The 5 Mistakes That Guarantee Your Business Never Gets Off The Ground

I see ‘$27 gurus’ giving terrible advice all time, while new entrepreneurs follow them straight off a cliff…It just breaks my heart.

Part 1 of 2

After years of beating my head against the wall until there was nothing but a bloody spot, I finally realized that much of the advice I’d received from the $27-guru crowd was absolutely wrong.

Not just wrong, but dangerously wrong!

Before I made my first nickel online in 2005, I spent $22,000 of money I didn’t have, $27 at a time on ebook after ebook.

Those low-cost ebooks professing to reveal the secret to making money online without lifting a finger to do the work usually were a colossal waste of money.

They all claimed you could follow some secret black hat ‘hack’ or by slip through an unknown ‘Google loophole’ to make instant cash. Usually, the only one making any money was the one revealing ‘the secret’!

With so many disenchanted wanna-be-get-rich-quick-entrepreneurs out there, no wonder the Internet Marketing crowd got such a bad name.

The real issue for the aspiring business folks was not that financial loss. After all, $27 does break anyone’s bank account. It’s the crushed spirit and the vanishing hope of financial freedom when you realize you’ve squandered your biggest asset.

Time.

Waste too much time following the advice of someone who doesn’t really have a sustainable or successful entrepreneurial experience, and you’re not only at zero again, but you may even be further behind.

Those $27-gurus haven’t built a business. At best, they’ve built an illusion. It may have everyone fooled for a moment, but when things get a little shaky, it all crumbles and disappears in the wind. They disappear never to be heard from again.

It kills me when I see this happening.

That’s why I committed to my long-term goals and passion when building my business.

NAMS didn’t start out as an online business training company, but as a hosting company.

When I realized my customers didn’t know who to trust or who to follow to set their businesses up right, I introduced them to the best people, either at the NAMS Workshop or in our MyNAMS Insiders Club.

The Insiders Club became the business behind the glass wall. All the Insiders get to watch as we figure out what’s working today and for the future in the long haul.

It’s a little like making sausage – never pretty, often messy, but always tasty.

What we teach and what we preach is from our experience. Every week, on our live mastermind call with the Insiders, we review our experience in our business, and share what’s working and what’s not working from our members as well.

This is real world stuff in real time.

We root out the really bad advice that stinks up the Internet, and try to be a guiding light for the new marketer to get on the right path, right away.

Now, I’m not against low-cost items that help you build a system using strategies and tactics that fundamentally work. Just make sure it’s not a ‘hack‘ or ‘hidden loophole‘… there’s no future there. That’s one of the biggest mistakes you can make, taking really bad advice from people who care only about their wallet, not yours.

But it’s not the only bad advice you’ll see.

In this two-part blog series, I’ve decided to reveal the 5 worst pieces of advice you can get and how to avoid it. Here it is:

Create your product first
Get more traffic
Focus on your passion
Get the money and get out
Get your Infrastructure in place first

Today, we’re going to look at 1 and 2.

Next, we’ll tackle 3, 4 and 5.

Bad Advice #1: Create Your Product First…

This is just awful. This piece of advice is the one thing that strips new marketers of all hope because they are guaranteed to fail! And it’s a really a costly failure.

The bad advice is often couched in these well-intentioned platitudes:

“You’ve got something to say and people need to hear it,” or

“You’re an expert. Just claim it and get your product out there for people because they’re waiting on you…”

Frankly, unless you’ve figured out how to cure cancer, no one is waiting to hear what you have to say.

I know we all want to believe that we have solved a serious problem and we have to get our product out the door because people need it.

Maybe they do, but they have to WANT it first.

That’s where all that marketing and sales experience comes in so handy.

And they’re not sitting idly waiting for your product. EVER.

Don’t get me wrong. You may have a great product idea. And you may have some life experience that is absolutely riveting.

But building your product first is the fastest path to going out of business.

