And in doing so, we find that clients come back repeatedly not just for the workshops, but also for other products and services. They've connected with Renuka and me, that's for sure, but they've also connected with each other. Which is why we started having paid meet ups You noticed the term "paid", right? We tried having free meet ups, and they just fizzled and died because it's easy to look out the window, see the rain and climb back into paid. A paid meet up leads to commitment, and you get a 90-100% turnout. Anyway, the meet ups had the same effect. The more people met, the more they knew each other and the more they then interacted in 5000bc. The interesting bit is that they didn't just interact with others they'd met, but with the rest of the members in 5000bc. And as you'd expect, a phenomenally large number of those we've met in person are still members of 5000bc. Some have been members for ten years, some have been around for 15, while others are newer. It isn't to suggest that longtime members are people we've met with or interacted with on a live course. If you're looking for a magic trick, it's right in front of your eyes: it's the people. What should we do at Psychotactics to increase this interaction? What are we currently doing? Quite a few things. The first is the chocolate bar, the second are the e-mails, the third is the Taking Action forum, the fourth is the welcomes when you join—but instead of a list, let's find out how it all works. And yes, let's find out what else we can do because there's a real downside when a client leaves or doesn't participate. If you look way back to the tribe, you'll notice that every person in the tribe could bring knowledge to the fireplace. When that elder didn't participate, the group was poorer. Or if a participating elder died, that group's learning and interaction were greatly impoverished. Going alone sounds pretty cool, but it's terrible for the group, and it's crappy for the individual. We're not done yet. I'll be back to explain how we use and how we can use the people interaction for mutual benefit. Oh, and you know how it's frustrating when you don't have examples, lots and lots of examples, well, "don't you worry", there will be examples galore. Let's move to the next part, shall we? But before we do, let's take a little detour into what makes people happy. Robert Waldinger is the director of a project that should have been abandoned a few decades ago. He's the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which is possibly the longest study of adult life that's ever been done. Over the past 75 years, the study tracked the life of over 724 men, year after year, deeply digging into their homes, their lives, their health and one more thing. They were also asked how their life stories would turn out. A study like this is extremely rare, because funding tends to dry up, the researchers get bored or the people involved in the study die. Yet this study is still going and still has about 10% of the original participants still alive and well into their 90s. And what did they learn? The real happiness came from something extremely boring: good relationships. Yup, that was it. 80% of today's millennials, when surveyed, want to be rich and at least 50% want to be famous. Yet, the thing that people figure out over time, is seemingly mundane. It's that we crave relationships most of all. People who are socially connected to each other are physically healthier and live longer and happier lives. Secondly, the quality of those relationships matter. Toxic relationships don't count for much. And the third big lesson that they learned about relationships is that good relationships don't just protect our bodies, they protect our brains. It turns out that being in a securely attached relationship to another person in your is protective, that the people who are in relationships where they really feel they can count on the other person in times of need, those people's memories stay sharper longer. But what has all of this got to do with your business? It's the "bfoto": the blinding flash of the obvious. We all want stuff, don't we? We want to be rich and famous, but most of all, we want to feel wanted. All those phrases of "no one is an island" or "love me or hate me, but don't ignore me" comes into play. And this feeling of being wanted goes right to the very root of our happiness. UC Berkeley psychologist and author Dacher Keltner. When Pixar was doing research for the movie, Inside Out, they needed guidance from an expert on emotions and they turned to Dacher Keltner. Anyway, here's what Keltner said in an interview with Shane Parrish from Farnam Street.com. "The connection, you know, happiness, our sense that life is going pretty well, is strongly driven by three things in the vast scientific literature now. One is the positive emotions we've been talking about, like mirth and laughter and love and sympathy. Another is how you handle stress and negative emotion. The third is social connection". We are so focused on adding content, playing with technology and dancing with keywords that we forget to work on the most basic (and most wanted) human emotions of connectedness. Advertising and great salesletters are important to get the client to become part of your clientele or community, but it's what you do next that makes all the difference. Keeping clients is—at least to my mind—the most important part of a function of how you go about connecting them, getting them to talk to each other and help each other. And voilà we are still going to have some people that leave, but by and large, people want to stay. This concept applies to every job most of us have ever held Most of us get into a job for economic or prestigious reasons. Even so, even when the money or prestige is great, we feel like chumps and long to find another job if the company isn't great. We long for the people and the connections and to be treated with dignity and respect. This "bfoto" is something almost all of us have experienced if we've been in a job somewhere. And it applies just as profoundly in your business. But how do we go about creating this community and connectedness? Let's find out what we are doing at Psychotactics and maybe you can add to the list as well. it would be great if you added what you're doing, to the list as well. And why you're doing it. But first, let's check out what we've done so far and how it has helped. Next Step: Have you seen your customer back out of a deal at the very last minute?The Brain Audit is a complete system that enables you to understand what's going on inside the brain of your customer. It's a system that is based on a deep understanding of how our mind works.

