Psychotactics

The cartoons before the encouragement (notice, no colour). And then, along came an audience.

I was lousy at marketing.
Well, let’s put it this way: I was (and still am) an outstanding cartoonist.
And marketing was nowhere close to being my forte.
I’d write, but I’d agonise over it.
The only thing that kept me going was the audience.

Audiences are needed…and not just for those who are struggling
This is why writers, singers, speakers need an audience. It doesn’t reflect on their ability to speak, write or draw. But in their ability to be appreciated.

The greatest speaker in the world becomes a bit of a washout if there are three people in an auditorium that seats five hundred. It saps your energy.

However, if those three people happened to be the only ones the speaker was expecting, then he/she will turn out a world-class experience. Which is why if you’re starting up any venture, be it a blog or a website, or a newsletter or even a painting, I would get at least two-three people to visit (and bug you) so that you get and stay motivated.

The biggest issue is the appreciation, and not the ability to write, draw, speak.
Being able to be very good at something, is a nice-to-have, but most writers, speakers, etc start out being very, very average. In some of my early speeches, I had to take a ten-minute break because I forgot what I was going to say. Early articles used to take me two days or more to write, and I’d struggle. But it was the audience (and believe me, back then they were tiny audiences) that kept me going.

Tiger Woods had an audience of two (his father and mother).
It was not his so-called talent that mattered. He didn’t start out as the world’s best golfer. But without the audience, he probably would never have gotten there at all.

Get an audience, no matter how minuscule.
Your so-called talent will come with practice.
But if you don’t have an audience, you’ll probably never get off the ground.

Footnote: When I started this blog, I started drawing cartoons in black and white. And then Ankesh Kothari bugged me to change to colour. I resisted at first. But then I moved to colour. And the improvement in my colouring techniques have improved dramatically. Without the audience, I may have never made the move. So there you go: A real live example.

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As a journalist, I might reject your PR piece for lots of reasons. Here are just a few. Avoid as many as you can, and you’re more likely to have positive results.

1) It’s irrelevant to what I do or what I’m working on. If I cover health topics exclusively, don’t send me a release about your B2B software. (you’d be amazed how many times I still get random people sending me weird releases that make no sense.)

2) The release is so poorly written, I can’t find the benefit to my reader. (Hint: use the Brain Audit to write all you releases, and writers will LOVE you!) Just like with any other headline, you have precious few seconds to capture the reader’s attention. So, start with the problem, add in a solution and a target audience…you know the drill.

3) I’m just too busy. If I put a call out for experts, often I’ll get inundated with too many great people to interview. I have to cut somewhere. And no, I won’t always have time to write a nice little email saying “sorry, I can’t use you this time.” I have a deadline to meet. Sorry if I hurt your feelings. Get over it.

4) You simply don’t have the credentials that others do. If I’m working on a heavy research piece about cancer and weight loss, I’m not going to use an info-marketer as my source. Sorry, I’m going to pick the best known doctor I can find.  If you’re in an industry where credentials count–either get some credentials, or shoot for publications lower down on the prestige ladder first.

5) The release is too long. You want it to be one page. Period.  Give me only what I need to pick up the phone and call you. Use your best stuff, your biggest benefits—but don’t go overboard with the exclamation points (In fact, just don’t use them. Really.)

6) I never saw it. Email is fast, easy and free. And I get a ton of it every day. What are the chances that your release gets buried in my inbox? Pretty good. If you can possibly get a physical address, mail the release. You’re looking at a possible gold mine in free publicity. Isn’t that worth 42 measly cents? No, they don’t print my mailing address in the magazine. Get creative. Call up the magazine and ask what address you should send a press release. If you know I’m a freelancer, go to my website and see if there are any clues there. Email if you have to, but postal mail is better.

7) You annoy me. Sometimes there’s no other way to explain it–something isn’t quite right about the release, or you send me releases all the time, or I’m having a bad day….

PR is a tricky business, that’s why the good agents cost so much money. But as we’ve already mentioned, there are ways to get the publicity without going through the major publications.

Here’s a way to completely bypass journalists
Send your releases to, or make friends with the influential bloggers and podcasters in your area of expertise. Make comments on their blogs. Get to the point where they’ll recognize your name. Then send them a release or make a casual reference to you appearing on their show. Often your target market will be more likely to read a certain high powered blog than the newspaper.

Better yet, start your OWN podcast. It’s easy, gives you access to lots of great experts, and gives you expert status at the same time. Okay, that’s a whole ‘nother article.

(More articles by Julie Anne Eason at  www.5000bc.com: Note: 5000bc is a paid membership site)
How the Publicity System Works: Part 1/4
http://www.5000bc.com/content/view/3828/1/

How To Make Journalists Fall In Love With You: Part 2/4
http://www.5000bc.com/content/view/3829/1/

Working Backwards: How to Get Journalists to Come to You: Part 3/4
http://www.5000bc.com/content/view/3830/1/

Why a Mention in Retail News Monthly is Better Than Time Magazine: Part 4/4
http://www.5000bc.com/content/view/3831/1/

Real live discussions about PR in the Cave
http://www.5000bc.com/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,90/topic,4449.0

************************************************************************

Julie Anne Eason was a freelance journalist for over a decade before turning to copywriting and marketing work. She also sat across the desk as an editor for a short time. Her final words of advice are “PR is tough. Keep trying and don’t take anything personally.” You can find her at http://JulieAnneEason.com or on Twitter as @mainecopywrtr

How do you get attention, and keep that attention?
Then how do you get across a cheeky message, while at the same time revealing your personality?

Air New Zealand seems to do it well, even though you may not be paying attention to onboard safety instructions for the squillionth time.

What do you think?
What message did you get from this video?

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You may think your brain is all hardwired. And that you’re supremely suited for learning.
But in fact, your brain is incredibly at the mercy of the sound environment. And the reason for being at the mercy of sound is because most of our early references as children are purely based on sound. This early period is known as the ‘critical learning period’.

In this ‘critical learning period’ when the brain hears a set of sounds, it sets up a language processor
What this means is that the brain is creating a language out of seemingly meaningless sounds. To a child, the words ‘how are you?’ are quite the same as ‘bookie boo?’ At first the sounds don’t make any sense whatsoever. But over time, the brain learns to segregate the sounds, as it stores more data in the language processor.

