Quitting The 9 To 5: Getting An Internet Mentor

As mentioned in my first post in this series on ‘How I Quit My Job To Start My On-line Business’ I was excited and shocked.

I was keen to start…I was going to earning an awesome on-line income very quickly.

It was August 2006 and I knew very little about making money via the internet. I needed some guidance and I was happy to invest in my new adventure.

I decided I needed an Internet Mentor.

I did some research on-line and found one who specialised in mentoring people who wanted to offer coaching services on-line.

That’s what I thought I could do and would be good at. I had been managing / mentoring / coaching people in the corporate world and I could coach others to become better managers.

The internet mentor I found had numerous testimonials and one of his services was to meet him for one hour to go through a brain storming session and just to get to know each other.

We met in a London hotel and he asked me lots of questions.

We covered:

• My experience

• My strengths

• The On-line Business Strategy

• Possible Domain Names

• Branding

• My Ideal Clients

• My Target Market

• The challenges of my target market

• Short-term on-line Goals

• Plans for the website

We covered so much in just 60 minutes.

He was professional, slick and knew the right questions to ask. He had a system. That was the crucial difference. He knew his ‘system’ worked. He had come prepared.

I liked that. It was a structured approach and the mentor also knew his stuff.

We agreed that with my knowledge and experience it would be good to enter the personal development niche…specializing in ‘Management’. I knew that I could cover such topics as:

• Time management

• Delegation skills

• Managing change

• Stress management

• Management style

• Communications

• Presentation skills / public speaking

• Staff management

• Motivating others

• Work life balance

• Making things happen

My on-line goals were to have:

• The website live by the end of October 2006

• 100 free opt-ins by the end of 2006

• 1000 free opt-ins by the end of 2007

• $320 extra income per month by the end of 2006

• $1600 extra income per month by the end of 2007

• Have 2 paying clients of my own by the end of 2006

That was the end of the session.

The next day, I received an email from the mentor with our session written up and what the next steps could be.

I was sold.

He was extremely professional and delivered exactly what he said he would.

At first I wasn’t too sure whether I should sign up or not. Although the mentor was good and we got on well…his charges were quite high. I was a little reluctant.

But I knew I had to invest. I knew I wanted to move quickly and get things going straight away.

I signed up. I thought I would regret it in years to come if I didn’t. I’d always be thinking, “What if?”

This is exactly what I was going to get for my investment:

• Website design including logo creation and colour analysis

• My own website with several pages of content plus a blog with the ability of a free opt-in, customer email database and integration with a shopping cart for me to sell products.

• The CMS tool and code to enable me to maintain my website after delivery.

• 9 x one-hour business coaching sessions

• Web hosting for 1 year

• Invite to the mentors website/SEO 2-day workshop

Total price: $4,000

That’s it I had done it. I had invested the money. Now it was time for action.

Over the next few weeks, I was working in the evenings and weekends.

This was all new to me. I was totally out of my comfort zone.

With the mentor’s help I was designing my website. The pages required, the navigation, the colour scheme and the content.

The first thing I needed to concentrate on was ‘building my list’. That was priority number one. Visitors were going to have the ability to sign up for my ‘giveaway’ in return for their name and e-mail address.

I created a free 7-day e-course aimed at Managers and called it:

“Secrets To Getting Promoted, Boosting Your Income And Working Less”

Visitors would opt-in and the course would be delivered automatically over 7 days.

The mentor suggested I use the one-shopping-cart service for such an activity.

It took me ages to write the 7-day course. It was basically 7 blog posts but this was all new to me.

I wrote the opt-in squeeze page – this was to be my home page.

I set up the autoresponder, added such pages, as ‘About me’, “contact” and I was ready.

It was mid–October 2006. We had beaten our goal of end October 2006.

“Within weeks I am going to be making lots of extra money”

Lessons to takeaway:

If you are unsure what to do or where to start…get a mentor you feel comfortable with.

Within a few weeks I went from knowing very little about making money on-line to having my niche agreed, my own website, a ‘giveaway’ and my customer database list was growing.

In the next post I shall share with you how many opt-ins I started to get, how I created my first selling product and how rich I did become.