The very moment you announce a waiting list, it seems like a nerve-wracking decision. Is it going to drive clients away? Or will it work? The odds are it will fail if you don't consider "segregation" and "creating attraction". This episode shows you exactly what those two terms mean when it comes to waiting lists. Let's roll on to the episode, shall we? Click here to read online: Why Waiting Lists Fail ======== Commitment Would you wait 14 years to join a Disney Club? Apparently so, because Club 33, in Disneyland has a 14-year waiting list. Originally intended as a place for Walt Disney to entertain investors, the club now has a nose-bleed $25,000 joining fee plus a recurring $10,000 a year membership fee. Oh, and you still have to pay your tab for the food and drink. But surely all this waiting is excessively nutty behaviour, isn't it? We wouldn't ever get obsessive about a waiting list, would we? And yet we do get on a waiting list all the time, though on a modest scale. You may not think of going to your hairdresser as being on a waiting list, but if you've made an appointment, that's just what it is. The reservation you made at the restaurant next week, that's also a waiting list. That flight in October, the hotel bookings—they're all waiting lists. Waiting lists are everywhere, but we don't quite seem to notice because they're part of our everyday lives. And when you book or put down your name, the commitment increases Or does it? If we look at the hotel you booked, there's a reason for that specific choice. The flight, the tennis match, the restaurant booking—they're all a form of commitment. Some of them you might need to pay for, in advance. Some of them, you pay for later, but the reason for being on that list is because you and I seek a level of satisfaction. However, we are more likely to show up, pay for, or join something if we're already on a list than if we're not on that list. Nonetheless, a waiting list by itself doesn't work. If all you do is slap on a form on your website, it's unlikely to get any attention. However, if you create the demand for it, the corresponding commitment goes up as well, because potential clients have both something to gain and to lose. If they get into Club 33, for instance, they have additional status, plus other goodies such as immediate fast passes, upgrades on Disney cruises and behind-the-scenes tours of Disneyland attractions. If your eyes glazed over the attraction—and the loss factor, in the case of Club 33—then clearly you're not going to get on that list even if you owned half of L.A. At this point we are probably clear, a factor of attraction is what we're going to need to get a commitment of any kind In the case of a famed club, restaurant or event, the attraction can be a foregone conclusion. In the case of your course, workshop or book launch, you need to spell out the detail of why the client should even bother getting on that list. However, you don't have to list everything that the client is likely to get. Clients are pretty smart and know a good deal when they see one, but can quickly get overwhelmed with dozens of reasons. Instead, picking one reason why someone should get on the list is extremely important. For instance, even with the home study versions, we expressly communicate that there are only 25 copies. When a to-be buyer realises the scarcity factor, they understand they can't get the product any other way and hence sign up. But what if you're a complete newbie? If you are, pay close attention to the previous paragraph. Even a completely unknown business can focus on one big idea that will convince a client to commit. Let's say you've just decided to sell a physical product like a water bottle. There's nothing fancy about water bottles, but let's say your bottle is designed to enable the person know for sure, how much water they've consumed in a day. That's a single point. It solves a problem, and the potential client is likely to be more eager to want to know when the product is out so they can buy it. Or let's say you have a camera—a video camera—that is likely to help you edit video as if you were operating a two or three camera set up. That one point is likely to get most people who shoot video to pay very close attention to your list. As you'd expect, it works just as well for a training session or a digital product. You'll need to pick ONE point from your product that's super-compelling. Let's say, for instance, I'm laughing a book on "talent" for example, or a book on how to "make nutritious Indian food, 10 minutes after you get home", I'd be harping on a single point. And that point alone without a ton of details about the book is likely to be enough to get you on a list. Once you're on a list, it doesn't mean you'll go through with the commitment Many reservations get cancelled and changed along the way. However, the greater the loss factor, the more likely the client will go through the entire process. Therefore, even if you're only able to create attraction at this point, you'd want to think about the downside as well. A person headed to a hard-to-reserve restaurant is more likely to clear all obstructions so that they can make it for dinner. A person that is keen to do a course will wake up at midnight just to make sure they sign up. It might sound a bit like science fiction to you right now, but remember that all businesses that have that kind of demand today, were once struggling just like everyone else. They systematically put the attraction/loss factor, increased the scarcity and then commitment followed soon after. In case you missed it: Listen to Part 1: 3 Elements That Create Waiting Lists that Work