Here’s what happens to a lot of new entrepreneurs:

you spend all your time building your product
throw up some last-minute sales page because a guru said you must have one of those
hook up a PayPal account to the buy button
wait for people to send you money ‘while you sleep’
And then, you wait for people to beat a path to your door

Crickets. Nothing. No nibbles. No sales.

This confirms your worst nightmare. Your husband or wife was right! Your mom said, “I told you so!” Everyone was right. There’s no way to make money with an online business!

It’s time to give up.

What’s missing?

EVERYTHING is missing! Especially sales and marketing strategies and techniques.

You’ve made the classic mistake of spending your hard-earned cash building a product without a market, that doesn’t solve a desperate problem, or that people haven’t said they want or need.

The only one with a desperate problem now is YOU!

Next step? Clinical depression.

Man, this seems harsh as I’m rereading it, but I really wish someone had smacked me up side the head with this TRUTH when I first started.

I’ve done it. Been there. Got the t-shirt.

My XXL says, “I’m with stupid!” and the arrow’s pointing up at my face.

You’re not alone.

That’s why I teach that product creation is the LAST step!

We break the business down into two simple layers: Marketing and Delivery.

Marketing equals sales, traffic, conversions – all the skills and techniques required to make money. If you live in this layer and master it, you’ll be rich for ever!
Delivery equals the plumbing of your business, the infrastructure, the products – all the technology you need to build an empire. And frankly, you never need to know how any of this works…

I love the delivery layer. It’s fun. And it’s tangible. You can see your progress there very quickly.

The marketing layer is harder. You have to get good at sales and marketing to survive.

But don’t spend any time in the delivery layer first…

In fact, you shouldn’t step foot in there until you are making beaucoup money.

It’s not necessary to your success. When you’re making a lot of money selling other people’s products using THEIR delivery layer, you may be ready to build your own – including your own products – if you decide you want the headache of a complex infrastructure. (We’ll talk more about this in #5.)

But not until then.

Here’s another harsh truth: Your product is not so special that it will sell itself.

Everyone I know who is successful in business spends 80 to 95 percent of their time SELLING.

But it’s not really necessary to have your own product. You should focus on selling other products until you get REALLY good at it, and forget creating your own products.

Why? Let’s count the reasons:

You didn’t have to spend the time building it yourself.
You don’t have to invest cash in the solution.
You test the market to determine if the consumer market wants it while being completely detached from the outcome.
You can drop it like a hot potato if it doesn’t sell – and not lose a wink of sleep over it.
You can serve your community by offering solutions to problems which makes you a vital service provider.
You get paid for your performance. The more you sell, the more money you earn.
You learn to sell and market immediately without waiting until everything is ready (when you’re creating your own products).
You build relationships that will reciprocate for you when you’re ready to sell your own products down the road (if you decide to do that).
You discover how to generate cash fast.
You get paid by other people to build your list with quality buyers.

Bad Advice #2: Get More Traffic…

Oy vey!

What if every click on any link to your website costs you $1.

Imagine a little meter in the upper right corner of your site that counted the clicks, dinging every time a new person visits, and withdraws a $1 from your bank account instantly.

No money is going into your website because the person who visits doesn’t buy anything.

Your friend, Annie, has a meter on her site too. And every time someone visits, it dings her account $1 just as it does yours. But within a few minutes, her website meter sends out a beautiful cash register sound and adds $2.

That’s because someone just deposited $2 into her account.

For every dollar she spends, she gets $2.

You tell your friend, Tom, about Annie. You mention how frustrated you are that your site doesn’t seem to be making any money, and you’re not sure what the problem is.

Tom, who doesn’t have a website at all, decides to write an ebook about Annie’s experience. The conclusion is that Annie is going to get very rich as she drives more traffic to her site.

It’s a secret formula anyone can follow Tom says on his sales page, and you can solve your traffic problem with his ebook for just $27.

You buy the book. Tom’s conclusion is that all you need is more traffic, because that’s what Annie needs to create more sales with a converting offer.

