Have you ever had a great idea while you're out and about and had nowhere to write it down easily or scribbled it on a scrap of paper and then lost it? If so, this article is for you...

 When you have a great idea while you’re out and about, just call your own answering machine and leave yourself a message. How easy is that!

FAQS

Q. What if someone at home answers the phone?

A. Get them to write it down or ask them to hang up so you can call back and leave a message.

Q. What if I don’t have an answering machine?

A. BT’s 1571 voicemail service is free – use it.

Q. What if I’m not a BT customer?

A.  Get yourself a free softphone and VOIP number from http://www.sipgate.co.uk/ . (You can choose any UK STD code including 0845). Setup the voicemail feature and then close the programme on your PC. Your messages will arrive in your e-mail inbox as audio file attachments – you just click on the attachment to listen.

As an alternative, for a few pounds you can buy a digital voice recorder (Try Argos or Amazon). These days they are usually smaller than a mobile phone and most will even upload files to the PC via a USB lead. Carry one in your pocket or handbag and you never need to forget a great idea again.

Steve Bunyan – Life Coach

Today sees the launch of smart-garden.co.uk which is a family run gardening business based in Northampton. I am very pleased to have worked with Fred and Jen on helping turn their ideas into a reality. You can see the results for yourself at smart-garden.co.uk

My very best wishes to Fred and Jen,

Steve Bunyan - Life Coach

Yesterday my client and friend, Angela Macadam-Thomson launched her new website hypnotherapyshop.com. Angela is a hypnotherapist and her new website offers everything she does in a very simple and easy to navigate format. Not only does it showcase her products and services, it also enables visitors to buy them online. Her services include everything from a CD to help you quit smoking, to a year long, elite sports programme for anyone who wants to be a regular winner in their chosen discipline. Apart from detailing the products and services she sells, her website has a mailing list, a blog, an online enquiry form, a shopping cart, an affiliate programme and a links page. It can take credit card payments and it automatically records details of all the traffic and transactions genrated by her affiliates so that she can pay them any commissions due very easily.  She can update all of these herself, whenever she needs or wants to. Despite her abiliy to do all of these things, Angela would be the first to admit that she's no computer whizz.

Angela's website is something we worked together very closely on, and it is the first working manifestation of my plan to show up-and-coming small businesses how to put together an e-Commerce website for themselves without the need to pay for a web design company.

I am currently putting this plan together into an e-Book (Websites for Winners) which, once completed, will be available for download here, on my website free of charge and will enable the user to put together their own small business, e-Commerce website for under £50. Yes, that's under fifty pounds! So many small business websites not only cost many times more to have written, but also never actually deliver any new business whatsoever. My plan is for "Websites for Winners" to be a solution to this problem for any small business that wants it.

"Websites for Winners" will be a step-by-step guide to creating your own, professional, small business website to not only showcase what you do, but also and perhaps more importantly, advertise, promote and sell what you do too. Unlike some I have seen, it takes an approach which is British, not American from conception. I'm not knocking the Americans in any way, it's simply that there are a lot of cultural differences between our nations and many small businesses here in the UK frankly struggle to feel comfortable with a wholly Americanised approach. For that reason my e-Book will not be about writing single page, sales funnel websites, but about writing multi-page, multifunction, interactive ones instead.

I intend for the e-Book to be such a simple process to follow, that anyone who can use a PC can do it all themselves. As far as I'm aware, there isn't yet any system on the market which can offer this. Of course there are website packages available that are pretty simple to use, but it seems to me that they all lack one vital ingredient or another; "Websites for Winners" won't.

On top of this e-Book I plan to offer page templates which can be simply cut and pasted into the blank website to produce top quality pages from both a design and a marketing perspective. These too, will be available for download right here on my website for a small fee. For those who want to do it themselves, but don't feel 100% comfortable doing so, I will of course, be offering packages of coaching sessions. For anyone who can't, won't or simply doesn't have the time to use a PC to write it themselves, I will also be offering an off-the-shelf, complete, web design service too.

So, if you are intersted in having your own small business, e-Commerce website from under £50 that actually generates new sales, just watch this blog! If you would like to be informed when Websites for Winners is launched, you should join my mailing list (on the left of this page) and if you would like to know more now, you can e-mail me here . 

I've just added another new free software package to my Freebies page.

TurboCASH .7 is an open source accounting package that is free for everyone to download and distribute under the terms of the General Public Licence (GPL).

It is one of the world's first fully-featured open source accounts packages for small business.

Great news for small businesses everywhere!

Steve Bunyan - Life Coach

In future, whenever I add anything new to my website I'll write a short blog article about it on this page.