This language processing behaviour can easily be taken over by ‘evil forces’.
You could confuse a brain with disturbing sounds—like the sound of a noisy fan. Or the thundering sound of planes taking off. Or even worse, the sound of meaningless noise being thrown at the child.

Most of us are like children when we’re learning a new skill
Even as adult we’re at the mercy of sound. When we’re learning a skill (our critical learning period), if we are encouraged by the teacher, we start to learn a lot better. When on the other hand we hear disturbing sounds the ability to learn goes down. So if the teacher discourages you, or tells you that you can’t really move ahead because you’re not ‘talented’, you start to believe in the sounds. Your critical learning period is filled with noise.

Your brain literally sets the processor into action, and your learning in that specific task becomes slower—often retarded. It feels as if you’re stuck in room with a noisy fan. Nothing seems to make sense.  And this is where most folks give up learning.

So why don’t two year olds give up when faced with learning as many as five languages simultaneously?
Two year old kids don’t give up because they are almost always encouraged to speak; to learn; to walk; to dance; to draw. While they are no longer solely dependent on sound alone, encouragement plays a critical role in their development. Plus they can’t fathom what’s important or necessary at that age. So they learn pretty much everything that’s thrown at them. And sound plays an incredibly important role in the process of getting better at a skill.

Which is why trainers, consultants and teachers need to be careful with the sounds they make…
The right sound of encouragement doesn’t just work on a two-year old kid. It works just as well on a seventy-year old man or woman. And the reason I’m telling you this, is because I used to only use the power of critique. I’d often tell people what was wrong with their website or with their marketing strategy. Then one day I learned the power of sound. Of how to critique as well as praise.

And the very same clients improved in leaps and bounds.
And it all boiled down to sound.

You may believe talent matters. Suspend that belief.
You may believe some people are smarter than others. Suspend that belief, if only for a while.
Instead use the power of sound. Because as you use the sound of encouragement, it creates that language processor in the brain.

Your job is not to judge the client/student/customer. Your job is to create a language processor of achievement in their brains.  And help them get through the ‘critical learning period’ with a little help here, a little nudge there.

Then watch as a student learns quickly. And confidently!

P.S. This concept of sound is just as valid for you when you’re learning a new skill. The more you talk yourself into believing in talent and luck, the less talented and lucky you’ll be. Get yourself a good teacher. One who recognises the value of sound and language processing

 

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I’ve got news for you. Most people never read your sales page as completely as you’d like them to do so. And the reason they don’t read it, is because there’s too much too read, right?

Wrong!

They don’t read it because they’re doing what all humans do all of the time.
We scan the horizon.
 When we walk into a room, we scan.
 When we walk out of the subway, we scan.
 Even when we’re in an ice-cream parlour and we know the exact flavour we want—we still scan.

So why would you expect a reader not to scan when they’re on your sales page? 

Of course what the reader sees on your sales page is a waterfall of text
.

And one of the ways for you to get the reader to slow down is to use sub-heads.
Because sub-heads are often in a different colour and different size and font, the reader is able to jump from sub-head to sub-head. But sub-heads are not always effective, because sub-heads are often sequential. This means the writer (that’s you) can’t just throw a sub-head just about any where, but have to place it in a logical progression of text.

 And readers do slow down at sub-heads.

They read a bit of the sub-head, the text, and then it’s scanning time again.
However, that scanning is dangerous for you as a seller
. You may have something really important to say. And you say it. But you’ve stated that important fact somewhere in the middle of your text. And the reader/prospect who’s mostly scanning sub-heads jumped right over your important information and zoomed right past those crucial facts and figures.

And this scanning behaviour is very dangerous for sales, because it creates an incomplete picture in the reader’s brain.
An incomplete picture in turn leads to a prospect putting off a purchase.

 And while losing one sale is bad enough, you’re probably losing a lot more than just one. It’s common for a customer to buy one product/service and come back to buy a larger quantity or variety or products/services. So (gulp) you’re losing a lot of sales because of this nasty human habit of scanning.

So the way around is to harness another one of our nasty habits.
The habit of detecting change. 
So if you’re scanning the horizon and a blue tweeting bird pops in, you notice it right away. That blue tweeting bird is the equivalent of a graphic. A graphic puts instant brakes on the reader. The reader stops to examine the graphic. Suddenly you’ve slowed down the scanning, and they’re actually reading.

So yeah, let’s chuck a whole lot of graphics on the sales page, right?
Ha, ha, you know the answer already, don’t you?
 Put in stock graphics like ‘globes’ or ‘two people in a suit shaking hands’ or some clip-art kind of graphic, and the reader will just sail right past your graphic. But put in a graphic that explains the concept, or a graphic that give information of your product and services, and you’ve got a winner.

 But where do you find examples of such graphics on sales pages?

It depends what kind of sales pages you’re looking at, of course.
Some sales pages are as many as 15-20 pages long, but don’t seem so long because of the graphics (see an example at:   http://www.psychotactics.com/brainaudit). Some pages are short, but built in layers so that you get locked into a section ( http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/#faces ).

And you’ll find you’re scanning—even with the pictures. But notice how the pictures are slowing you down.

You can’t help it. You want to scan.
But the graphics are giving you critical information. And at the same time causing you to want to buy (yes, well-presented information has that kind of effect).  And best of all, graphics don’t always need to be sequential.

They can be placed any where on the page, as long as they are interesting and have some sort of description in the form of a caption.

Don’t take my word for it.
Test it for yourself.
 Use a page with well-designed graphics vs. one without well-designed graphics.
 And you’ll see the results for yourself. 

And yes, crappy graphics don’t count!
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I got a note today from a client who said that she wanted to buy our product, but that certain things on the website made her unsure.

So to put this in perspective, she was looking at our website at 5000bc (which is a membership site). And she said:
1) I found a spelling error on your front page.
2) The screen shot of the forum is from 2007. That doesn’t tell me how active the forum is right now.