You decide that’s right! More traffic will solve your problem. You get 10 times the traffic you had and immediately you see that your bank account is draining 10 times faster!

More traffic? No! No! No!

Traffic is a double-edged sword!

Sending lots of traffic to a bad offer that doesn’t convert and continuing to do so over time will bankrupt you FAST!

What’s the solution?

First, get new friends. Tom’s an idiot.

Immediately, stop paying for traffic until you figure out why it’s costing you so much. In other words, why isn’t it converting?

Annie is doing something right. What is it?

Study Annie’s site, her offer and the marketing system that she’s using. Why is her site converting so well? Talk to her. She’s living the successful online business life.

What’s she doing that you’re not?

Then, look at other people’s offers and conversions. What’s working for them? Why is yours not?

You’ll discover that successful marketers are split testing sales pages, messages, offers and prices to build the best conversion rates.

Terry Dean, one of my real mentors, says: You don’t have a traffic problem. You have a conversion problem!

Always!

Successful marketers are spending as little as possible to determine what works best, and then doing more of that.

Testing becomes your best friend.

Make changes slowly and watch your numbers.

Test those changes with small, but meaningful amounts of traffic to make sure your changes are effective in a positive way. Continue testing until the conversions don’t rise any longer.

Test different markets, warm or cold traffic, paid or free, Bing or Google, Facebook or Youtube. You’re looking for the sweet spot.

When your conversions are making you more money than you’re spending, then – and only then – do you need more traffic.

Here’s the key:

If you’re making money because your traffic conversions are really good, then you know exactly how much money you can spend on getting more traffic and it becomes a self-perpetuating system.

But not until.

What we’ll cover in Part 2…Click here to read it.

One of my favorite, and more controversial efforts this year was to focus on creating our own products or selling other people’s products that solve real problems with real solutions. We backed that up with our favorite hashtag:

#SellNoCrap

The final 3 pieces of bad advice really support an attitude of quality and service above all by focusing on your passion AND money, building value in your offers, and creating systems that work for you all the time.

Stay tuned. I think you’ll love the next part in this series.

Tell us what bad advice you gotten in building your business in the comments below.

To learn more about how you can test drive the MyNAMS Insiders Club for only $1, click here

The Audacity of Hope; The Importance of Commitment; The Blessings of Failure

By David Perdew 6 Comments

“The Audacity of HOPE; The Importance of COMMITMENT; The Blessings of FAILURE; The Path to SUCCESS!”

Sometimes, a gem scrolls through my Facebook newsfeed, and someone says something profound that makes me reflect on my life.

I’m always grateful. Always optimistic. And always pushing forward.

But it can be a real struggle sometimes.

Click to play Denzel's 90 second speech..

I know you know exactly what I’m talking about. We have conversations sometimes, and in those, I hear the burning desire and determination that is required to succeed.

So, when I heard one of the great celebrity philosophers of stage and screen, Denzel Washington, this week give a short but profound acceptance speech for one of his many rewards, I was kind of blown away.

He was talking to you and me.

I heard it.

I started thinking about it.

And this is what I came up with:

HOPE is a an audacious, double-edged sword that cuts both ways unless you know how to wield it

Twenty-two years ago, when I was bouncing from couch to couch, friend to friend, family member to family member with the tiny bit of stuff I held onto packed in the back of my SUV, HOPE kept me alive.

When the love of my life came met me in the living room and told me she had cancer, HOPE helped me be strong and put one foot in front of the other.

When 6 months of unemployment with no job in site drained our bank accounts and kept me awake at night, HOPE was the only thing I wasn’t willing to give up.

When my online business began to feel like an abyss that was sucking me into oblivion, HOPE was the only thing that kept me from burning down everything we’d built.

But there’s a problem with HOPE…

As I sat with great HOPE – and that seemed to be the only thing I had, I kept asking myself if I was just being delusional.

Am I just being a pollyanna with my head buried so deep that I can’t see reality?

There are many people out there who tell you to snap out it, get real, and be practical. Essentially, they’ll crush your dreams if you let them. Always be on guard.