A waiting list seems to be both a barrier and an enticement The problem with waiting lists is that they fail, and fail miserably if you don't get the elements right. So what are the elements that contribute to a really smart waiting list? Let's find out in this episode, shall we? Click to read online: 3 Elements That Create Waiting Lists that Work: Episode 183 ======== Why do most of us prefer Friday to Sunday? It's odd when you think about it, right? Friday is a working day (in most countries), and Sunday is a day of rest. Yet we wait with baited anticipation for Fridays. The reason is probably apparent to you by now. Friday clearly and consistently holds the promise of the weekend that is to follow. We all know what follows Sunday, don't we? Anticipation—that's one of the big reasons that you need to have a waiting list Anticipation creates an enormous amount of drama in our minds. If you have to wait for something, there's a pretty good chance you're going to value the product or service a lot more than if you hit some magic button and got an instant delivery. We create waiting lists for three core reasons: The first reason is the anticipation The second is to create a barrier And finally to get a commitment. Let's take a deeper dive, shall we? 1: Anticipation In 2010, some British ministers came up with an incredibly interesting, if slightly preposterous idea. If you were going to apply for British citizenship, you had to learn to queue. Phil Woolas, the immigration minister at the time was dead serious when he suggested that to-be citizens would need to learn to queue. He said: "The simple act of taking one's turn is one of the things that holds our country together. It is very important that newcomers take their place in queues whether it is for a bus or a cup of tea. It is central to the British sense of fair play, and it is also better for everyone. Huge resentment is caused when people push in." There you go—anticipation in a nutshell And you know something, the British are spot on when it comes to creating anticipation. We like stuff better when we have to wait. Tali Sharot, associate professor of cognitive neuroscience in the Department of Experimental Psychology at University College London gives a simple example of how anticipation works. Regardless of the outcome, the pure act of anticipation makes us happy The behavioural economist George Lowenstein asked students in his university to imagine getting a passionate kiss from a celebrity, any celebrity. Then he said, "How much are you willing to pay to get a kiss from a superstar if the kiss was delivered immediately, in three hours, in 24 hours, in three days, in one year, in 10 years? He found that the students were willing to pay the most not to get a kiss immediately, but to get a kiss in three days. They were willing to pay extra to wait. Now they weren't willing to wait a year or 10 years; no one wants an ageing celebrity. But three days seemed to be the optimum amount. So why is that? Well if you get the kiss now, it's over and done with. But if you get the kiss in three days, well that's three days of jittery anticipation, the thrill of the wait. The students wanted that time to imagine where is it going to happen, how is it going to happen. Anticipation made them happy. A waiting list is all about anticipation, isn't it? No matter whether you're about to sell a product, service or training, it would do us all a bit of good to create a waiting list. And waiting lists work for a simple reason: it creates a feeling of scarcity—even if you're not exactly well known in your field. Take the example of Joseph Pilates, for example. When Pilates started out his studio, he wasn't just an unknown; he was also an immigrant to the US with a German accent. That didn't exactly stop Pilates from creating a waiting list. He started his exercise regimen near a niche audience—dancers. Despite being brand new in the business, Pilates never agreed to see a client right away. The client was always put on a waiting list, a few days or a week or two after the initial contact. Waiting in that "queue" as it were, created anticipation for the client. When the day rolled along, they were eager to get started. In the case of a kiss, that anticipation needed to be relatively quick However, that's not always the case. A few years ago, I bought a cigar-shaped Nakaya pen from Japan. If you're into fountain pens, you can bow now, because the Nakaya is easily one of the most revered pens. Solar orange in colour, the nib is fashioned to your writing style, and yes, the nib is made from 22 karat gold. It comes with its own fancy box and a whole lot of razzmatazz justifying its price. And as you'd expect, you can't just walk in and buy a Nakaya. That would ruin everything, wouldn't it? The joy of owning a Nakaya is in telling this story. The story of how I was told I'd have to wait for at least nine months. Nine months turned to a year, and if I'm not mistaken, it took yet another six months to get the pen. By the time it showed up, I had almost given up on ever owning it. Which brings us to an important point of anticipation Some anticipation can be relatively quick; some months long. The main factor is to keep the flame alive while the client is waiting. Waiting for the Nakaya was partly interesting, partly a pain. I didn't get any updates on what was happening, and as a client, I had to follow