The Three Month Vacation Podcast

Kids have a superpower. When they're very young, they don't know Monday from Sunday. And it's this lack of knowledge that also gives them an upper hand when they're learning. Unlike adults who are clear about how the result needs to look like. just about anything will do with a child. How do we take that child-like attitude and use it to speed up adult learning? Let's find out in this episode. Nex...

You've heard the line many times before, haven't you? And at times, it seems like kids learn at a blinding pace. But why does this phenomenon occur? Is it because kids are smart or just that we are more accommodating as trainers? Let's find out in this episode. Next Step: More about kids and what you can learn from them. What I Learned From Children (And How It Lowered My Stress Levels)

One of the toughest tasks a business owner can have is when it's time to write a sales page. You know that it's unlikely your product or service will sell unless you have that sales page. Yet, once you sit down to write something, it's almost impossible to write anything down. And when you do, the words are so um, boring that you believe it's something to do with you. In reality, it's because you...

Can You Stop Feeling Overwhelmed? Almost all of us have varying levels of stress. Yet some of us are always in a fog, always struggling. Is there a fix? And is it a non-overwhelming one? Next Step: Listen or read The Overwhelm Virus: How To Get It Out of Your Daily Routine

When it comes to audience building, we tend to fall for the hype. It's all about "getting a thousand clients" or "making thousands of dollars". If you've already been down that path you know that all of those methods fail spectacularly. You have to ask yourself: what works? Or rather, what are the principles that you need to be paying attention to, if you really want to get, grow and keep your aud...

When we start on a course, we all expect we'll get to the end. Yet time after time, we seem to abandon the course quite early. Part of the reason may be that the content is boring or too difficult, but often the bigger problem is our desire to implement it. What if that method was one of the primary reasons why we don't seem to finish courses and books? What if there were a counterintuitive method...

If you're a big company like Amazon, YouTube and Apple, should you bother to send out e-mail newsletters? Can't you just spend loads of money on publicity and advertising? Why do these billion-dollar companies still work with e-mail? The answer is remarkably simple. If you don't keep in touch, someone else takes your place. However, that's not the only reason why you should start and sustain an e-...

How do most of our stories end? Usually, it's a fairy tale ending. Or maybe it ends in chaos, sadness or even disaster. We believe that an ending is crucial for any story. And there is no doubt that endings are needed for stories, but they're almost always irrelevant when you're using a story for an article. The story is there to make a point, not end with "happily ever after". Learn why a fairy t...

It's not unusual to approach an edit with a machete. We see a mass of words and want to hack through them to make the story more interesting. The problem is, that we don't know what to throw away and what to keep. That's why "relevance" is more important to a story than just adding or removing words and sentences. Let's use the power of "relevance" to make a quick, precise edit. Next Step: Once yo...

We often believe that stories have a sequence. First, this happens, then that happens and then something else shows up. And while that belief is generally true, the heart of the story is the "stuck point". You know it's powerful because the audience sits up upright. If you were to stop or even pause long enough, they'd be asking, "What happened next?" Do you get the "What happened next" with your...

When you hear someone tell you about their vacation, you try to be interested. All that exotic food, that astounding accommodation—it's all boring. Yet there's a reason why it's boring. We aren't really hearing stories, but instead, we're just getting a sequence of events. The magic to making it not boring is when you hear the sound of Thumpity-Thump-Thump-Thump-Thump. Yes, like falling downstairs...

When people ask what we do, we are often unsure what to reply. Sometimes we may have a script that we've practiced over and over again. Yet we don't often have success with scripts, because somehow we haven't gotten the attention of the prospect. How can we bypass the tedious answer and create a small 2-minute sales pitch that gets the prospect involved? Learn how to use the twin powers of contrad...

Ever wonder what Writer's Block happens to be? It's a form of choking under pressure. When we're called upon to speak, to write, or to do something under pressure, we almost always seem to struggle. This choking happens even with professionals who normally breeze through their work. The big reason for this choking under pressure is partly because of the lack of the right preparation. Instead of tr...

The hardest part of writing is usually the first few lines. However, the ending can also be quite a vexing problem. Unless of course, you use a simple method called "sandwiching". When you use a "sandwich", it closes the loop, leading to a very satisfying sort of finish. How do you learn how to sandwich? Well, listen to this story taken from The Moth Podcast and you'll see how it can be done. Next...

Why do you have a bloated story? It's often because there are way too many facts in the information you've put down on paper. Even if we know we have too many facts and figures, how do we separate the information so that we don't lose the power of the story? Let's find out in this episode. Once you finish listening to this episode head over to listen or read the series on— How To Keep Your Reader...

When we sit down to write a sales page, we run into a problem almost instantly. We know that the client is usually looking to solve one problem, but which problem should we choose? How do we know if the client is simply going to ignore the headline and not look at the rest of the sales page? Should we stuff our headline with three separate problems or is that a really bad decision on our part? The...

When we sit down to write an article or create an information product, we often have a sinking feeling. We look around and find that it's "all been done before". That we have nothing new to add to the conversation. Why should we keep going despite these odds? More importantly, why is our hesitation driving clients to the competition?

As I sat down to write a sales page for a course, I wasn't stuck. However, my progress was so slow that it was driving me crazy. A sales page consists of well over a dozen elements. However, to get started, it's important to get two core sections right. The first section to work on is: What you want to cover. The second section is: what are clients looking for? And as always, you need to start wit...

When we write an article, we tend to get one point across. Yet, what if we were to disagree with our "one point" and do a complete u-turn? It doesn't seem logical to flip flop, does it? And yet that's what the client needs to create a more complex, more interesting version of an article. Let's find out why u-turns are crucial when writing articles.