But also remember that those very same people may love you so much that they’re concerned you’ll be devastated when your dreams are dashed, and they think they’re protecting you from disaster.

Those people dashing your dreams are absolutely right, unless…

Listen up: HOPE can be what drives you forward, or it can keep you stuck in a constant state of despair.

Your next step determines which way this sword swings, because it’s in your hands.

You have to decide…

And that’s it. The first action I take when I’m in a desperate situation is to make a decision.

Will I step forward into the unknown, or retreat into the familiar.

The unknown is hard. COMMITMENT to change is required.

And change is hard, but as Denzel said in that acceptance speech, “Ease is a greater threat to progress than hardship.”

COMMITMENT is tricky. We think that COMMITMENT comes with great difficulty. But truly, you’re always COMMITTED.

Sometimes you’re COMMITTED to staying the same, and that means you’re COMMITTED to doing nothing new.

I know I’ve been there.

Who doesn’t want to sit down and rest? Do nothing? Let everything just happen?

But that’s not growth.

Quoting Denzel again, “Without COMMITMENT you’ll never start. Without consistency you’ll never finish.”

There it is. Make a decision. Be COMMITTED to it. And stick with it, as my dad says, “No matter what!”

So, what happens when you FAIL?

Because you will. We all do. FAILURE is the great blessing in our lives. It gets us one step closer to what works.

Nobody likes FAILURE, but FAILURE is an absolute essential element in growth.

It’s a paradox.

Without FAILURE, we have no idea if we can succeed.

Without FAILURE, there’s no opportunity to improve.

Without FAILURE, we can’t teach other people what works.

Eventually, we bump into enough walls, step in enough potholes, and exhaust all possibilities that the only thing left is success.

That’s only possible if we maintain HOPE and COMMITMENT.

The blessing of FAILURE is strength and growth. As the HOPE and COMMITMENT are tested, we get stronger, more HOPEFUL and more COMMITTED to finding the right solution.

Is this the path to every SUCCESS?

I’d like to say, “No, some people find success easily and fast.”

But that’s not my experience, nor is it the experience of anyone that I know who is successful.

Every example held up as an overnight success usually has traveled a path strewn with one discarded failure after another, but because they are so focused, committed and hopeful, we only hear about the sudden success.

That’s great, but the stories of overnight success can seriously cause many of us to cry out, “I’ll never make it.”

In fact, you’re on your path. You’re building your story. It takes what it takes to get you where you are.

Finally, I used to live in the problem bemoaning all my challenges and my failures. “Why me?” was my anthem.

Now, after many years of ups and downs, great decisions and bad choices, millions of dollars in and millions of dollars out, I wouldn’t trade any of those problems (i.e. FAILURES) for anything.

Everyone of them turned out to be a blessing and a stepping stone to the next great thing that happened in my life.

The Taoist story of the farmer who said “maybe”

I heard this story 20 years ago, when I was living in a 2-room apartment in Atlanta, loaded with more than a quarter-million dollars of debt, a $15 an hour job, and a whole lot of self-pity.

It made a ton of sense then and even more as I look back.

An old farmer had worked his crops for many years with his prized horse. One day, the horse ran away. His neighbors came to visit when they heard the news.

“Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.

“Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed. “You are so lucky!”

“Maybe,” replied the old farmer.

The following day, his son jumped on one of the wild horses to tame it and was thrown, breaking his leg.

The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. “Maybe,” answered the farmer.

The next day, government officials came to the village to get young men in the army to fight a looming war.

The son’s leg was broken, so they did not grab him.

The neighbors who were lamenting the loss of their sons, once again, congratulated the farmer on his luck.

“Maybe,” said the farmer.

Never give up, NEVER give up…

Things never go as planned.

But if you have HOPE, COMMITMENT and learn from your FAILURES, SUCCESS is not far away…

Are You Looking For Support and Training So You Can Turn Your Failures Into Successes?

Try The MyNAMS Insiders Club For $1 Today!