up. That's not good practice, especially since the delivery was an unspecified date. Even if the delivery time is well into the future, it's a good idea to keep the client in at least a mild state of anticipation, or the whole experience can quickly turn to irritation. Pilates' system wasn't complex He created a list. Anyone of us can do that. Whether you use a notebook, appointment software or some form online, the first task is to create a list. That list alone creates the first level of anticipation. And believe me, it makes a big difference to how clients perceive your offering. Take for example the home study courses we have at Psychotactics One of the downsides of creating content is that there's this eagerness, almost a lust for creating new products. It's so much fun to create yet another course, yet another product, yet another service. And it's inevitable that as you produce new products, the older products—powerful as they are— seem to become very Cinderella-like. They don't get much attention because all you're doing is promoting the new and fancy program or workshop or app. Well, in 2016 I overdid things a bit. I rewrote the entire Article Writing Course so that it was now in Version 2.0. However, I like to do things "live", which meant that I rewrote all the notes, re-recorded all the audio, and moved around whole sections of the course. Stuff that was in week 8 moved to week 2 and let's just say it was like trying to refuel a plane while flying it. Anyway, that fried me a bit and I couldn't do any more courses that year Which is when Renuka and I sat down and decided to bring out the stuff that we'd already done. The uniqueness course, the copywriting course, and yes, since I wasn't going to conduct the Article Writing Course in 2017, that too went on the list of courses to be sold. We then created waiting lists. And just because we're weird, we kept the list down to a fixed number. Which meant we'd sell only 25 copies. As you can tell, the scarcity works quite well, and the sales of the product replaced me. Instead of me doing a course, just the combination of the waiting list, the anticipation and the scarcity created enough revenue so I could do something else instead of conducting a course. If you're just starting out, Pilates is an excellent beacon in the dark Yes, go and do some Pilates at a class, but also pay attention to how he created anticipation by making people queue in an imaginary line. And that's the first point to consider when designing a waiting list; the first element to put in place. Create the anticipation. However, a waiting list is an instant barrier. Is that a problem? Or a blessing? And can it blow up in our faces? Let's find out. 2: Barrier If you host a valuable seminar and charge a lot, will more people show up? Or is it better to have one free of cost? Back in March 2007, we had the chance to test the free option. We'd decided we wanted to give back to New Zealand because we got so much from this strange and lovely country. We decided we'd have free marketing events under the brand name "The Learning Rock". You could come to the event; there would be no up-sell; no charge and not even the Psychotactics logo anywhere in sight. In effect, we decided to spend over $1000 a year (and these were the costs of hiring the venue), without expecting anything in return. We had a room capacity of 40 people. Would enough participants turn up or would the room be half empty? The answer lay in the barrier that needed to be put in place. For one, the event was at 7:32 am. Not 7:33, not 7:34. The doors were fastened as though with superglue once we got to the start time. The attendees were put on a list, and if they showed up, they'd get a chance to be on the priority list. If on the other hand, they didn't show up they'd be taken off the priority list. All of these barriers should have put people from making the long drive into the city. Instead, the room was packed to the brim, every single time. Barriers play a significant role in creating a filtered waiting list It's not like there aren't waiting lists online, but having a barrier of sorts makes a big difference to the quality of the clients. It's easy to believe that a barrier isn't much use if you're selling something like products or digital products, but it matters. In our case, we don't sell products, but we do sell information products. When there's a barrier in place (and we insist on clients reading The Brain Audit), they tend to buy a home study product and finish it. This behaviour carries on to online courses like the Article Writing Course. The course is incredibly tough and should have a high dropout rate. Instead, the opposite scenario unfolds. Over 90% of the clients get right to the finish line and get the skill of writing. Having a barrier in place is one of the first things to consider when starting up a waiting list The size of the barrier doesn't matter. What matters is that there's some sort of barrier in place. You could get the client to read a few pages of a report. Or you could get them to fill in a detailed form. Or there could be a small fee—say $10—that creates a barrier. The waiting list itself is a barrier, but to make it, even more, wanted, add one more level, and you get a far better quality of clientele. However, easily the coolest reason to have a waiting list is, so you don't have to bug clients who are not interested in your product or service. Having a waiting list creates a nice opt-in and commitment factor. Next-Up: Listen to—Why Waiting Lists Fail.