Now normally you’d look at your stats in Google Analytics and see a bounce rate. Customer enters. Customer leaves. And you’d think, ooh, my keywords are not working or my CPV (cost per visitor) or RPV (revenue per visitor) sucks. And all that yada, yada will circulate in your brain for no reason.

But you can’t see the reason why the customer is shying away from the purchase, can you?
She didn’t have a problem with the product.
She had the money to buy the product.
She was on the tipping point and something stopped her.

It was the tiny little glitches that Google Analytics can never catch.
And these little glitches are called ‘objections.’ Yes you’ll roll your eyes, because it’s more than likely that you know all about ‘objections’.
But there’s a massive difference between knowing and doing (For example, someone who’s fussy about grammar may notice that in the previous lines I put the period before the quotation mark. And then shortly after I put it after the quotation mark).

These are objections. And objections are distractions.
And distractions do their job: They distract.

There are things on your site that you clients see that distract them from buying.
And there are things on your site that clients ‘don’t see’ that distract them from buying.

And while you can depend on any analytics software for several issues, all the software is doing is giving you is data. It’s not telling you what’s going on in the head of the client. It’s not telling you why the client won’t buy.

Ugh comes to mind, doesn’t it?
Ugh: As in, yes you and I are probably measuring correctly what’s happening from an analytics point of view, but ignoring the issues. And the issues are the distractions and objections.

So what’s a business to do?
There a few things you can do, actually.

1) Get instant feedback using the ‘Bug’.
2) Get recurring feedback using a prospective client.
3) Get ongoing feedback using a client who’s just signed up.

1) Get instant feedback using the ‘Bug’
On our website at www.psychotactics.com you’ll find a graphic of a ‘bug’ on every page. And a link with a little note. The note gives an incentive to the person sending us the ‘bug’. That incentive is a $50 voucher (for the best ‘bug’ of the month). Now be aware. Not every ‘bug’ gets the $50 credit voucher. Just the best ‘bug’ (and yes, our decision is final). But without exception, everyone gets some sort of goodies from us, just for having sent in a ‘bug.’

I then put the ‘bug’ in my list of improvements. I then fix the glitch. And then I report back to the person that I’ve fixed the glitch. You think it’s tedious work? I don’t think so. A customer who finds a glitch and reports it, wants you to fix it. But when you go beyond that level and actually reward them and then fix it, and report back, you’re encouraging them to send in more bugs. And you’re also forging a bond. Now  most folks would rather not do so much work. Those folks also lose customers, and spend thousands on fancy consultants, because they won’t do what’s necessary.

2) Get recurring feedback using prospective clients
This task is simple. Get prospective clients to take a look at your sales pages. These prospective clients needn’t be new clients. They can be existing clients. So for instance, when I wrote the sales page for the ‘Brain Audit Version 3.2 Special offer’, I didn’t need to go out and get new clients. I just got clients who hadn’t bought that product before. Even as I was doing the ‘Brain Audit Special’ for this week (and this is for new clients), I got feedback. Some clients pointed out grammar errors. Some pointed out confusing elements. Some pointed out other issues. We fixed them, and I’m writing this as the orders literally come pouring through in my inbox. I can categorically tell you that if those issues hadn’t been sorted out before I made the special offer, there would be a stream of complaints coming through, and far fewer sales.

So yes, you don’t always need brand new customers to look at your sales page. When a new product is being launched, your existing clients haven’t seen the offer, and it’s easy to let them have a look and give their feedback. But of course, it also helps to have just prospects looking at the page. With the ‘bug’ system, you’ll get feedback through the year, but it also helps to have prospects take a look every six months or so.

You don’t need an army of prospective clients. Just 3-4 of them will be fine. And doing this task just twice a year will show you all the glitches that cause your customer not to buy.

And this takes us to the third segment…

3) Get ongoing feedback using a client who’s just signed up.
When a client just buys a product or service, they’re in a unique position to give you feedback because they’re no longer just prospective. They’ve actually gone through the process and paid for the product/service. They can tell you where they were stuck, where they slowed down. And where they almost backed away.

It’s easy enough to do this feedback with new clients. All you have to do is send them an autoresponder a day or two after their purchase. Or give them a call. I engage some of them on Facebook, or Twitter. Or Skype. Or whatever.

So yeah, no one’s telling you not to use Google Analytics or any other tracking device.
Just don’t expect the software to tell you what’s causing the customer to be distracted or to slow down. That glitch has to be fixed in real time, with real customers and real devices like the ‘bug.’  It’s only then that your sales will really start to kaboom!

Footnote: The client who pointed out the glitches went on to become a customer. And now we’re talking on Skype about her sign up process and how to make things even better. So yeah the tweaks never end And yes, if you want to see that page which got fixed (or if you want to take advantage of the Brain Audit Special then you’ll need to go here).

If you’ve been wondering whether or not to purchase the Brain Audit then here’s the perfect moment.
And it’s perfect because you get the brand new Brain Audit Ver 3.2

Two years in the making…
This book has been two years in the making, and now it’s finally out! And you not only get the book, but also the complete audio book in a format that will really excite you (even if you’re not a big fan of audio).

When you buy the Brain Audit on the 16th, 17th, 18th or 19th June 2009, you’ll also get a bonus set of Goodies on ‘How To Create Headlines: Part 1 + Part 2 worth $158.The Headline Report isn’t some hastily put together document. Instead it gives you an instant understanding of how to put together headlines. It explains WHY headlines work, and shows you various applications which you may never have considered…

The book has 99 cartoons and descriptive text. And yes accompanied by professionally recorded audio as well. 

Get the Brain Audit Ver 3.2 (Audio + Text + Goodies worth $158)

*If you’ve wondered why customers back away at the last minute, both online and offline, you’ll find the specific answers on the page itself.
*If you have a website or intend to sell something off your website, you’ll avoid all of these mistakes, that if not fixed, will drive away customers.

The link  http://www.psychotactics.com/brainaudit19june

Judge for yourself. I think you’ll be really pleased with what you see.

