Month: January 2008

Jan

2008

Whose Fault Is It Anyway?

There’s a correlation between those people who take responsibility for their lives and those who are successful in all aspects.

There’s an equivalent match for those people who don’t achieve and those who point the finger at everything and everyone else for their condition.

Look, it’s like this. Once you take responsibility for the fact that where you are in your life right now is no-one’s fault but your own, is when you can take the next step and do something about it.

Are you with someone you don’t like any more? Got a job you hate? Feeling sorry for yourself because you don’t have any money and you’ve racked up huge credit card bills?

Whose fault is it?

Go look in the mirror.

And before you respond back and say “ah yes, but…”, well, that’s just an *excuse*. If you’re unhappy, that’s you that’s done that, sunshine, no-one else.

Don’t agree?

Okay, just tell me, who is the person that’s responsible for your life?

Is it me?

Is it your government?

Is it one of your parents?

Did one of the above make the decisions that got you to where you are today? Are the reasons you are where you are, because those things in the past just happened to you?

Or are you prepared to face the truth that your life is your life? And that you are all grown up, and that you are responsible for everything that happens to you?

You make decisions every day about your life, and you should know that you can make dramatic changes with the smallest of those decisions.

Like…

Today, I’m going to accept responsibility for my life. I don’t like my job, and I don’t much care for working for other people, so I’m going to do something about it.

I’m going to create a product, and I’m going to offer it for sale online.

While I’m working on the traffic for that, I’m going to create another related product, and put that one on sale too.

And another, and another…

Trust me. That’s all it takes. That’s all there is to it.

It’s not a secret. If it is, it’s the worst kept one ever.

Make a decision, NOW. Take control of your life.

Take some simple steps, and change things forever.

-Frank Haywood

Jan

2008

Product Idea Follow Up – Default Ebook Layouts

After making a blog post about my default ebook layout, the number of downloads has risen dramatically from 211 to 494. See this screen grab from my Aweber account:-

You can see it’s really hit a chord with people. I’m amazed at how useful everybody is finding this tiny little product I’ve done. It seems that by accident, I’ve stumbled upon something big.

It’s a simple idea, and the surprising thing is that no-one’s ever done it before. But isn’t that the way with a lot of the really good ideas? They’re just simple things that are useful to people.

I’m only just now realising what it is that I have here, and so I might just have to follow up with this myself. I’ll wait 30 days and if no-one contacts me to say they’ve done a pack of default ebook layouts, then I’ll do my own.

My guess is no-one will.

On a side note, if you’ve been struggling to find that one idea for a product, why don’t you think about what it is that you need yourself, and see if it’s been done before? Even if it has, I think you’ll find it either isn’t good enough or doesn’t give you quite what it is you’re after.

Once you know what you need to do, create your own version, and use it as your first product.

If you want further product ideas from me, make sure you’re signed up to new blog notifications as I’ll be password protecting future ideas so that only my blog readers will get them. You can sign up on the main page.

-Frank Haywood.

Jan

2008

Would You Like To Work Less and Earn More?

Well of course you would, who wouldn’t?

Hmm… Well, a lot of people *say* they would, but then aren’t prepared to make the effort to get to that nice place.

A lot of it is down to a few small organisational changes you need to make. Do it now, and reap the reward for the rest of the year. It’s not a big deal, but for most people it’s something they never get round to doing.

One of my buddies, Alex Jeffreys, has put up a couple of free videos that everyone should watch. It’s the perfect time for these, it’s a new year, everyone is fired up, but if you don’t do just a few simple things, you could end up wasting the year away.

I admit it – I “freewheeled” for part of last year and I realised my mistake towards the end. That’s all changing now, and I’ve moved into a new (smaller, quieter) more private office space in a corner of my home.

I have a new white board for details of my current task, I have two 28 day charts with spaces for small post-it notes for the upcoming tasks, and I have a far clearer view of my year ahead.

The post-it chart is something I learned years ago, and it can really keep you on track when you have a lot of small tasks to complete. I’ll write more about how that works in another post.

For now, go take a look at Alex’s videos. If you’ve ever brain stormed anything before, you’ll find it second nature to you.

As Alex says, when he was shown how to do this by his business coach he thought “what a load of old cobblers”, but he found it really does work.

If you do anything at all today, read these posts and watch the videos.

http://www.postlaunchprofits.com/blog/work-less-make-more-money-video/
http://www.postlaunchprofits.com/blog/work-less-make-more-money-video-2/

-Frank Haywood

Jan

2008

Check This Out

Check This Out:-

http://thinksimplenow.com/productivity/the-9-step-television-diet/

-Frank Haywood

Jan

2008

Product Idea – Default Ebook Layouts

I’ve just recently had a very nice comment from Jason Anderson about my free default ebook layout:-

Oh, forgot to mention, I’m using your ebook format to write the user’s manual. That was a nice video tutorial and a well written user guide. Glad you put that together, it really opened my eyes to the power of Open Office.

Open Office used to be the “poor man’s” system. Now it’s really robust and I use it more than MS Word.

Well thanks Jason! I’ve gone and used it as a testimonial on the home page for the default ebook layout – remember my post a few days ago about the power of social proof?

I’ve just checked and there have been 211 downloads of the layout so far in the short time it’s been up, and I’ve had I think about 4 or 5 comments about it, so I know it’s hit a spot with people. I created it because I needed it myself, so I spent a few hours a while back fiddling with Open Office Writer until I got it to work just the way I wanted it to.

Now if you think about this, I created it to fulfill my own need, but when I did my “7 Products In 7 Days” exercise (detailed elsewhere on this blog), I had the bright idea of using it as one of my products.

So I did a video to show how it worked, and created a short document to go with it. Including setting up the web page, autoresponders etc, it probably took me about 5 hours to set it all up, not including all the time I spent fiddling with the format in the first place earlier last year.

But now, after about a month, not only do I have a product page that’s pulling in a moderate amount of interest, I also have some market research that tells me there’s a real interest in this kind of product (211 downloads with little real promotion).

So what if I put together a number of other default ebook formats using colour, graphics, different sizes etc. and then offered that package for sale? How much could I charge for that?

Maybe I won’t do it at all, or maybe I won’t do it for several months, I have a lot of other ideas in motion. So, if you want to go do it before me, there’s the idea, go right ahead. I wouldn’t expect a cut of the money, but a link to this internet business blog would be nice. 😉

It’s still free at the moment, so go grab the default ebook layout before I start charging!

-Frank Haywood.