How do you instantly grow your small business? How do you become "rich" overnight? These are the frustrations we have to deal with, almost every single day as we wade through the temptations of the internet. It almost seems like a lottery, doesn't it? But people win the lottery, don't they? And so we fancy our odds too. Yet, there's a hare vs tortoise race in play here and usually, it's the hare that seems to burn out. How can you enjoy the race and have a good life and yes, become an "overnight success?". Find out in this episode. Click here to read online here: How to Become An Overnight Success: Episode 182 ============ Winning the lottery is like flushing money down the toilet, right? Richard Lustig doesn't agree. Despite odds of 175 million to one, Lustig has won the lottery seven times, and claims he's won over a million dollars so far. When you hear the repeated success of Lustig, it's easy to miss the sub-text in his wins. The first point of the sub-text is that he's been playing the lottery since 1992—that's well over 25 years. Plus he has a strategy. He goes after the smaller prizes, like the $100,000 lotteries, completely avoiding the $40 million jackpots. Are you going after the $40 million jackpots in your business? You know what I mean, right? Let's say you've managed to make the break from a job to your own business. That move, wonderful as it is, hasn't brought a lot of relief because you still have to commute to and from meetings with clients. And now you're keen on hitting the jackpot. Well, what's the jackpot? You want to reduce or eliminate that commute completely, don't you? And while it would be ideal, that's not what a "gambling man" would do. A "gambling man" would reduce their odds of losing. Instead of five days of commuting, maybe you can whittle it down to four. Four may not sound like much until you get into the percentages—yup a 20% increase in home-time, isn't it? In the months to follow, reduce that by yet another day, and you have a 40% improvement over the start of the year. A similar sort of phenomenon plays out when it comes to earning revenue online Let's say you're earning twenty three dollars online. What next? Oh, that's easy. Most people would like to go from twenty three to two hundred thousand and twenty three. It sounds bizarre right now, as you're reading it. No one in their right mind is likely to achieve so much of a monetary gain, so quickly. Even so, it's a lot like playing the lottery, isn't it? You see others playing, they seem to be winning; surely you have the same odds too. Our world, your world is inundated with success stories Everyone is making more money than you, everyone is spending more time on vacation (yes, I'm guilty) and everyone seems to be winning the lottery, except for you. It's not like there's any shortage of avenues, either. Some make their fortune via podcasting; others on YouTube; the third through some SAAS (software as a solution) offering. We all have this multi-pronged attack of the different types of media that will make us our fame and fortune, and the fact that everyone else seems to be doing just fine. But a gambling man like Lustig may tell you a different story He's spent the past 25 years hacking away at the lottery. He's picked the smaller wins, because the odds are so much better. It's all about structural change, making sure that he gets ahead bit by bit. And to be fair, his gains are pretty average by a wage standard. By his own admission, he's won a little over a million dollars over twenty five years. That's a pretty modest $40,000 per year. You can easily beat those odds in your own business, but your goal must always be structural. I guess it's time for an example, right? When we bought our first house in New Zealand, it was priced at $230,000. I'd read a book about how to whittle down that mortgage in a few years (In New Zealand it pays to wipe out the mortgage quickly). Our expenses, barring educational courses, was about $3000 per month (and that included the mortgage). We set about aiming to turn that mortgage into a big fat zero. In the first five years, we bought three houses in Auckland, totalling well over a million dollars. In ten years, we paid off every last cent on those loans. Would anyone in their right sense try and pay those loans in three months? How about six months? Ten years seems pretty quick by any standards, but we learned what we had to do, and we went about it systematically. We applied the same rigour to our business In the year 2000, the business was just a website with a dozen articles. No one bought anything, hardly anyone read much of anything. We simply buckled down, went for dozens of meetings with clients. And out of those dozens, sometimes hundreds, we got ourselves our first client; a sofa store. The second client was a law firm. The third was a division of Quickbooks. We paid the mortgage, we budgeted our expenses and the only big blow out was education. I bought a ton of stuff online and we both read through them. We listened endlessly to workshops and marketing material (even the stuff which was tedious). It took a while for things to happen. The first international workshop was in 2004, but that was after we'd done a tonne of speaking sessions in little places all around New Zealand. By 