Everybody starts off with a plan, but shortly after that plan turns to custard. We should be able to realign ourselves and restart, but restarting seems to be extremely difficult. Which is the quickest way to get back on course? That’s what we’ll find out in this episode.

When I was 13 years old, my parents got involved in a court battle. I was past 40 when the issue was finally resolved. We don't see ourselves wanting to engage in high conflict. Yet, there seems to be no way to avoid the tectonic forces of our world. No matter where you look online or offline, someone is continuously bashing the other side. And often, that chaos spills over into our world. Like it did with my parents. They had no intention of being sieged for over 25 years, and yet that's what happened. Tensions escalate beyond a point, original facts disappear, and conflict becomes a reality. Yet, all conflict isn't destructive. There's a difference between High Conflict and Healthy Conflict. The dangerous kind is when it's "us" vs "them", "good" vs "evil". That kind of conflict bestows arrogance and superiority. It layers on the rage, sometimes even dread. It's a state where almost everyone loses, unlike in Healthy Conflict, where disagreement doesn't soar and serves more as a way to understand each other and improve. "High Conflict" is a book by Amanda Ripley, which kept me reading late at night. Typically, my eyes are on self-shut mode by 10 pm (since I wake up at 4 am), but this book was fascinating. Plus, it tackles a topic that seems to swarm around us both on a personal and a societal level. Is there a way around High Conflict? That's what I set to find out.

The toughest part about creating bonuses is how time-consuming they can be, especially when you want to make them desirable. Yet there is a method of creating extremely desirable bonuses without doing much at all. This is what this episode on “ creating bonuses out of thin air” is all about.

It may sound odd, but the bonus is often the tipping point for a client to buy your product or service. And yet, by the time we are done with creating the product or service, we are too tired to work out what the bonus should be. n this episode we look at two methods. —One is a more traditional method called “bundling“, well the other is quite unexpected and requires very little work. —A method called “Unbundling“. Let’s find out how we can use both of these methods, or just one, to create bonuses that are extremely yummy.

We tend to think all is well with the world when no one complains. Yet, most customers rarely complain. Instead, they just walk out of the door, without saying a word. A silent customer is not necessarily an asset. How can you get your customer to be a little more 'noisy'—and why you should start now.

What was the trigger for the Three-Month Vacation?Why do we have workshops at random locations? This is it—the second part in the two-part series of "how all these traditions started".

How did the gold star show up in Psychotactics courses? How did we start sending chocolate across the world? Here is a two-part series on how all of these traditions started.

It's rare that we don't learn lessons from a child. Even so, I think we don't always pay closer attention to what they're saying. My two nieces have taught me a lot. Here are a few nuggets of simple, yet intense wisdom.

Are you pro or anti-vaccine? Are you pro this or anti-that? We seem to be pushed into one camp or the other and we end up getting ourselves in a tight corner. Is there a way to be part of a conversation and still neatly sidestep the argument?

When starting up, it's almost impossible to get clients. Yet, there's a method that's almost fail-proof and gets the client interested in you, right away. What's more, this method not only gets you one job, but has the potential to get you back repeatedly. The big surprise is that it doesn't work just when dealing with new clients, but it works amazingly well with current clients too. Want to get going? Well, here's what the checklist is all about.

The biggest problem with perfection is we feel we have to keep to the job until it's done. As logical as the idea sounds, it's always—yes, always—counterproductive. Instead, there's a method that's far superior, and quicker. Which allows you to reach even higher levels of satisfaction than you'd expect. All of this "perfection" can be achieved by understanding the "coats of paint" system. Ready for a quicker, faster road to "perfection?"

Many books, yes whole books, are dedicated to the pursuit of happiness. And yet, all it takes is a simple mind shift. Happiness isn't something we need to find, as it's something we feel all the time. Which begs the question: Are unhappy people choosing to be sad? Find out how to tap into instant happiness.

In a perfect world, you would be asked a straightforward question, and you'd give the answer that was expected of you. And most of the time, interviews on podcasts, radio or TV can be just as you imagined, or even better. Yet, there are times when the questions are awkward, or worse, boring. What do you do under these circumstances? And there's a third situation too: where you're terrified. All of us, will, at some point need to be in some kind of interview. It might not happen today, but it will occur at some point. When it does, this advice is likely to come in handy.

We often see overwhelm as a nameless, faceless monster. It seems to charge into our lives like some Godzilla and never wants to leave. However, the moment we categorise the concept of overwhelm into sections, we realise we don't have to be powerless. Here's a trip into the three faces of overwhelm and how to beat it—or at least keep it at bay.

