If I Could Go Back Two Years...

[Steve Tuggle]

I'm still very much a newbie at IM. Two years ago I was a very inexperienced newbie. If I could go back two years when I knew hardly anything at all here's what I would do differently:

1. Would NOT attend a high dollar IM conference to learn IM. Instead of gaining knowledge I lost more money when I purchased more high dollar IM products that I didn't need or use.

2. Would NOT purchase any high dollar IM products. As a newbie you simply don't know what you need to buy.

3. Would NOT just start building websites without a clear plan.

4. WOULD hang around the Warrior Forum. It takes awhile but you'll find a handful of people that you learn to trust. From these people you can learn a great deal. I have a small number that when they speak...I listen.

***5. WOULD hire a coach.*** This is the single best thing I have done. I found someone here at the WF that has taught me more in a month than I learned in two years on my own. If I could go back two years this would be the FIRST thing I would do. The fog lifts and you see more clearly after working with a coach.

Caveat: I have hired coaches outside of IM in the past. Hiring the wrong coach is a waste of money. So choose your coach very carefully. #4 above helped me choose the right one.

Oh well, you can't go back two years or even two minutes so we all press forward....

[BJ Min]

hey steve...

any tips for hiring the right coach...can you give your lessons that you have learned from finding a good coach?

thanks
bj

[TomBond]

Good thread, hindsights a wonderful thing isn't it?

I think I would spend time planning and more time doing

[radhika]

1. Would NOT attend a high dollar IM conference to learn IM. Instead of gaining knowledge I lost more money when I purchased more high dollar IM products that I didn't need or use.

2. Would NOT purchase any high dollar IM products. As a newbie you simply don't know what you need to buy.

Steve,

I second that. Boy how much money was wasted on these ... I remember buying a product for $700.00 from some UK business person. I didn't even remember what exactly it was. Still couple of papers he sent me are with me.

I am glad that stage is over. Now I am very careful in buying a product.

.

[Stevie B]

Hmm, wasn't aware that coaches could be found & hired on WF.

Please would you shed some more light on that Steve? How did you go about this? I understand what you are saying in #4 to "hang around the Warrior Forum. It takes awhile but you'll find a handful of people that you learn to trust." but how does that translate into getting a coach as that suggests a more 'formal' one-to-one relationship?

Best Wishes

Steve

Originally Posted by Steve Tuggle

***5. WOULD hire a coach.*** This is the single best thing I have done. I found someone here at the WF that has taught me more in a month than I learned in two years on my own. If I could go back two years this would be the FIRST thing I would do. The fog lifts and you see more clearly after working with a coach.

Caveat: I have hired coaches outside of IM in the past. Hiring the wrong coach is a waste of money. So choose your coach very carefully. #4 above helped me choose the right one.

[Zeus66]

Great advice, Steve! But it's a double-edged sword. Yes, absorb the great information here at WF, but don't get stuck in that mode. Pick one promising course of action and DO IT! There are many ways to make money in IM, and that's both a great thing and a potentially harmful thing to a newbie. You gotta force yourself to pick something and go for it. I recommend it be something you honestly can see yourself doing without burning out. Then you definitely want to pick something that a lot of Warriors are doing successfully. Frankly, you'll see a lot of crackpot stuff here. The way to sort that out is noting what you like and paying attention to the feedback more established Warriors have to say about it. It's not a perfect way to analyze an idea, but it's faster and will get you to the 'take action' phase quicker.

John

[winebuddy]

If I could go back 2 years, the first thing I would have done is buy and learn to set up an autoresponder and then learn how to build squeeze pages. I would already be very wealthy if I had done that 2 years ago. Instead, I did it one year ago and it is now beginning to look like the sky is the limit.

[Steve Tuggle]

Originally Posted by BJ Min

hey steve...

any tips for hiring the right coach...can you give your lessons that you have learned from finding a good coach?

thanks
bj

Hi BJ,
Hiring the right coach requires some due diligence and some good fortune in my opinion. I hung around WF for awhile ( I think a couple of years) and found probably 5-10 people that I learned the most from their posts. There are many more than these I just had my favorites. One of these favorites recommended someone for IM coaching. This person happened to be one of my favorites also. We connected and it has been well worth it.