Yup, that’s an old cartoon but it was 70% relevant so I put it it in without any change

Have you ever noticed a strange thing when you get off the highway onto an off ramp or side road?
On the highway you’re doing about 100 km an hour, and the speed limit on the side road says 60 km an hour. You hit the brakes, and think you may have slowed down to 60 kph. Yet, you’re still doing 80 kph. Horrors! You were sure you’d slowed down enough and yet you haven’t.

You’re experiencing pace vs. potential.
If you were driving at 60 kph before you hit the off ramp, you’d do 60 kph quite easily. It’s because you were oh-so-fast, that you ended doing an 80. But how the heck are you going to ever do an 80 in your life, if you don’t hit 100? Because when you’re on 100, even your hit-the-brake speed is a good 80.

People hate to be pushed
They want to go at their own pace. They believe they know what’s good for them. Yet your life is like a car. You don’t know your potential till you really hit the accelerator. You don’t know how far you can go unless you hit feel the tires steaming up.

Look around you. The little ol’ lady in the next lane is still getting to her destination, but she’ll get there whenever. At her own pace. Pace is great. But potential, ah…now that’s when you really know the stuff you’re made of.

Which is why Tiger Woods has a coach
Which is why Tiger is the best golfer in the world. Because his coach knows the pace of Tiger. But the coach pushes Tiger to his potential.

But you don’t need a full time coach
You don’t need constant hand-holding. That’s not what a coaching is about. You may decide, for instance, that you want to improve your ability to do more persuasive presentations. Or maybe you want to write more powerful articles in half the time. In these scenarios, you do a course, but not just any course, but one that gets you to your potential.

In our article writing courses for instance, we see dramatic improvement in under two weeks. Both in terms of speed and quality of work. Clients who’ve never written more than one article  a month (if at all) write 14 articles in two weeks. And end up with a bank of 60 articles at the end of the course. And they do this without breaking too much of a sweat.

But would they do it alone?
No they wouldn’t. In most cases they need the structure. They need the guidance. They need the encouragement. And they need to know what they’re doing right and what they can fix. And yet they also need someone that will make sure they don’t fall off the rails. It’s all of these factors and a bit more that leads to potential.

The difference between pace and potential isn’t always a big gap.
But once you close the gap, you’ll be moving at an incredible speed. You’ll be doing things that in a  fifth of the time, and doing it better than ever before. It will make a world of a difference in both your business as well as your personal life.

Summary:
1. Pace is good. But pace is you. And goodness gracious, you don’t really know yourself as well as you think you do.
2. Potential is when you hit the accelerator. When you find what is really possible to achieve. Once you know what you can achieve you’re breaking the speed limit.
3. Tiger is naturally talented. Yeah right! So are a squillion other golfers. The difference between Tiger and the others is Tiger doesn’t keep to the pace of the others. He keeps stretching his own potential. You should too.

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If someone says pass the ‘cheese’, what are they saying?
They’re saying: Pass the cheese, right? Except that’s not the way some kids hear it.

They hear pass the grease. Or pass the peas. Or pass the fees.
And in many cases these kids don’t even hear a word in English. Or Japanese. Or French. All they hear is a mushy sound.

And since all early development is sound based, these kids get off to a lousy start.
While all the kids around them are called smart, and intelligent, these kids are called dumb and slow. And amazingly, it has little to do with brain processing and a heck of a lot to do with hearing.

In his studies, eminent scientist Michael Merzenich proved time and time again, that if you could improve the sound for these kids, you could see a dramatic change in their learning.

And it all starts with the critical period of learning
This is when the brain is setting up basic processing machinery. And it doesn’t take learning per se, to drive the initial differentiation of the machinery of the brain.

All it takes, for example in the sound domain, is exposure to sound. And the brain is at the mercy of the sound environment. So for example you could rear an animal in an environment in which there is meaningless sound. And what you find is that the animal’s brain sets up the sound as kinda important. The sound doesn’t have to be valuable to the animal. And the brain quickly sets up a processor that’s specialised to listen in to those sounds.

When the sounds are useful, they create a language processor in our brain.
When they’re not they create defective processing. And this defective processing leads to a bit of ‘defective hearing’.

But what about normal kids? What’s wrong with their hearing?
There’s a little girl who lives not far away from my house. One day, when I was visiting, she said: “I have bad handwriting.”

I was stunned. Kids barely learn to write at the age of four and five. How come a four year old knew that her handwriting was bad?
And how could she compare good with bad when she’s barely able to work out the letters herself?

The answer lies in the hearing, doesn’t it?
Her mother has been telling her that she’s got bad handwriting.

Her mother then reinforces that myth by pointing out that the kid’s grandparents both have bad handwriting.
And so purely by sound, the kid’s handwriting worsens. The more the sound of ‘you have bad handwriting’ enters her ears, the more her brain processes the information as true.

Most kids aren’t slow. They have a hearing problem. Sometimes the hearing problem can be fixed by removing the fluid that’s impeding sound waves from correctly registering on the brain. Some times the problem can be fixed far more quickly by just getting the parents to stop talking nonsense.

The problem doesn’t stop at kids
Even though adult brains are extremely plastic and can learn quite easily, what I’ve found is that when learning a new skill, adult brains go through a ‘critical period’. In this critical period their brain either hears sounds that create a language processor for learning that particular skill, or it’s confused with the random or negative sounds so that the language processor simply recognises noise.

What this boils down to is the obvious conclusion
Talent is but a language. Your brain is a language processing unit. If the brain hears noise, or has obstructions that prevent it from hearing the right words or structure, it will not be able to develop that talent.

This becomes even more critical when you’re a teacher, consultant, parent or guide. You are the noise maker. You are the problem. You are the person who’s consistently telling kids that they can be talented at this and not talented at that.

Your brain is plastic. Stop believing in the limitation of talent.
Improve your hearing instead. And that in turn will improve your learning skills and the learning skills of those you come in contact with every single day.

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It doesn’t matter which website or blog you go to—most of them make one fundamental mistake. And it’s a mistake that can be easily avoided, if only you did one tiny little thing.

That tiny little thing is placing the ‘subscribe’ button in the right place. And to understand the right place, we have to understand a tiny little quirk of human behaviour.