Sometimes we need to make big changes to our behaviour. Sometimes, it's just a little tweak. In today's episode we look at three very tiny tweaks that I learned while listening to other podcasts. And yes, you are likely to find good value in these tweaks too.

Do Clickbait Headlines Work? Can a normal headline be just as powerful? Clickbait headlines seem to be designed to get our curiosity. But what makes a clickbait headline so attractive in the first place? And how do we write “normal” headlines that are far superior in getting the attention of the client? Let's find out in the podcast.

When is it beneficial to adopt a contrarian mindset? What does it mean to be a contrarian? What is the concept of contrarianism? Do you know why Tesla is such a big car? Think about it for a second. Tesla Motors only make electric cars. The bigger the car, the heavier it's going to be and the greater the drain on the battery. So why make a big car?  Let's find out.

Which product should you pre-sell?Should it be the $20 product or the $2000 one? Let's find out what's involved and how you can systematically manage your pre-sell.  Stage 1: Which products are the most important? Which are not? Stage 2: Have we created a “separate section” for each of the vital products/services?Stage 3: How can we create urgency and scarcity?

What is a mastermind mindset? How does a mastermind group work for courses, workshop and membership sites? When we think of a mastermind mindset, we tend to isolate the ideas to a group of people. But what if you could use the very same concepts in online courses, workshops and even in membership sites? Here are three steps to powerfully use mastermind concepts across the board in your business.

Learning is odd. It should be logical, even progressive. This is why we feel that we're bad at learning. But if we recognise what's really happening, we can move forward steadily. In this series, we look at three sets of phenomena that I've personally encountered while learning.

You'd think you'd need to be someone great or at least do something wonderful to inspire others. Yet, you're a source of inspiration. How do you inspire? It's remarkably simple —and here's a short piece on how you need to go about it.

We often go looking for a magical solution to help us write. And yet the magic is often found in the ordinary. How can seemingly repetitive advice help you become a consistently good writer? Let’s find out

When someone asks you what you do, what do you say? People tend to give a top-level answer. They say, "I'm a lawyer, a real estate agent, a fitness trainer". And while that information is descriptive, it's also extremely vague. It doesn't necessarily get clients to want to work with you right away and often they're not curious enough to ask for more information. How do you avoid being vague? You do so with the power of subsets. Subsets allow you to be extremely precise and in turn make the client want to know more, thus increasing the chances of working with you. Best of all, creating a subset is easy. Time to figure out how to create a subset and use it to your advantage, eh?

Does generosity have its limits? Let's say you decide to give away a lot of information to clients. How do you get them to come back to buy the rest of your information? Won't it overlap? Won't they get mad and demand a refund? Not necessarily. It all depends on how you go about about the free vs fee strategy. At Psychotactics, we give away hundreds of articles and an equal number of podcasts. We give away whole courses, reports and other goodies. And yet there are no shortage of buyers. How do you manage fee vs free? Let's find out in this episode.

When we think of writing, we automatically assume it's the act of sitting down at the computer and creating a new article, report or book. What we seem to miss is that there are other factors that come well before the writing process that drain us more than the writing itself. What's even more important, is that you're able to easily avoid those other factors—those minefields. While writing may still be difficult, there's no reason to make it even harder than it is. Let's find out how to remove the unnecessary obstacles in our way.

It's one thing to create information and quite another to know whether you've ticked all the boxes. When creating information, the client doesn't just seek information. Instead, she looks for other elements as well. Elements such as examples, entertainment etc, all of which need to be part of the product itself. In this podcast, we go back to front. Let's say you've already finished creating your information product. Can you go back and make tweaks to make it more complete, even more interesting? Sure you can and let's find out how.

When we start to build a list, we think of followers or fans, but all of these potential clients are elsewhere on YouTube, or Instagram or Facebook. We can't wait for the fans to swell up in number. Instead, you need to move quickly. Even if you have just four-five fans, you need to get them over to YOUR list, your website. How can you go about that task effectively? And how do you then get them to the very next stage, which is to buy something? List building isn't complex, but without these fundamentals in place, it's can be a massively wasted exercise. Find out how to avoid the pitfalls that a lot of people drop into and never seem to recover.

It's a line we've all heard, but as it does in life, the very same line plays an extremely important role in list building. When we think of building lists, we hope that some course will give us a silver bullet. That some coach will tell you which buttons to press, and you'll magically have a list. Or worse, we believe people who tell us that we can build our lists pretty much like a Jack and the Beanstalk story. Unfortunately for us, all of these promises are castles in the sand. The reason why we fail time and time again to build lists, is because we believe the dream-merchants and fail to pay attention to how a list—any list is built.