I hope this helps. I really can't say enough about how helpful this has been. In fact just this last week during our session I told my coach of a subscription service I was thinking of purchasing for backlinks. Without hesitation my coach said, "Don't do that." and then proceeded to explain why. The explanation made sense and I was saved from wasting time and money!

[Joseph Then]

Originally Posted by Steve Tuggle

1. Would NOT attend a high dollar IM conference to learn IM. Instead of gaining knowledge I lost more money when I purchased more high dollar IM products that I didn't need or use.

2. Would NOT purchase any high dollar IM products. As a newbie you simply don't know what you need to buy.

I beg to differ here. I think the problem is not that they are high dollar IM products.

It just that too many people bought them, read them and store them in one corner.

[gjabiz]

So hindsignt can be a good teacher, in some cases.

And we all have the last two years to look at, and some of us, we have the last 20 years to examine.

But what about the NEXT two years? What are you going to be doing, now that you have your initial education under your belt? What are the new career paths, the new IM trails you will follow and the new gurus you will listent too?

I see more mobile apps and more private social media. Your own channel, TV, radio or whatever with your invitees only in attendance.

What are YOU doing for the next two years?

gjabiz

[InternetMarketingIQ]

You were obviously not afraid to purchase products, even if they didn't work out. In my opinion it's a mistake for Noobs to try to find everything "FREE".

Focus on software purchases. If you find a tool that makes what you are doing easier then purchase it so you can get going. I'm a huge fan of RoboForm. When I first heard about it years back I couldn't see any real value in the product. I thought so what a piece of software that logs me in and out. I can do that.

Then once I started using it I realized that it is extremely powerful... amazing tool for really accelerating ones link building campaigns. Set up an identity and with a few clicks you fill out all the sign in info you need to join a forum, blog, or community site. Amazingly powerful.

I then discovered how easy Dragon Naturally Speaking makes it to post blog comments. Assign your URL to a phrase and click talk, bam... user info filled out. Works even faster than RoboForm if you have a lot of sites you want to promote with a blog comment but are not sure which one until you read the blog. Also makes it so much easier to enter monthly accounting data (All those $20-$40 residual checks that come each month) directly into Excel.

The point is if you find a good software program... buy it. Move on. It's hard to make a bad investment in productivity software.

Point #3 is the most important point one can take from your post.

The only other thing that I see missed early on is too many I I I I I, me me me. in new marketers. Never slowing down to realize there has to be a person on the other end.

Once you start making it in this business you realize that money is not your problem, your problem is there is never enough time.

[Rapido]

If I could go back 2 years, I'd pick just one business model.

My biggest mistake was trying to do too many things all at the same time.

Rapido

[waken]

If I Could Go Back Two Years...

I would have focus only on ONE marketing method instead of tonnes at the same time!!

[LegitBlogger]

I agree with the coach tip. I discovered that we all need a
coach if we are serious about ANY field of endeavor, IM
inclusive. Of course, we might know "more" than our
coach but a coach can help us "better organize or
coordinate" that which we know. That's obviously why
even the big sports stars, movie starts, etc have coaches,

[Zeus66]

I want to second what InternetMarketingIQ said above... Productivity software is a marketer's best friend. Well, outsourcers are actually their best friend, but until you can afford them, software like Roboform is the bee's knees.

Going back 2 years, one of the things I don't think I'd quite grasped was the concept of "speed of implementation." This essentially means taking ideas or plans to the action phase very quickly and getting that action phase done as fast as possible. This is why productivity software is so vital to your business! If you do things like link building completely manually (typing in every field at every site), you're really bleeding a lot of your valuable time away. Time is money to an Internet Marketer! Get the pro version of Roboform for about $30. It will easily be one of the best investments you'll ever make. I also highly recommend Micro Niche Finder ($97), if you need a way to seriously reduce the time you spend doing keyword research. Those two softwares: Roboform + MNF = the best investments I've ever made in my IM business. By far.

Speed of implementation. That's the best lesson I think I've learned in the last 2 years.

John

[ramone_johnny]

The best peice of advice I ever got was this...

"If I ran across a mindfield and made it safely to the other side, wouldnt you want to know EXACTLY where I stepped..?"

Having a mentor is vital in this business!