2006, we had our first really big ticket item, the Protégé sessions where clients paid us a substantial sum. That's when we knew we were finally getting somewhere. Jim Collins is the author of "Good To Great", a book that has sold over 2 million copies In the book, Collins talks about the "Egg and Chicken". He says: If you look at an egg before it hatches, it looks like nothing's happened. Then the chicken jumps out—now we're the chickens—the chicken jumps out, and Fortune magazine comes running in or Fast Company comes running in and says, "Revolution at Egg! Transformation to chicken! Interview with CEO of Egg!" But if you ask what it looks like from the chicken's point of view—from the chicken's point of view there was a lot going on inside the egg before this one step happened that you never know about that led up to that process. We know what leads up to that chicken moment It's structural change, bit by bit. Whether you're aiming to win the lottery, or start up a business, your job is to go about the steps systematically. — Will you get twenty e-mails telling you that you could become a millionaire overnight? Sure you will. —Will there be a pull to do this, that and the other all at once? Sure there will. But eventually, it's the gentle progress that counts. Progress like commuting just four days, instead of five; getting one strategic alliance per month; taking on one medium, e.g. podcasting, and working it day after day for the next few months, weeks, and yes, years. All those stories about how you can double and treble your income, they're probably true. And they probably aren't at odds of 175 million to one. However, the structural way is better. With tiny changes, you can move ahead. You can slowly but surely get your commute down to zero; your bank balance to a healthy state and pay off the mortgages in style. If you want to become an overnight success, you'll need to slow down a bit and work the structure. The odds are a lot better, I can assure you. Special Bonus: The Brain Alchemy Masterclass give you the structure that you need to build your business upon. It gives you the tactics and strategy that will form the very core of your business, no matter whether you're just starting up, or have been in business 'forever.' We've always recommended that clients start off with this workshop because it whizzes your strategy around. Here is the link to get this $2500, product free: The Brain Alchemy MasterClass—How To Structure Your Business.

Is negotiation a skill? How do you win when your back is against the wall? When negotiating will aggression help or should you use something else, like questions? Questions play a role, but nothing does the job quite like calibrated questions. In this second part of negotiation strategy we find out exactly the questions you need to ask to get the information you need to get your negotiation to work out stunningly well. You can read the article online here: https://www.psychotactics.com/negotiation-battle/ ---------------- The three negotiation concepts we'll cover are 1) Going too fast—and why you need to slow down and listen. 2) The power of labelling—and why it validates emotions. 3) Calibrated questions—a way to completely remove the attack mode and get the opposition to give you vital information. If you're a cartoonist and want a job as a copywriter, how do you get that job? This was my dilemma around the age of 20. I'd finished university, and my dream was to become the top copywriter in the city I lived in—which was Mumbai, at the time. There was this peculiar problem, of course: I didn't know much about copywriting. To smoothen my entry into the world of advertising, I did a class, which loosely promised a job in an ad agency, but it was just a hot-air promise. No one got a job, or not at least one with the big agencies. And I was impatient. I can't remember the details, but there I was sitting in front of the creative director who was leafing through my cartoons. She looked up and said: "You know there's a difference between cartoons and copywriting, right? I agreed, but it wasn't a time to be coy. As most negotiators will tell you, there's a way out of any negotiation, if you know what to ask. When FBI and other international negotiators get on a scene, the situation is already way out of control. Their job is to somehow, get a nutter to give up hostages; and to surrender. In short, their job is simply to win in a situation where winning seems implausible or even impossible. Which is why Chris Voss talks about calibrated questions Calibrated questions are easy to dismiss as everyday open-ended questions, but they're pretty precise in how they get the discussion moving forward. They're designed first to acknowledge the other side (that's always super-important). Once that acknowledgement is achieved, calibrated questions get you to introduce ideas and requests that would generally seem pushy. It edges you forward. Instead of getting all riled up, a question that's calibrated swings the problem across to the other person. In the book, "Never Split the Difference", the author gives a range of questions you can choose from However, most of the questions he recommends you work with, are simply "HOW" and "WHAT" questions. Quite by chance, this is approximately what I did