Imagine you've missed the sunrise for the past 300 days. Would that mean you'd give up on sunrise forever?We know the answer to the question, don't we? Even if we snoozed right a few hundred sunrises, it's possible for us to wake up on the 301st day and bask in the glow of a morning sun. And yet when it comes to projects, we often treat a stalled project as a form of failure. Why do we follow this crazy method of giving up? And how to we restart a stalled project?

In this second part, we go deeper into how it's not just the writing alone, but how a fixed formula can derail us. We often believe that if we've written 800 words in the past, the next article needs to be just as long. Which slows down your writing and often throws you completely off track. Find out why staying flexible is good for you as well as the reader.

Why does writing seem like a chore? It's easy to believe that we need more practice. But practice alone doesn't bring an article to life. A dull article, even when filled with lots of words, is still very boring. The problem lies in the misunderstanding that we need to write like authors. Authors and writers may be similar but most often are not. Being an author is often a gruelling task, and as a writer of articles, it's best to avoid that path. Here's how you go about it.

Did you finish the last book you bought? How about that last course? And if you're like me, you probably have at least two dozen things that you've bought—and still not finished. Well, there's a reason why. Somehow, our note taking gets in the way. We never seem to reach the finish line and we have a ton of books and courses to complete. Yet, what if there were a way to solve this problem? It's a method I use, and it's based (strangely) on boomerang behaviour. Here's how it works.

When clients leave, we automatically assume they say they aren't using the service or membership site. They give reasons why they're leaving, and it sounds logical to our ears. However, there are situations where clients almost never leave. And as you'd expect, it has all to do with community. Which is also why you don't leave your family, your friends and your dance group. How can we understand this concept of community better? And how can we make clients not only stay but benefit from community. Let's find out.

The 1000 true fans concept seems to follow a simple multiplication rule. If you have a thousand fans and they buy $100 worth of product in a year, you earn $100,000. Which sounds perfectly fine when you're doing the multiplication, but falls apart in reality? Where are the flaws in the 1000 fans concept? And what if we went down from 1000 to just one? Just one? As in "zero to one"? Let's find out.

Almost all of us will be asked, “what do you do?” And despite having to answer this question frequently, we struggle to create a powerful sense of curiosity with our answer. In short, the elevator pitch seems to fall flat. What makes it flat and how can we easily fix the problem?

Motivation people around you seems like an unending task. Your staff, your team, your walking group, your kid all need motivation. And all of them are motivated by different things. Some by money, some by responsibility and others by praise. Is there one system that works for everyone on the planet? Yes it is, and it's called "being a fan". Learn how you can become a fan and how it changes the dynamics of a relationship forever.

Which do you think is superior? Group or one on one consulting? Most people aren't likely to pick group consulting. It seems like the benefits of one on one consulting far exceed that of a group. And despite our bias for one-on-one consulting, greater learning and implementation is done with groups. Plus as a trainer, you earn a lot more while spending fewer hours. If this all sounds magical, it is. But how do you position group consulting in a world that's tilted towards one on one? Let's find out

If you were to ask someone to pick a field where there's more vs less competition, they're likely to pick one with less. And that would be a mistake, possibly a fatal one. Competition isn't bad for you—it's good. If it makes no sense, here's a podcast that shows you exactly why competition helps you determine if you're going to make it or not. And how to go about using the power of competition to your advantage.

You think you know Renuka, but maybe there's a bit you don't know quite yet. She looks mischievous, but her real mission comes alive on April 1. Enjoy this slightly unusual episode of April Fool when Renuka's maniacal genius comes to life.

The problem with a service-based-business is that you can't always publish a fixed price. The pricing always seems to depend on what needs to be done for the client. This results in a lot of wasted time and effort. Often, both the client and the vendor (that's us) get so bogged down in the process of quotes that the job gets postponed or falls through. How do we avoid this back and forth? And is it really possible to make your service like a product? Let's find out in this episode.

I used to hate writing a newsletter. It would be the task I'd keep postponing until the very last minute. Of course, that would make my entire week miserable. Until, I found what could be called a "rough formula". And it's an easy formula too. Try it and you'll see that your newsletter isn't as tedious as it used to be. In fact it's fun—well, almost.

If you look around you, the obvious success benchmarks are usually money first, and then, at least a huge dollop of fame. But are our benchmarks of success skewed by Fortune Magazine or Inc or Fast Company? Are those blogs we read driving us down a path we didn't originally set for ourselves. We had to muddle around a fair bit because we too were confused. However, here are our benchmarks for success. Maybe it will get you to set your own, as well.