So here’s what we tend to do in real life

Let’s say we’re meeting a stranger. At what point do you give that stranger your contact details? At the beginning of the meeting, or at the end? The answer is, you give them your contact details both at the beginning and again at the end.

When we first tend to meet a person we don’t know, we immediately give them our business card. Notice that at this point we don’t know the result of the meeting. If it’s a business meeting, maybe we’ll do business and maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll like the person and maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll agree to their terms or maybe we won’t.

But we give them our business cards anyway.

And we do this action because we’re introducing ourselves, but also saying that we can be easily contacted. This quick gesture of giving out a business card, instantly gives the stranger the ability to get in touch with you.

The same concept applies on a website or a blog

When we put a subscribe button at the top of the blog or website, we’re saying we can be contacted. But you also have to realise that your subscribe button is not the reason why the visitor has come to your blog or website. They’ve come to your blog or website for their own selfish motives.

For instance, I went to a blog today that gave me ’10 Wordpress Plugins That Increase My Search Engine Rankings’. I instantly downloaded the plugins, got distracted and closed the page.

And the blog lost the opportunity to make me a subscriber.

And it’s very likely that hundreds, if not thousands of visitors just like me would have done the very same thing. They got what they wanted and now they’re off on their merry way.

But what if there was a subscribe button at the bottom of the blog?

Do you think that would have somehow changed my behaviour? What if there was a line that said: “Would you like to get goodies or smart articles like this in future? If so, simply subscribe via email or RSS”.

Do you think I would have clicked away? Or would I have subscribed? It depends on the content of the page, right? If the contents were great (and they were indeed very useful) then my selfish motive would kick in and I would subscribe. But there was no prompt. No subscribe button at the end of the page. No next step.

And so I left.

And so did a hundred, if not a thousand people after me.
Those subscribers are leaving by the truckload, not because they want to leave, but because you won’t give them a simple instruction to stay and join the conversation.

So what should you do in the next five minutes?

You should do the following:
1) You should put a subscribe button at the top of the page.
2) You should then make sure you have a subscribe/take action button and a little teaser at the bottom that encourages me to subscribe.

This simple act alone may not quadruple your subscribers.

It may quintuple them. It may double them. Who knows! But if you’ve got great content, you’ll see a definite increase in subscribers, that’s for sure.

So remember that business meeting with the stranger? You gave your card at the start of the meeting. And then at the end of the meeting, you gave that person an action plan.

You told them: I’ll call you. Or you call me. Or email me. Or whatever.  Without that simple action plan or next step you’d have been wasting your time. And we don’t like wasting our time, do we?

So there you have it.

A five-minute action plan. Put it in place, and watch your subscriber numbers go up, up and away.

(Sean’s note: Yes, we take our own advice most of the time. Our website at Psychotactics.com has a subscribe button and precise teaser, but the blogs don’t. So guess which of the two has the better hit/subscribe ratio! Seems like it’s time for my own five-minute action plan, eh?).

Next Step?: Get Updates via RSS | Get Updates via Email (Fill in your details in the top-right hand form)
Don’t forget: Look at the Psychotactics Sequence of Marketing Products and Services.

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So you’re all focused on customers. Customers bring in the bread, the butter. And yes, sometimes the jam. But if you focused on competition for an itty-bitty while, you’d find that you could have a lot more jam.

Doesn’t make sense?
Well here’s how it works. Let’s say you’re selling a product or a service. Let’s take a product to begin with. Let’s say you’ve worked out how to make a great lemonade. And now you’ve pretty much sold the lemonade to all the supermarkets. And to all the stores. And you’ve got 95% of your market saturated with your sweet, sticky lemonade.

What are you going to do next?
Of course if you’re silly you’ll try and get the remaining 5% of the market. But if you’re smart, you’ll stop focusing on getting more customers, and instead focus on getting more of the competition interested in what you’re doing.

Why would you do that? Why give away your secrets?
Yeah right! So it’s a big secret. It’s not, actually. Anyone can easily create a lemonade that that’s just as sweet and sticky as yours. What they struggle to do is to replicate your method of distribution, marketing and management.

You can only sell your lemonade for $2.
But you can sell your secrets for $2000. Or $20,000. Or $200,000. And at this point, let’s do the math. How much lemonade would you have to sell to get $200,000? Quite a lot, eh? Now when you sell your secrets you can sell them to tens, even hundreds, or thousands of people (depending on the terms and the price of the secret).

But won’t the competition put you out of business once they know the secret?
If the competition really wanted to ferret out your secrets, couldn’t they do that just as easily? All you really have to do is track someone closely; see what they do; and then replicate it.

But often there’s more beyond the obvious
And your competition knows it. They know that for every product you’ve ever sold, you’ve got a dozen underlying systems in place. And that’s what they’ll pay to learn. And you’re the one who can teach them.

Of course they may try to wrestle you out of your own market
There’s always that crazy risk, but technically you’re so far ahead, that they’ll never ever catch up. Yes, you think they will, but they won’t. Unless you get lazy and sloppy. And believe your own press.

How do I know this to be true?
Because we’ve given away all our secrets at Psychotactics. If you want to learn how to write blog posts like this, I can tell you (there’s even a course on Article Writing where we give away every last secret). There’s a course on copywriting. There’s a course on speaking and selling from the podium (our conversion rate is 50% or more, and we never make a pitch or do anything sleazy). There’s a course on information products. And there’s an answer to any question that you may want to ask us.

And this is how we quickly built Psychotactics to the point where we can go on three-month vacations every year. (See photos on Facebook too) We don’t treat a secret as something hallowed. A secret is for sharing. You can give, and give and give and give, and there’s still more that the competition wants to know. Because even as they’re playing catch-up, you’re moving ahead.

So why would they bother playing catch-up, if you’re going to win?
Even the competition knows that there’s loads of space for everyone in the market. For one, your competition may not even be in your own town, city or country. But even if they are, there’s still enough business to go around.

And competitors know this…
Which is why they’re willing to pay us the dollars to give away our secrets. And which is why we’re more than happy to do so. On every course I’ve ever had, at least a good chunk of them will be competitors. And not only will they do similar stuff, but we actually tell them to ‘not reinvent the wheel’, and to use a lot of our material as the basis for getting their business going.