back at that early meeting with the creative director. I asked her: What can I do to be a part of this agency? How about I work for free for a month and then you can decide if you want to pay me, or I can decide if this agency is a good fit? The questions seem pretty mundane, and even silly when you think about them, but they get outstanding results. Voss insists that calibrated questions have the power to educate your counterpart. It brings the problem to the fore and completely defused the conflict. Calibrated questions aren't random at all. Once you have a conversation going, or if you've decided how that conversation should move, you design what and how questions that make the other person think it's their idea. Of course, when I was sitting in front of my potential boss, I had no idea I was asking intelligent, let alone calibrated questions, but they were "how" and "what" questions and I was hired. Without pay for a month, as you'd expect, but I had a job in Leo Burnett, one of the largest agencies in the world. The same kind of questions apply to most negotiations because they get the other side to explain their situation You start with "what" and "how" and completely avoid the "why". Why is very confrontational so barring rare situations (which Voss describes in the book) you stick closely to "what" and "how" questions. Which is what I did when we were negotiating the fence issue earlier this week. • What about this is important to you? • How can I help to make this better for you? • How would you like me to proceed? • How can we solve this problem? • What are we trying to achieve here? • How can we look at this in a completely different light? What if we could put in a hedge instead of a fence? Notice the tenor of those questions? They're all about the other person and their agenda. And you almost appear subservient. You're not even asking "what can "WE" do to make this better. You're asking what can "I" do? And only once you've moved along do we get to "we" solving the problem. Or "we" trying to achieve a goal. The scene outside my dining area was complicated. The builder didn't want to leave out the space that was owed to his client. The client didn't want the area to become a problem when she developed and sold the property. In short, there wasn't even one person to deal with, but a range of people, some of whom weren't even on the scene until they bought the property somewhere down the line. Even so, being calm and working through the problem got the builder to progress from, "We are sorry, but there's no way out," to pitching in with a whole bunch of very workable solutions. The trees at the far end weren't going to be touched. The apple and the pear espaliers (which grow on the fence) will be removed in the dormant winter season in June. Even the big tree that's in the way will have a skirting around so that it doesn't have to be cut down. In short, the builder got precisely what he wanted, including every inch that was on his client's property, and we got our trees, our fence and yes, there will be some minor inconvenience, but what a good solution, wouldn't you say? The calibrated questions led the way at all times As we went through the questions, he showed me his plans, explained his situation, worked with me. And though we went for the win, and not the win-win, both of us ended up getting whatever we wanted and without any fuss or aggression. The key to your success is to make sure you stay calm at all times and ask the questions. However, one question did make me a bit queasy. That question was "how am I supposed to do that? "How am I supposed to do that?" seems anything but an open-ended question. It seems like someone who has the upper hand would simply snap back and say: I don't know. You figure it out. However, that's not what happens. Once I went through the above questions, I blurted out the last question too. And I was amazed at the response. Instead of telling me to go take a hike, the entire set up of questions before this one caused the builder to be even more helpful than before. In the end, we shook hands on a decision that we both loved and went our merry ways! The next time you're in a negotiation, use just three of them and see them work like magic, though I'd add the fourth one about creativity too. It helps the other side come up with a slightly different point of view, especially if you give an example. However, here are the three questions and the fourth that I added to the mix. • What about this is important to you? • How can I help to make this better for you? • How would you like me to proceed? • How can we look at this in a completely different light? What if we could put in an "x" instead of "y"? What? How? And no WHY. And on that happy note, let's go to the summary. But here's something even more interesting. "Never Split the Difference" is almost like a layer over The Brain Audit. It handles the conversion issue in almost an identical way. Let's find out how these two books almost match each other, shall we? Negotiation Summary 1) Going too fast—and why you need to slow down and listen. 2) The power of labelling—and why it validates emotions. 