In the rush to succeed online, many people are paying large chunks of cash to learn vital business and internet marketing skills. We have done it and know many people who have done it as well.
It’s easy to get sucked into following a guru and copying what they do, but sooner or later you need to cut the ties and find your own voice and do your own thing. You need to innovate and develop your own stuff.
Even gurus get it wrong. Copying them will not mean what you do is a success. The biggest thing that will make you successful is taking action and developing the right mindset. Not all coaches are trained to help you overcome mindset issues.
Remember that not all business coaches or mentors have your interests at heart – particularly if there are any conflicts of interest between what you do and what they do.
If there is a conflict of interest, say for example you are providing web design services and so are they, remember:
- It is in their interest to sell your their services and also promote their services to others – they will never be good referrers
- It is not in their interest to sell you other services which compete with theirs
We advocate getting coaches and mentors to help you succeed. Just be aware if there are any conflicts – particularly if you have made the decision to turn your Internet Marketing hobby into a business.
We believe you are better of getting coaches who specialize in different areas.
We recommend:
- Get a Internet Marketing coach to learn technical skills of Internet Marketing.
- Get a business coach to learn business skills and help you develop strategy to improve your business
- Get a mindset coach to help to make shifts in your mindset
- Join mastermind groups where the people in the group have complementary services to you – you will get more leverage from forming relationships with people who make good strategic alliances.
Be wary if:
- Your mentor wants to see your books and operates in the same space as you
- Does not ask you to do a business plan or marketing plan
- Does not have any business experience
We coach, but our coaching tends to teach people the technical skills of Internet Marketing and general business skills.
As much as we would like to look inside your business, we don’t. We are also not experts in mindset – although we can help a little in that area
Can we help you with this – yes.
Should we – no.
We recommend leaving that to people who specialize exclusively in business coaching and mentoring. We recommend using people who have business experience.
We also run a digital marketing agency. We help our clients grow their business and provide them with sound and strategic marketing advice and services. We do not provide that advice to people who compete in the same industry.
We have recently reviewed our processes and ended a long association with one mentor. Before we ended the association, we found new mentors that benefit our business and provide better value for our business. Sine we did this, we have had more new business coming in to our business and we have more structured advice specific to our business.
We have a business mentor who :
- Provides advice on our structure
- Does not compete in the same industry
- Wants us to do a business plan and marketing plan
We are also part of a mastermind group:
- Which does not let businesses who compete with each other in the same group
- Provides business advice and training on key business issues common to the group – they bring in experts in different fields for training
Update: Many People have speculated that this post is about a particular person. This is not the case. This post is written from my own observations from several different business and internet marketing coaches and from our own experiences with several of them. Take the lessons as a reminder to ask questions and not follow anyone blindly.
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