Get Rich With WordPress

By David Perdew 1 Comment

“It Started on WordPress and Made This Author More than $100 Million…”

Last weekend, the second in author E.L. James series hit the box office.

The sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, did nearly $50 million at the box office crushing everything else except The LEGO Batman Movie.

With the release of her latest film, I thought it would be great to review how all this started with a blog post.

Grey birthed a new genre commonly known as “mommy porn”? The book’s genesis was as a story – not a very good one either – on a Twilight Fan Fiction site in 2010.

(Unfortunately, the author’s publisher has removed practically all traces of the early work on the Internet)

She quickly moved the story to a personal website (50Shades.com) which has since been rolled into her current author page at eljamesauthor.com.

The response was overwhelming. She began selling copies as an ebook of the early rendition and then quickly contracted with a print-on-demand paperback publisher.

The author’s FAQ page says:

Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed were never self-published as these novels. An earlier version of this story began as Twilight fan fiction which was posted on the internet. The trilogy was picked up by an Australian publisher, The Writer’s Coffee Shop, who released them as e-books and print-on-demand paperbacks.

According to paidcontent.org (http://paidcontent.org/2013/01/10/with-release-in-hardcover-50-shades-completely-flips-traditional-publishing-cycle/):

A tiny Australian publisher then released them as ebooks and print-on-demand paperbacks, selling about 250,000 copies. Random House snapped up the rights in a seven-figure deal, rereleased the ebooks and made 50 Shades widely available in paperback for the first time — where it achieved stratospheric success.

Fast forward a year later and Fifty Shades of Grey was at the top of the New York Times Bestseller list. Soon, it would be followed by two more Grey books, all in the top 10 list.

Just the list ma’am, just the list…

Remember Dragnet from the old days when Jack Webb played Sgt. Joe Friday. Look it up on IMDB kids.

Sgt. Friday’s favorite line delivered in a dry monotone was, “Just the facts ma’am, just the facts.”

Today, it’s all about the list.

If EL James hadn’t had a list, a huge list of devoted fans, publishers wouldn’t have come knocking. Nobody would have taken a chance on an unpublished first-time author who was writing graphically about sexual bondage and sadomasochism.

But she had a huge market. An audience of rabid followers who were already buyers begging for more.

Seven figures and a life-changing journey followed.

It started with a WordPress blog

She still has WordPress blogs, very fancy well-designed ones, but they are WordPress.

She probably had the same type of shared hosting you may have from some place like Liquid Web. And she probably had a low-cost autoresponder like aWeber.

She may not have known it then, and may not even know it now, but she owes her success to her list. Some would call it a market.

So, what about you? Are you the next Big Thing?

If you’re not building your list, I doubt it.

When you have a big, responsive list, and can influence a lot of people, you don’t have to be all that good as a writer or speaker to command a lot of attention.

But if you’re incredibly good at whatever you do, and don’t have a list, you won’t get the time of day.

There are a gazillion plugins that will help you build your list as aggressively as you want. To recommend any here would be silly, but here are two of my favorites 🙂

Optin Monster (a littler more expensive, but we use this for nearly everything on our site because of the analytics)
Lead Pages (the fastest way to get an optin page up and start building your list)

The key to building a really successful business online is to focus on building a responsive list and keep adding to it every day.

And some day, you could find yourself with a little extra – like maybe substantial – cash in your pocket.

The money really is in the list.

In 2013, according to Wikipedia, she joined the Forbes list of highest earning authors with earnings of $95m which included $5m for the film rights to Fifty Shades of Grey!

And maybe like you, it all started with WordPress.

Need to Learn More About Building Your WordPress Blog?

Try The MyNAMS Insiders Club Today for Just $1

Why Free Coaching Will Send You Into Bankruptcy….

By David Perdew Leave a Comment

“Why Free Coaching Will Send You Into Bankruptcy Fast!”

Working with FREE coaches was the most expensive lesson I’ve ever learned in doing business online...