3) Calibrated questions—a way to completely remove the attack mode and get the opposition to give you vital information. With The Brain Audit, you're likely to be using it more in written material, whereas negotiations tend to swing to words and situations. I think that's the core difference between these books (from a bird's eye view). However, the book had more than I could chew off, at least after going through it twice. So I worked out three core aspects: 1) Labelling. I moved very quickly to labelling the situation. 2) Calibrated questions: I used only three and a half: important, better, proceed (and the half was: how am I supposed to do that?). 3) Information gathering with two parties: I listened and made mental notes (and Renuka came along). The listening with two parties (and Renuka didn't say a word) meant she picked up stuff that I didn't hear at all. And she also was able to see things from her perspective, because I was too focused on working with the other person. The match with The Brain Audit. Often, when you read or listen to a book, the information either seems old or new. Old, as in, "I already know this stuff, so it's slightly boring, or at least not very groundbreaking". Or "new" in the sense that you're learning nuances, and you have to pay close attention to what's being said. For instance, there's a tiny nuance in the calibrated questions: e.g. How can "I" make this better for you? which moves to "how can "we" solve the problem? The nuance is so tiny it's easy to miss unless you pay close attention, or someone points it out. Either way, whether you consider the information to be old or new, you're always working out how to implement the information in your own life, your own chat with a client, or when you have to negotiate something like a lease or rent. Which is why, when I listened to this book for the first time, I missed a lot of the information. Then, the whole fence-dispute started up and I was instantly focused on trying to speed up the learning and implementation. I downloaded the Kindle version of the book and marked it up (I have special software for the iPad, which I'll cover in a future series). Even though the negotiations are mostly over, I'm listening to it once more. Even so, I didn't realise how much this book fit with The Brain Audit, until I was being interviewed for a podcast. During the podcast, me being me, I stopped talking about The Brain Audit and went on to talk about "Never Split the Difference", instead. And I realised something pretty cool. The books are almost identical from a bird's point of view. Let's see what Chris Voss' book really says: • Listen to the person • Ask them calibrated questions • Mirror what they are saying • Slow down and listen • Label their emotions What do you find in The Brain Audit? • Listen to the client (and fix an interview) • Ask them calibrated questions (the questions in the target profile interview) • Mirror what they're saying by writing down their exact words on your sales page • Slow down and listen (don't talk, just ask questions in the interview) • Label their emotions. How does it make them feel? Do they feel like hostages, in a way? Why? The Brain Audit, has an almost identical layer as FBI procedure, it seems You have the target profile; you ask them their problems, you listen carefully to their version of the solution. You write it down on your sales page. Mirroring, slowing down, listening all the time. You have now finished the first section of the book, which gets the attention of the client. Then you move to the second part of The Brain Audit, where you're reducing risk. In "Never Split the Difference", Voss talks about "the objections" and how you need to destroy those objections, thus building trust. Objections equal risk and removing them becomes a crucial part of dealing with people who are not seeing things your way. You may not see the similarity between a kidnapper and a client, but they're both in objection-land and their objections need to be reduced or completely defused if you are to reach a solution. I haven't figured out how testimonials or case studies figure when dealing with terrorists or bank robbers, but they do reduce risk for a client. As I listen to the book for the second time, I'll keep my ears peeled. Finally, you have risk-reversal, which everyone wants. How are you reducing the client's risk? What guarantee will the hostage takers have when they walk out that door? Will the building project go through on time, or will there be a stall because of the fence? The risk-reversal needs to be in place for progress to do its thing. And finally, uniqueness: why you? Why not the other negotiator? Why should the client buy from you, and not from your competition? The similarities hit me like a thunderclap I simply hadn't seen the two overlap in so many ways. I was excited to be on the call, and even more excited to get off the call and listen to the audio as I went for my walk every morning. And that's just what I'm going to do today and tomorrow and for the week to come. And it's what I'd suggest you do too. Listen and read both books. They're really cool, but more than anything they're result-oriented. They get you and your client to a common goal. Negotiation is about information. So is writing sales pages. How cool is that? Special Bonus: The Brain Audit: Why Clients Buy And Why They Don't Click here to get an excerpt of The Brain Audit.