Episode Details

In a small business, strategy and tactics often go wrong.

Yet all you hear about is success, success and how someone made it big.

This episode is about some bad judgment calls and also about plain pomposity. It's taught us to be better marketers and better people.

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In this episode Sean talks about

Story No.1—The Internet Marketing Conference Fiasco of 2003 Story No.2—A Mess In Wellington: Why Extreme Personalisation is Not A Good Idea Summary: How our minus two learning has helped us

To read this podcast online: https://www.psychotactics.com/psychotactics-mistakes/

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I remember one of the early events in my speaking career

Renuka was sitting in the audience. When I finished my speech, I came back to my seat and asked her how she found the speech. I gave you a minus two, she said.

Speaking hasn't been easy for me, and I struggled a lot not knowing what to say when in front of an audience

Luckily, almost at the start of my career, I ran into Eugene Moreau and his 13-Box Speaking system. The 13-Box system was so honed, it was like having a Samurai sword at your disposal. Except, it's not much use having a Samurai sword and not going through "sword practice".

To get my practice in speaking to a high degree of professionalism, I'd speak everywhere I could. And when I mean, speak everywhere, these weren't at fancy events. I'd speak at the Rotary club, some places where people would meet to network and even at association meetings. In my mind, it was pretty clear that if I didn't get the practice, I wouldn't become a confident speaker.

And I knew I'd reached a good level when I was paid to speak at an event

It wasn't much. I think it was about $300 or $400, but hey, this was a paid gig. The only problem was that my so-called ability had gone to my head. In the first few years, I'd rehearse fifteen, sixteen times before getting in front of an audience.

This event, however, was different. The audience happened to be farmers—not professionals. They still had to sell their products, so they still needed a message like the one that's contained in The Brain Audit. But because they were farmers, I got a little pompous.

I practiced a couple of times, then my wife Renuka and I drove to the event

The signs were not good. Both Renuka and I had spent a restless night, and we had a long drive ahead of us. She kept asking me if I'd done my usual practice runs. I nodded, but I knew I'd taken some shortcuts. And on that day, when I went on stage, I was sleep-deprived and already a bit tired from the drive. Plus, as you can tell, I hadn't done my usual 15-16 practice runs.

Yes, I got a minus two.

This series is a little detour into the world of Psychotactics—and. About times when we got below par results

Some of the results were our fault, and some of them were just experiences we had along the way. In every instance, we learned a lesson, and it helped us move ahead in our business. Let's take a trip down memory lane, shall we? Let's look at some minus two experiences. Like the time back in 2004, I think, where I was a speaker at an Internet conference, and everyone was selling their products, but me.

Why did things go so wrong?

Story No:1—The Internet Marketing Conference Fiasco of 2003

I should have known better than heading to a particular Internet Marketing Conference in Australia.

It was what you'd call a pitch-fest.

Pitch-fests are given that name because the speaker tends to speak for a fixed amount of time, but then reserves at least a third of the given time to pitch their products or services. Think of speaker after speaker getting up on stage and selling like those folks you see on infomercials, and you