I guess I was too cheap…

Not frugal. Not smart. Just cheap.

And listen, I don’t say that easily. I always thought I was being smart with my money.

Spending a little instead of a lot seemed very smart.

But that’s a sucker’s game, it turns out.

Dropping a thousand or more on programs and coaches was not an option for me. I didn’t have the mindset for that.

Yet money slipped through my fingers like water through a sieve because I fooled myself into thinking that I could learn just as much with a free report. Or maybe a $7 product. Sometimes, I would spend up to $97 - but I had to think about it pretty hard.

But I bought something new every day!

In fact, this "cautious" approach was the worst investment I could make in my online business education.

Instead of learning how to do business online, I got a $22,000 lesson in how to blow $22,000 on products that didn’t get me any closer to a real business.

Twenty-seven dollars at a time.

All of a sudden, $27 turned into $22,000 on my credit card with no online revenue to show for it.

Confessing this in 2004 was one of the hardest days - and best lessons - of my online business life

Charlsa (my wife and business partner) and I were strolling down the country road in front of our house on one of our summer walks and discussing our credit card problem.

“How do we owe more than $20,000 on this card,” she asked?

That’s when I told her that I’d been buying everything “learning” to do business online.

She was so angry that I really thought I’d destroyed this marriage. It wasn’t the spending. It was the spending without telling.

She had every right to be angry.

And I had every right to feel like a complete idiot.

We discussed the business and just how real my dream was.

I was working full time then and traveling the country as a consultant. The money was good, but I wanted to trade it in for the dream of managing my own time, working from home, and being with my wife (who was ready to kill me).

She was teaching K-12 music at two different schools 8 miles apart in north Alabama. With only 30 minutes to get from one school to the other, she snarfed down her lunch on the road between schools every day as she moved from class to class at a break-neck pace.

Think about it: She prepared 12 lesson plans each day.

She was working like a demon.

And I’d spent $22,000 which was nearly two-thirds of her annual salary as a teacher in just a few months.

Getting through this was hard, but we did it.

She didn’t block my dream of building an online training company even though she could have because she held all the cards.

But we agreed that I would be more open about the business finances and the risks that I was too willing to take.

And we agreed that I needed three things:

to pay for real business coaching to help guide me along the way
to bounce my ideas off someone else who had been down the path before me successfully
to commit to listening to the experience of a coach

I knew Charlsa completely bought into the value of coaching, even more than I, by a simple exchange at a NAMS Workshop session.

The session had been going on for about 45 minutes when I came in. I spied her in the back of the room taking notes furiously.

“Where have you been,” she said as she smacked me on the shoulder. “You need to be coaching with this guy.”

“This guy is Alex Mandossian,” I said. “And he gets $25,000 to $50,000 per student per year!”

“And he’s worth every penny,” was her reply.

Three years ago, I began coaching with Alex.

She was right. He was worth every penny and more. Alex was my mentor for 18 months, and we remain good friends today. He helped me get my head right when it comes to business. He helped me realize my value as an experienced business person with a ton of great relationships, great products, and a great reputation.

He was there whenever I had a problem that had me stumped.

And he had this uncanny knack of answering my very specific question with a high-level diagram or handout that tied to an Alexism (parable) that helped me discover the problem as it fit into the whole of my business.

Then, that problem became much smaller or disappeared.

For example, when I complained that I had set all my prices too low, he said, "Pricing is a self-esteem issue."

That was the first time I realized that I didn't have enough confidence in my own value to price my products for what I'm really worth. (Notice, that was not the problem I thought I was going to solve.)

He was the fifth coach I’d used in 7 years, and I’m now working with a sixth.

Each brings something different to the table.

I ate off their tables until I was full, and then looked for another table to get different experience. And I encourage you to do the same.

Why is working with a coach important?

I’ve come up with 4 great reasons working with a coach is key to your success.

