Sep 20, 2025
Playa Caracol, Panamá 

“Drink’s MAKES MY CLOTHES COME OFF.” ~sign on wall of a local restaurant

(Can’t read the full email – click here for the online version.)

Sometimes what foreigners think is a cool slogan doesn’t translate very well into English. The quote above is a good example.

We had found a decent place for lunch based on reviews from Google, in the small city of Penonomé. This town community is situated in the geographic center of Panama, along the Inter-American Highway. 

We drove to this city to finish the 4^th and final step needed to obtain our Panamanian drivers’ licenses. This was a fairly convoluted process, and an expat neighbor advised us we would do well to hire legal help. Fortunately, my wife decided we were more than capable of doing it on our own and saved us the $250/license fee our lawyer wanted to charge to help us navigate the system.

The steps, on their own seemed straight forward.

1. Set-up an appointment with our embassy who would prepare a letter, in Spanish, confirming our existing drivers’ licenses from Canada, along with colour photographs of our passports, Panamanian immigration cards.
    
2. Set up an appointment with a department called “Authentication and Legalization” within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Their job is to provide another letter that certifies that all of the documents, foreign license included, are authentic.
    
3. Letter confirming your blood type. This is a novel one to us Canadians. To obtain a driver’s license, your blood type is needed and is added to the license. So, this means visiting a clinic/laboratory that can test your blood, determine your type and print out an official looking document confirming that it really is your blood that was tested.
    
4. The last and final step is visit SERTRACEN which is the Panamanian authority in charge of local license issuance. Like registrars for the issuance of drivers licenses everywhere, there are offices all across Panama. 

I won’t bore you further with the challenges of language and navigation of the various government department websites. In the end, the most challenging aspect was to locate where and how to make appointments. The rest ended up being quite easy. This is notwithstanding the actual drive to these places and finding parking. Especially in Panama City which locals have told us is the 3^rd worst city for driving in the Americas. 

In any event, we chose to do the final step in Penonomé because it is a small city. We could avoid the congestion one always finds in the capital, it wasn’t much farther a drive for us, and we had never been there.

Which is why we found ourselves having lunch in this small, but well-reviewed restaurant, with the strange sign on its wall.

Now the first command of good marketing is to “Interrupt” your prospect and gain his or her attention. This sign being neither on their website, Google page nor on the outside of their establishment, would not even qualify for step one. 

Sure it got our attention once we were inside but then, what was the point of it? Are they hoping to sell a lot of drinks? 

All kidding aside, knowing and using what we call the Conversion Equation is a skill each and every one of you should have, if you want any of your promotions and even your website, to attract and convert prospects into cash. 

-> Want to learn how to improve all aspects of your business, including your marketing? Grab my free training here.

Until next week, 

Stay healthy and focus on profit! 

 - Hugh 
The “Profit Accelerator” Expert

P.S: Tiny, consistent wins—1–2% changes—can compound into 50–100% more profit in a year. Our team built a tool to unlock those gains. If you’re curious about how this can transform your coaching business, click here to explore further.

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