Yet most of us want to take our secrets to the grave
Ah well. What can I say? I’ve already said it enough. Competition will generate more revenue than customers, no matter if you’re in a service based business or in products. Or training, for that matter. And better still, competitors will keep coming back to learn the upgraded skills. Yes, they become customers in a way, but not for your products, but for your information.

It’s win-win, of course. They win. You win. And you get to take the three-month vacation.

P.S. And um, in case you’re wondering: Yes, we do show you how to build your business, so that you too can take the three-month vacation. But to get started, you may want to try to learn how customers. Have a look at Why Customers Buy (and Why They Back Away): The Brain Audit

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I love the New Yorker (I’ve been a subscriber for years—yes I get it all the way to New Zealand). And this cover summed up perfectly what I wanted to say. Saved me having to draw a cartoon instead.

In the year 2003, I went to a presentation in Australia.

There were 450 people in the room. And two fancy cars (yes in the room!) And then the speaker ran from the back of the room to the front, amidst thunderous applause.

Five days later, I was $10,000 poorer.
And none the wiser. I’d been suckered by a get-rich-quick scheme. And if you’re feeling a little superior at this point, I don’t blame you. But when I started out in business—and for a few years after the starting point—I was quite concerned about getting enough dollars in the bank. Actually, if someone promised me some crazy scheme to improve my bank balance or customer acquisition rate, I was more than likely to look their way.

Hard work was intoxicating.
But sitting in the ‘counting house’ counting money was frankly even more appealing. I frankly don’t know how much money and time I spent before I got wise. Or should I say wiser. The moment of wisdom came when I started recognising the red flags.

- I started avoiding anything ‘instant.’
- I started avoiding anything that offered ‘tsunamis of customers’
- I started avoiding anything that had fancy cars, surfboards, planes, jets, boats.
- I started avoid anything with graphics of cheque books and bank
balances.

I realised I was trying to learn the tricks of the trade. And the people who were teaching me (or trying to teach me those tricks) were Ponzi schemers. They’d take my hard earned money, and then get me to follow their methods. I would then have to turn around and do the same lecherous activity.

And frankly it sickened me.
I realised I didn’t want a big yacht. Or a jet. Or twenty thousand X-Boxes. I didn’t want to surf on the waves all day. Or frolic in palm grove coves.

What I wanted was far simpler.

I wanted a decent life. I wanted to have time for myself. I wanted to be able to drink my coffee in peace. Eat my lunch and dinner in peace. I wanted to travel. I didn’t want to be pushed around by customers. I wanted to be paid in advance, and not have to beg for my due. I wanted a few goodies like my MacBook Pro.

And I wanted to know that my future was getting more secure with every passing year.
Hard work didn’t scare me. But I wanted to work fewer hours if possible. And I wanted lots of time to just sit and do nothing but read, or drink a Leffe Brune.

Of course things didn’t get better right away.
In our first month at Psychotactics we earned just $28. I don’t think it got much better that year, but with every passing year, the simple dream seemed to get momentum. And over the last seven years, we’ve gotten to a stage where we’d do fine even if we took a year, two years, even five years off. Of course this healthy state of affairs gives you loads of time to think.

And in this time I’d get mad at the get-rich-quick merchants.
Until realisation dawned on me once again. I realised that these people had a purpose in life. They were simply doing the rest of us a favour. They were attracting those who were interested in the short cuts. They were attracting folks who instinctively know that you can’t learn to play the piano in three months, but believe that you can be a zillionaire in the same amount of time.

They were attracting the Sean D’Souzas of 2003.
I was that person.
I wanted the shortcut.
I wouldn’t listen to common sense.
I wouldn’t listen to those who promised me results based on hard work. Well, I would, but I’d try and see if there was somehow some easier way.

And that’s the role of the get-rich-quick merchants.
Their job gets some of us to realise that only hard work and dedication will get us to where we want to be. And equally important, their job is to keep taking the dollars away from people who never learn the lesson.

They were actually doing me a favour, I realised.
Because shortly after, I invested both time and money in education. I bought from people who promised me nothing but hard work. People who didn’t promise the big boats, and the fancy surfboards, and all the glitz.

I carefully evaluated where I was going to spend my money, and then spent a lot of it learning from these folks. And things changed quite dramatically.

The guidance made a difference. The hard work factor never changed, but I was achieving a lot more in far fewer hours, and with far less effort. And getting paid in advance (which is always a nice thing to have).

But something else was happening as well.
I was getting better clients thanks to the get-rich-quick merchants. They were weeding out the people who simply wanted it easy. They were weeding out those who got impatient because they tried something for 10 minutes and weren’t getting results. They were weeding out all those for whom hard work is like a disease.

By the time most of our clients get to Psychotactics, they’ve sowed their wild Internet oats. Most, if not all our clients have gotten over the get-rich-quick mentality.

At our workshops we work with people who are willing to put in the hard yards.
In the Cave, at 5000bc, we even have a ‘Taking Action’ section, where people post their daily progress on a specific project, while getting advice on how to move ahead. It’s nice to finally be and work with people who understand the value of continuous guided momentum.

Hmmm…
So that creep in Australia did me some good after all. He gave me a $10,000 lesson. A lesson that I didn’t understand till many years after the incident.

So now when I see the get-rich merchants roll into town and promise these gazillion dollar returns, I don’t always smile. A grimace still envelops my face. But eventually I break into a smile. And get back to work. And to drinking my coffee in peace. And playing with my MacBook Pro.

Footnote: Since 2004, barring a year or two, we’ve always taken 3 months off per year.
Yes, three whole months. And we spend inordinate time in the cafe. This got one waitress to ask me if I had a job. Or was
in between jobs. But this idea of the ‘easy life’ can be misleading.

When we work, we really give it our all. When we don’t, we don’t. And it’s something worth fighting for. The ability to be able to have your coffee when you want, with whom you want, and where you want— be it Auckland or Tokyo

You know the feeling of getting home from the airport.
You get in the taxi, and as the driver wings his way through the streets, you know your way. Should the taxi driver dart down some crazy avenue, or decide to take you for a spin, you’re instantly able to avoid being taken for a ride.