Your mind will expand in many directions. This is not true for everyone, but it was for me. If you pay someone to coach you, and it’s enough money to hurt a little each month, you take it seriously.I’m more open to suggestions and more focused on taking the action when I'm paying someone each month to direct me. There's nothing worse than knowing I have to go back to that coach next week and report no progress.I don’t pay people thousands of dollars so I can argue with them about the solution. If I trust my judgement in hiring the right coach, I listen closely and implement fast.Once committed, I’m committed for the duration. Every one of my coaches have said I’m a great student because I actually do the work. And that’s why I get so much out of our coaching relationship.
She should be able to help me flatten the learning curve. Of course, I have to know what I want before I approach the coach. If I hire someone who is a great product creation coach, but I’m looking for information about creating automated Facebook Ad campaigns, then it’s not a fit - at that time.I would work with five of my six coaches again in a heartbeat if I need help in their particular areas of expertise. But the last thing I want to do is pay someone to learn what I’m learning. They need to have a high level of experience in their expertise.One coach actually fired me because she said, “You have a million dollar business; you need a million dollar coach. I’m not a million dollar coach. Now, go find that coach to go to the next level.”That’s a coach who knows her value and her expertise, and is confident enough to work within her comfort zone. I refer dozens of people to her.
Relationships matter. Is that coach going to bring you into a peer-to-peer group where you can bounce ideas off other people with similar problems? Is he introducing you to other resources that can help you get specific solutions quickly?Part of the value of a great coach is introduction to other resources. A coach can’t be all things to you, but he should be the one that protects you, helps you, and leads you to work with the right people.If you trust your coach, you should trust his circle too.And if you’re thinking about hiring a coach, you should talk to people he has coached to see if his circle of clients resonates with you.
Access comes with boundaries. Emergencies happen, but most coaches will only talk to you or answer questions during set office hours. And sometimes those are very restrictive.Why is that good for you? Because you have to start thinking ahead. With my current coach, I know I get one 30-minute phone call per month. And he’s available only on Wednesdays.It’s my responsibility to set it up, and to work around his schedule.Here’s the thing. We were already friends before I ask him to become my coach. I still have to work within the coaching parameters.A coach is not your friend. He’s not your Mr. Fixit. He’s not your counselor.
He is the person who can help you solve your current business problems and move you closer to your goals.

What happens if you get stuck?

Actually, that question should be what happens WHEN you get stuck because we all do.

But that’s not the time to hunker down or lock yourself in your office vowing to not come out until you’ve found the solution to your stuck-ness.

In fact, it’s the opposite.

Talk to your coach. You think she hasn’t been stuck plenty of times before? Of course, she has.

And I bet she has some advice about getting unstuck.

Call it what you will:

Losing your mojo
Falling out of the groove
Missing the zone
Paralyzed with fear
Limping along
Off track

It doesn’t matter. It’s all the same thing: You're not sure about the next step.

This is when it’s MOST important to reach out to your coach - not your friend - because your coach (if he’s any good) is going to shine a light on the next right thing to do, and then give you a good swift boot in that direction.

Coaching commitment comes in all flavors

We hear about 25k coaches who want your first child as collateral and you think, “Oh, I’m not ready for coaching…”

Are you committed to your business? If yes, you’re ready.
Are you focused on your niche? If yes, you’re ready.
Have you been struggling on your own awhile trying to find your way? If yes, you’re ready.

But ready for what is the real question.

If dropping $25,000 on a coach makes you tremble with fear, then look at other options such as:

Try a 15-minute free strategy session if he offers it - FREE
Purchase an hour or two to solve a specific issue - $200 to $1000
Hire a coach for a month if he offers it - $1000 to $3000
Got a bigger project, hire a coach for 90 days to get more attention and drive to a specific result - $1500 to $5000
Need to build a real plan? Sign up for the year of coaching - $5000 to $25000

And if none of those work for you, look for a group coaching that will drive results in a short period of time like 90 days. $500 to $3500

Whatever you choose, be prepared to start a lifetime journey of working with quality coaches to help you build a simple, scalable and sustainable business.

That’s what you want after all.