If you are considering using an expert mentor in your internet marketing business, you want to get the greatest possible results. Hiring and expert mentor involves spending money. It also requires your time and commitment to work closely with your expert mentor. After all this isn’t just sitting with a group of fellow students in a classroom. It isn’t sitting for an hour listening to a tele-seminar. You are risking your internet marketing business and your reputation on the final outcome of the collaboration. You must be able to work together to achieve the best possible results from the time you work with your mentor.
You must have faith in the ability of any expert mentor that you select. Thoroughly investigate their expertise and check their references before making a final decision. Any expert mentor you select should be committed to you and the positive impact they have on your business. Make sure you have no doubt about their plans and outcomes for the coaching they will be doing. For your part, know there will be feedback, direction, assignments, and deliverables as a part of the mentoring process. You must be ready, willing and able to deal with each of them appropriately.
After that first, hardest, step, the rest is easy. Follow each instruction to the letter. If you’re not clear on something, ask, and keep asking until you understand precisely what you need to do. Set yourself timelines for meeting each commitment you make to your mentor, and most critically, meet each one of them. Remember, your results will be no better than the effort you and your mentor put into them – and the most likely one not to step up to the challenge is you.
Keep in mind, too, what kind of expert mentoring you need for your internet marketing business at this phase in your development. There are three basic points at which you may need an expert mentor: the startup phase, the insurmountable problem, and the moving to the next level phase.
If done properly and you decide on the right expert mentor, the impact on your business can be impressive. However, your expectations should be realistic. Different problems have different speeds of resolution. Different problems yield very different results. Set solid, agreed desired outcomes with your expert mentor and then measure against that agreement.
A new startup business requires a significant amount of coaching and direction. That’s especially true if you lack prior experience starting and managing a new business. The startup issues can be totally overwhelming. They include obtaining the correct licenses and permits for your locality, wages and taxes, interviewing, staffing and managing employees, technology implementation, product identification and development and much more. In fact, the startup process can become a rocky road indeed if the correct steps aren’t taken. That’s where an expert mentor can help steer your internet marketing business to a velvety smooth take-off.
Then there’s hitting the wall – the insurmountable problem that you just can’t quite work through. It might be a saturation of your market, or it could be dealing with international law, figuring out how to migrate from a legacy to a new database system, or ramping up your understanding of using video and podcasting as part of your marketing program. An expert mentor can help you get through the hard spot, saving you time and ulcers by taking you by the hand and walking you through the steps you need to take until your problem has been solved.
Finally, that critical point when you need to move your business to the Next Level. That could be franchising, or going beyond electronic media, or serving a rapidly-growing customer base. The expert mentor for this level will be more expensive – and worth every penny, as your rapidly accelerating business threatens to escape your control. A year in, you’ll look back at that critical point and wonder how you could have done it without your expert mentor.
Every business finds that it needs help at some point. That includes every internet marketing business. Minimize the risks and maximize the results by carefully selecting an expert mentor for your business.
To your internet marketing success!