If you would like to have those articles delivered direct to your e-mail inbox just subscribe to the RSS feed at the bottom of this, my blog page.

You can then add the link for the feed to your e-mail software (such as Microsoft Outlook) and have it delivered directly to your inbox.

This means that whenever I write a new blog article you'll be informed straight away with a message in your inbox.

Steve Bunyan - Life Coach

During April and May 2008 I've given my website a whole new look. There is a new layout, new pages, new features, new pictures, in fact, all sorts of new things.

Some of the latest additions and improvements to my website include the following:

Affiliate programme This is now fully operational enabling you to earn an income by selling my products and services on your website, blog, myspace or facebook page, or even by e-mail.

Tell-A-Friend buttons at the bottom of most web pages. This means that it now takes just a few seconds to e-mail your friends to tell them about anything you find on my website that you think they might like. The e-mail will include a link to the page, so that with one click, they can see what you're talking about... and don't forget, Tell-A-Friend doesn't add you or your friends to any mailing lists.

Business Partners ... My business partners are people I work closely with.

CV for Winners ... A CV template so good that it will get you the job you want or i'll give you your money back!

Learn to Meditate ... it's easy, try it. This page has simple meditation instructions and downloadable meditation tracks to buy for just 99p each.

Freebies... A page dedicated to things which are entirely free and really worth having.

VIP Lounge... a "coaching clients and business partners only" area containing free resources, tools and more. I want my website to be a really useful resource for clients, business partners and visitors alike. I also want people to tell others about my website. So if there is something you would like to see, please let me know. You can e-mail me here.

Steve Bunyan - Life Coach

If you've heard of "The Law of Attraction" or "The Secret" you might find this short video fascinating. Could it perhaps be a step towards providing scientific evidence that our thoughts actually shape the world around us?

Steve Bunyan - Life Coach

By Steve Bunyan - Life Coach

This article is published and also availble to read on EvanCarmichael.com

If you run a small business, especially if you are just starting out, working from home can be a great way to run that business. It can save time and money, make life more flexible and solve all sorts of other issues into the bargain. The big difficulty most people face when working from home is being able to separate their work life from their personal life. So here are my two top tips to get you focussed on the fundamentals of working from home.

TOP TIP NUMBER 1: De-clutter
The external environment in which we live is both a reflection of our inner thoughts and it directly affects and steers those thoughts too. If you live and work in a cluttered physical environment your mind will feel cluttered and you will find it difficult to concentrate or prioritise. If however, you de-clutter your workspace (and your personal space too), making it tidy, removing unnecessary and unrelated items, arranging it for maximum effectiveness and efficiency and keeping everything in its place, you will find that your concentration improves, your focus is sharper, your ability to prioritise increases and your stress levels drop dramatically. De-cluttering alone can have an incredible effect on your ability to cope with changing demands. Try it – the results may simply astound you.

TOP TIP NUMBER 2: Separation
This has 2 distinct components; 1. Have a separate and clearly defined space for your work. This is best achieved by having a separate room used only for work. Resist the temptation to bring your home life into your workroom and vice versa. 2. Separate your time. Set yourself clearly defined working hours. During those hours you should be in your workroom and only come out for pre-planned or comfort breaks. Then, equally importantly, when it is not time for work, don’t spend time in your workspace. Clearly, if you have a caring role to integrate into your day alongside work, this may prove to be a challenging goal, but the aim should be to separate these two aspects of your life as much as is reasonable and possible bearing in mind your own individual lifestyle. Separation is very important because it allows you to focus on one thing at a time. If you are surrounded by household chores and distractions like a TV or people who want to chat, it is extremely hard to stay focussed enough to be effective and efficient. If however, you do separate your work and home life in this way, you will not only achieve more in your work, your home life will be hugely more rewarding too. This is simply because you will give each of them your full attention and the commitment they truly deserve. Controversial as it may be, from my perspective as a Life Coach, the idea of ‘multi-tasking’ is one that has been cooked up by ineffective people as an excuse for poor performance. To make matters worse it has then been adopted, especially by busy women who have multiple roles and has somehow become ‘cool’. I believe that this may be an effort to level the playing field with their male counterparts. My advice ladies, is this; celebrate your differences from men – don’t try to overcome them. They are a part of what makes you women and you should be very proud of them. Multi-tasking is in my opinion not a key skill or soft skill – it is a meme or mind virus which perpetuates the problem of being unable to focus and thus achieve your personal goals.

Welcome everyone, thanks for visiting - I hope you like it. Please keep coming back to see what's new. Oh, and don't forget to tell all your friends about it too. Best wishes, Steve :)