“It is difficult to see the picture when you are inside the frame.”

~Eugene Kleiner, Co-founder Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers

How do you know if you’re meant to be an entrepreneur?

“Do I spend my life working for someone else or do I take a crack and beating the odds and hanging my own shingle?”

It’s an age-old question (and one of the most important when it comes to doing passionate work) and today we’re going to get the answer from someone who’s much more qualified than I – my good friend John Greathouse.

Now that I think of it, today is also a pretty big day. Until now, I have never published a guest article on Live Your Legend. Not once in 4+ years has an article on this site been written by someone other than me.

Today that’s changing ever so slightly, and I’m very excited about it.

From now on, over 90% of what you read at Live Your Legend will still be created by me, but in the future I will very occasionally host a guest expert, a Living Legend, who can cover a topic about 100x better than I could.

After all, how ridiculous would it be to assume I could cover every topic regarding doing work we love, better than other experts out there? The truth is, in some cases (actually, a lot of them) that’s just not true. Plus, a different perspective is always useful.

So today I’d like to introduce a good friend and mentor, John Greathouse.

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*Note: In the spirit of full disclosure and helping in any way I can, I am filling you in on both the below details and my full private product launch checklist.  I only disclose this information because I feel it will allow you to further Live Your Legend. Sometimes real numbers help people listen a little more closely.

Enjoy.

****

On November 8th, 2011 I launched Live Your Legend’s flagship product – the Live Off Your Passion self study eCourse.

In the following 30 days the course sold 369 copies and made $31,355.50.

I was blown away.

But in a way I believe I (with the guidance of some very smart folks) created much of that luck.

I believe that at least 70% (if not more) of my success came from my detailed development and launch strategy.

After the launch settled down, I spent a full day deconstructing my full product creation and launch process for two reasons:

1. To understand what worked & why, and
2. To make the experience repeatable

The result was a 7-page, 135-item checklist of tasks and events that took place over the course of about 3 months from product creation all the way through to launch and post-launch.

I thought about keeping this private but in the spirit of helping you any way I can, just last night I put it into a free PDF download as part of the Epic Work Toolkit that all subscribers have free access to (download your copy at the bottom of this post – if reading this in email, click here to get access).

Warning: this checklist won’t be any use unless you are genuinely helping people.

Remember, it all comes back to helping those around you.

None of these product creation and launch strategies matter even an ounce if you do not do the things we’ve discussed in the past few weeks.

You absolutely must: 

• Find a way to massively help people using your passions and gifts
• Build it into an incredibly compelling and different positioning and online offer
• Surround yourself with passionate people doing the impossible

If you need a refresher, go back and read the last four articles on this site. Seriously take some time and meditate on that stuff.

Then come back to this checklist and watch it blow your mind.

*Note: Before creating my product, my friend Corbett Barr said I absolutely must read How to Launch the *** Out of Your eBook. The guidance in that book was absolute gold and it works for most any online product launch. Much of my launch checklist came from the things I learned in that book. The problem was the book didn’t provide an easy-to-follow checklist, so I decided to make one myself!

Download the full checklist that lead to my $31,000 product launch:

Ok, now for the really fun part. All LYL subscribers get this tool 100% for free.

To get the PDF download just enter your email in the form below.

**Some clarity for those of you new to Live Your Legend: Just so you know how things work around here, every couple months I create a massive workbook or tool in the form of a PDF, Word doc or online test to help you further do work you love, and I make it available totally for free as part of the set of tools every email subscriber gets access to (I call it the Epic Work Toolkit). It’s a way of me saying thanks for your support.

If you’re already a subscriber, don’t worry, you will not be double subscribed. You will just be taken straight to the download page.

If you are not a subscriber yet, entering your email below will give you full access to our full suite of free tools and you’ll get an update every time a new article comes out as well as some other exclusive subscriber-only content. Thanks for joining the community and being a part of what we’re building!

Don’t see a form? Click here.

I hope this launch checklist is even half as helpful for you all as it was for me!

-Scott

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