I learned three things about  info product creation this morning from my five year old daughter.

My daughter was lying on my bed watching me prepare to go to my day job. As I laid a shirt on the bed and began to button it up so I could steam the wrinkles out of it, she asked me what I was doing.

When I told her, she explained to me how a steamer works.

Shortly after that, I carried her to the loft so she could watch a video, since she had tripped over her huge butterfly pillow yesterday and injured her right big toe. Nothing serious, but she isn’t supposed to walk on it for a few days.

The recorded Tarzan series she was watching starts out with a couple minutes of episode which is interrupted by the introduction scene from the series. There are a bunch of episodes, and she has watched them a number of times.

When the episode was interrupted by the intro scene, she explained to me that there is an intro scene in every episode.

It struck me that she thinks in terms of explaining how things work based on her own observations, rather than asking a question and waiting for someone else to give the explanation.

What does that have to do with Internet marketing and info product creation?

1)      Learn to develop and offer your own observations. My daughter wasn’t afraid to explain what she saw. In order to rapidly create your own products and to continue to find new products to offer, you need to develop a habit of articulating explanations for topics that interest people.

2)      Become interested in how things work. My daughter loves to figure out what makes things tick and she loves to explain it to others. If you are interested in understanding how something works, you will find it easy to dig for the answers to questions people will be asking. It will be easy to convey that knowledge to them, since you have a genuine curiosity about the topic yourself. Also, the broader the range of interests you have, the easier it will be to find topics for more info products.

3)      Be assertive. My daughter considered herself an authority. What makes you an authority on a subject has more to do with the general acceptance of your observations than the validity of the facts you present. The power of your observations grows significantly when you show that you believe in what you say. (After all people accepted the observation that the Earth was flat despite some major inaccuracies in that theory.  It was accepted because of the authority with which it was told.) It’s a myth that you have to know all the facts about a subject to be an authority. You don’t. You just need to understand what works for you.

Take a minute right now – ok, 5 minutes max — to write down three topics that interest you and that you could create an info product about.

Does competition matter?

Give me your opinion in the comments below whether you think it makes a difference whether there is competition for the market you would be targeting.  Does it matter if there already is an info product (e-book, videos, etc)?

An accountability partner can be a great resource to motivate you and to help you reach your goals, but if you are not careful, an accountability partner can be like a ball and chain that drags you down.

To make sure you find an accountability partner who is your catapult to higher and faster achievement and not your crutch, consider this:

The greatest value in having an accountability partner is to maintain a daily discipline of setting and reaching goals. You want someone who helps you keep focused,  motivated and moving forward.

Theoretically, you should have enough self-motivation to go out and do the things you need to do in order to achieve your goals, but being human, we all like to share our victories with someone else.

An accountability partner fills the human need of letting us take pride in what we do, and have it mean something not only to ourselves but to somebody else. By telling another person of our achievements, we get the external feedback that what we do transcends the small world of our own egocentric wants and desires.

When we get positive feedback, we allow ourselves to believe that our efforts are valid because someone else sees them that way too. We tell ourselves that what we do is good and that we should continue, because the universe “out there” has given us the green light and the stamp of approval. What we do transcends us.

That’s an awesome feeling, isn’t it?

Just make sure that the  push for achievement comes from you. If you ask someone to be your accountability partner with the idea that that person is going to show up at your house every day,  shake you awake, tell you what you need to do and sit on you till you do it, then you have a crutch, not an accountability partner.

If you find yourself with a crutch, you should get a new accountability partner or do without one, so that you don’t become a permanent cripple dependent on your accountability partner.

After all, you want to be independent, don’t you? So, you need to find a positive accountability partner to be your catapult.

There are two types of positive accountability partners.

One type is very neutral, almost non-existent. She is someone to whom you can send a daily e-mail, and by doing so you give yourself an extra jolt of re-commitment to moving ahead with your goals.   The only requirement of this type of accountability partner is that he/she has a valid e-mail address.

The second type of positive accountability partner is more interactive. An interactive accountability partner is great as long as the push is coming from you to focus and achieve. An important quality of the interactive accountability partner is that there is no criticism or suggestion that you change direction. You want a cheerleader to reinforce your self-made momentum. The last thing you need is a devil’s advocate who constantly expresses doubt about your every move.

If you have a positive mindset, your accountability partner can be your catapult by simply being there and by giving you positive feedback.

Do you have an accountability partner yet? Is he or she a crutch or a catapult? Let me know in your comments below.