Psychotactics

Most people make a mistake with promoting a product or service. When they promote a product/service, they expect sales. And rightly so. But you’re missing out on the most important aspect of all: that people don’t buy when you want to sell. And this is why most of us go bananas in sales and marketing. [...]

We hate it when customers object. We’d prefer if they simply bought our products and services. Yet objections are a critical indicator of sales and marketing. Without objections you’d never know if the customer is interested or not. And without objections you’d never know how to improve your products and services (you improve them, don’t [...]

There are writers. And there are writers.
But you see I was a cartoonist.

It was way back in the year 1988
I was drawing cartoon strips for a very popular newspaper called ‘Mid-Day’. And every day, I’d draw a new strip, and submit it to the newspaper. And since it was back in the days before the [...]

When we’re about to start a project, we sit down and we plan.
We plan about the resources we have, the time needed for implementation, and yada, yada. What we don’t plan for is someone to watch over us.
So who is this someone who watches over us?
Is it someone who’s technically qualified? Is it someone who’s [...]

When we started up in the year 2000, we had a terrible business.
I was a cartoonist. No one would hire me as a marketer. I had no clients, no income (except from cartooning) and I was going around in circles trying to get people to listen to my ‘marketing advice.’
What’s worse is that our so-called [...]

When you complete an article, you always have one of two reactions.
You think it rocks. Or you think it sucks. And you may be wrong on both fronts. You may think your article rocks, when in fact it sucks.
And vice versa.
So how do you know if your article works?
You would think you needed to read [...]

There’s a problem with the last page of a book or a course
We all have this problem. When we get to the last page of a book or a course, we are enlightened, yet still confused. We’re confused because we know a fair bit about the material, but still have loads of questions that are [...]

I wasn’t a big fan of algebra in high school
I liked geography. I liked history. I even liked languages. You could safely say I liked everything but maths.
So while I’d score high marks in almost all subjects, my maths score barely hobbled beyond 50 or 65%.
And it was no great concern to me, because I [...]

Every day at a certain point in my day my brain is exhausted. And this tiredness has nothing to do with writing. It’s rather got something to do with walking. And listening.
And yes, let me explain.
Every day I take a brisk walk for about an [...]

When I first started doing seminars in the year 2001, I’d start off talking. And flipping slides. And then talking some more. And then two days or three days would pass. Then I’d hand out the feedback forms.
And invariably someone would be upset.
They’d think the music was too loud. They’d wonder why there was music [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]