But when you’re in an unknown city, you rarely have such luck. You don’t know the streets and are not quite sure whether you’re being taken for a ride, or it just happens to be a long ride.

And outsourcing may feel like you’re being taken for a ride.
So what are we to do? Should we outsource without knowing anything about the topic (e.g. should we outsource our website construction without any knowledge of how to manage the website?). Or should we outsource projects based on the fact that you’ve learned a little bit, and like the ‘hometown taxi ride’ you’re in control (even if you’re not actually driving the taxi).

I’m no control freak.
But I find that if I outsource something, I need to have a smattering of understanding of the subject. I also find that if it’s mission critical or something that affects my day-to-day work (e.g. websites, design, etc), then knowing and understanding the topic and the applications enables me to get a better understaing of how to direct the outsourced job.

Of course this takes time…
Imagine wanting to have a site up in Joomla, and then learning a bit (or a lot) of Joomla. Imagine wanting to have your book designed in InDesign and learning a bit (or a lot) of InDesign. It all takes time. And yet, I often find myself learning the skills that I’ve outsourced, if only to be able to know where I’m going and how to get out of a mess if needed.

Do you think it’s overkill? Should you just outsource and do nothing? Or should you actually put in the effort to learn?

 

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Imagine you want to sell a product, service or training online.
What’s the first thing you think of when you’re getting ready to promote the product? Why it’s the sales page, right? So you scrub the page; you polish it; and you hope to hell that the customer is going to buy bucket-loads of your products or services.

And zilch. Nothing happens.

There’s a reason.

You believe that customers buy because of the sales page. But the efficacy of the sales page is the biggest myth perpetuated by copywriters. The sales page is just one step. One tiny step I must add, in the whole process of sales.

But how do we know I’m not just ranting?

How do we know that the sales page is not as important as we believe it to be? Let’s look at your own behaviour. How do you buy a product from a site? No, don’t tell me. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you how most of our customers buy the Brain Audit. Most of them land up on the website, and boof, ten minutes later they’ve bought the Brain Audit.

Yeah right!

That’s not how you and I behave. No one behaves like that.

Our buying behaviour isn’t detached from our human behaviour. And our human behaviour is—as far as possible—to avoid jumping in without testing the water. Some of us test the water by subscribing for a while. Reading for a while. Some test the water longer. Some shorter. But almost no one goes directly to the sales page..

And no one gets a date without some work either.
Remember when you dated someone how you had to go through some steps? You had to meet the person, speak to him/her. Then you needed to set a time/place. Then you needed to get the phone number. Then you needed to get all spruced up for the date. Then you had to show up. And then, and only then did your date commence.

Yet when we go online we forget all these steps that need to come before the sales page. We are so seduced by this concept of someone clicking on a link and buying our product that we forget there’s a lot more involved in the process.

But surely tens of thousands of products or services are sold just by single clicks!
Yes they are. But a lot of these products are either items that are casual purchases, or they’re branded products. This means the buyer can do their research long before they head over to a site to buy the product or service.

You don’t have the luxury of being an Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt.

You don’t have the reputation of Google or Starbucks. You can’t just show up with your fancy sales page and get people to buy (Brad or Angie can).

So you’ve got to go through the dating process.

You’ve got to go through the steps. You’ve got to attract your customers and keep them attracted. And constantly build the trust, credibility, personality and consistency. And even when you do all of the above, your customer will shy away. They’ll go over to your sales page. They’ll read the copy; look at the pretty pictures. And leave. So yeah, the best sales page in the world is just a well-dressed up page.

Nothing less. Nothing more. Putting up the sales page is one step. One tiny step in the whole process of attraction, conversion, and consumption. And it’s only when the customer goes through the entire process that they even consider the next product or service in your sequence.

And then you’ve got to woo them all over again.

And again. And again.

So next time someone tells you that their sales page isn’t working ask them this question: “Have you been on a date recently?”

Next Step: Don’t forget to look at the recommended Psychotactics Sequence Of Marketing Products and Services.

 

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Most people think momentum has only one step.
That step is to move forward. And keep moving forward, no matter what the obstacles.
These people have Plan A in mind, and by golly, Plan A is going to get done no matter what!

But what if Plan A itself is a momentum-killer?
So most days I have this plan. It’s a plan that lets me wake up at 4am, and be working by 4:03am. (Yes, without coffee). But on many a day this plan goes wrong. Then I lose momentum. Then the whole day turns to custard.

But not if I have Plan B.
And it’s not just having Plan B that matters. It’s how you design Plan B—that’s what matters! Plan B needs to be considerably less challenging and far more interesting than Plan A. Less challenging “and” far more interesting? Yes indeed: It has to have both those factors in play for Plan B to work.

Let me give you an example:
If Plan A is to write a sales letter that’s 20 pages long, then Plan B is simply a plan to draw some cartoons or do some podcasts. If Plan A is a plan to write five articles for 5000bc.com, then Plan B is to write a blog post or two instead.

Notice something: Plan B isn’t a replacement for Plan A. It’s not something that requires me to do something just as challenging as Plan A. Instead Plan B is quite different. Plan B just takes the pressure off my back and still gets things done.

Everyone talks about having a Plan A and a Plan B.
Everyone designs a Plan A, but fails to design a Plan B.

And that’s why they lose momentum.
(Um, see video below)

Anyone can become a great chef—if you have the right emotional training to back you up!

Benjamin Zander, famous orchestra conductor and co-author of the ‘Art of Possibility’ has a story to tell.

Benjamin had a twenty-five year old problem.
He had thirty students that were going to go through two semesters of training with him. The students were all instrumentalists and singers. They were going to learn the art of musical performance, including the psychological and emotional factors that stand in the way of great music-making. Yet, in twenty-five years, he wasn’t able to get the class to do what he wanted them to do. Namely, to take risks with their playing. They’d always be so anxious to succeed, that they’d stay on the straight and narrow.

And then Ben (and his wife Roz) came up with an emotional super-charger
They decided to give every single student an A. No matter what they did during the year, the student would get an A.

Of course, this seemed unfair. Should the slacker get an A, even though another student has put in ten times the effort?
Technically this seems weird, but look at the emotional ramifications.
Imagine if you could learn to draw cartoons, and there was no such thing as a bad cartoon.
Imagine if you could write an article, and there was no such thing as a bad article.
Imagine you could paint a picture and got an A.

You can’t imagine it, can you?
But ask a cartoonist, or a reporter, or a painter to do the corresponding tasks above, and they’ll do it without too much of a frown.
And if you look back into their history, you’ll find something consistent.

You weren’t told that you were a great cartoonist. Your drawings weren’t put up on the fridge. Your parents didn’t get you a whole bunch of drawing books, and let you paint on the walls. You were instead told, that art was for the other talented people. That no one in your family was an artist. That it’s ok if you can’t draw. And that’s not what happened in the house of the ‘cartoonist.’

In that house, the cartoonist knew one thing. That he or she would get an A if she drew something.
That the mother and father, and teacher, and grandparents—even the dog would be all excited when you did your cartoon.
That when you went to school, your friends would egg you on to draw cartoons.
That your cartoons happened to be a chick/guy magnet and got you prominence.

All the while the brain is going: Hey this is good.
Emotions of success fill your brain.
Failure pops in, says hi, but the success is so overriding, because suddenly you’re seeing yourself as an A student already.

And hey, now you’re talented.

But how do we know this to be true?
Words and actions have enormous emotional ramifications.
If someone tells you you’re really good at ‘cartooning’ for instance, a couple of things happen.
1) You begin to like that person more.
2) You begin to see your own work in a new light.

Liking that person more, means you get pre-disposed to impressing that person. So if the person says: “You really dress well” then you’re more than likely to dress well each and every time you go to see that person (even if you’re quite casual otherwise). And then, in the process of dressing well, you feel better. And you see your own dressing in a new light. You can now spot smart casual from casual. You are now suddenly progressing along the line—if only to impress one person.

Of course, this leads to other people noticing your new ‘talent.’
This starts a bit of a Domino Effect. You think, there you are. And therefore you become what others believe you are.
And this magnificent journey begins with a simple comment, or series of comments.
Comments that make you feel good. Comments that make you smile. Comments that end up with your ‘talent’ becoming a chick magnet.

The A starts in a single moment.
Which brings us right back to Benjamin Zander and his students.
He got each student to see themselves at the end of two-terms. And to write a letter to him saying: “Dear Mr. Zander…I got my A because of…”And in this letter they had to give as much detail as they could; the story of what would have happened during the year; and what would have happened to the student as a result of this A grade. And everything needed to be written in the past tense.

Would you live up to your A?
Would you live up to be a ’smart dresser?
Would you live up to being a superb cartoonist?

You see, it’s all emotion. Because Zander’s students haven’t achieved anything. But do you have any doubt about the outcome? That’s the power of emotion. That’s the power of your brain. And that’s why talent is a myth.

Bjorn Borg, master of the wooden tennis racket

In the early 1970s, men’s tennis was dominated by Americans.
In your wildest imagination you would not believe that a Swede would change all that.

The name of this Swede was Bjorn Borg.

In less than 10 years, Borg made an entire country ‘talented.’
Some of the most impressive tennis players like Mats Wilander, Stefan Edberg and dozens of other players sprouted from the Swedish woodwork.

About the same time, a woman called Martina Navratilova surfaced from Czechoslavakia. She too, started winning everything in sight.

And then, magically, the Czechs became talented.

The very same phenomenon surfaced in India
Before the year 1985, the Indian cricket team was considered to be a second-class cricket team.

Then from nowhere, they rose to win the World Cup against all odds. And from then on, you’d be slightly mad if you had a one-day tournament, and didn’t have the Indian team as an active participant.

What causes an entire country to suddenly be talented in a sport?
Surely it can’t be inspiration. If it were inspiration, then any one from any country could simply be inspired to do the same.

You see there’s quite another factor at work.

It’s called pride.

Or a lack of wimpiness
Because so-called talent requires hard work. There’s not a single ‘talented’ musician who doesn’t put in many, many hours of hard work. There’s not a single speaker, dancer, writer, athlete, teacher who simply ambles in, and oozes talent.

Talent is the culmination of so many factors, that it almost seems magical.

And unique.

And that’s because we see the expression of talent in a matter of minutes. We see a person draw a cartoon in a few seconds; write an article in an hour; play a difficult piece of music in a matter of minutes. And they seem to be so talented.

Yet the reason we aren’t talented, is because we’re wimpy.

Most people give themselves the permission to be untalented.
And we don’t have to look to the Bjorn Borgs or Martina Navratilovas to find so-called talent.

If you look around you, you’ll find some families seem to be overly talented.
They seem to be involved in the arts, writing, music and somehow seem to be so very creative.

But stop and think about it for a second.
What stops your kids from being as talented?
What stops you from being more talented?

It’s the stupid, nonsensical belief that people were born with talent.

That one country is more talented than another.
That one family is more talented than yours.

Don’t tell that to the Swedes
Here’s what Bjorkman, himself a world No.4 has to say: “We were so good that we spoiled everyone at home. There was no way we could keep winning Davis Cups, have No. 1s and Grand Slam singles champions.

We played the Davis Cup semifinals last year and were not even nominated for the top five teams in Sweden. I think people do forget some of the achievements we still create in tennis because they compare everything to the past.”

And here’s what Bjorn Borg himself has to say:
“We are struggling with the junior tennis in Sweden, but we’re working very hard to improve that. They’re also struggling in Australia”.

“But I think this goes in a circle. Sweden produced players for many, many, many years, unbelievable players. It’s impossible to continue to
do that forever”.

“But I’m sure Swedish tennis and Swedish juniors, we will be back. But it’s going to take quite a few years.”

Can you spot the wimpy-talk in the language?
Talent doesn’t arise from wimpy talk.
It arises from action. And patterns. And layering. And emotions.

“I think” is not a powerful emotion. It’s a doubt.
I think is wimpy.
Recognise that in your own life. Cut out the wimpy talk and get moving towards creating real talent.

Because talent starts with emotion. If you don’t believe you can do it, you never will.