How Can You Propel Your Potential and Make More Money?

Brian Basilico — November 4, 2016 Follow @bbasilico

Invest In Yourself

One of the things I had to learn to add to my business was investing in myself. How do you invest in yourself? Well, obviously through training courses and going to conferences, but one of my favorites is coaching. I’ve worked with a lot of different coaches, including a speech coach, a sales coach and a mindset coach. Each one of these coaches helped me propel my business forward by teaching me or guiding me through the process of growing myself and growing my business.

Let’s start out and talk about how do you find a coach. Well, first and foremost there are many different ways. You can listen to interviews. A buddy of mine, Mark Mahwinny, started Natural Born Coaches, which is a podcast that you can listen to and see if somebody connects with you. You have to realize that if you’re going to hire a coach, there has to be some synergy between you and that coach.

Finding A Coach

The first thing I suggest that you do is set up an interview call. Find out what it is that they have to offer. The other things that you want to look at are case studies or history. What have they done for other people? Then finally, you have to have some confidence. You have to feel like that this person is going to have some kind of impact on your business. Generally speaking, they’re going to give you some kind of return on your investment.

One of the things that I tell my clients is if you can’t get three times the investment back over the course of at least a year, then it’s probably not a good fit. They need to be able to make some money and that’s my goal is to teach them how to do it and then let them continue to utilize that information to reap the rewards.

One of the things that I like to tell people is that it takes a minimum of three months to really see great results, but there are some coaches that I’ve worked with for as long as twelve months. You have to figure out that value proposition. What is it that they bring to the table that is going to improve your business? How will it increase your business and help you make more money?

Then finally you have to look at hiring a coach as an investment. It’s an investment in yourself. Now, you wouldn’t go to the stock market to lose money, right? You want to make a return on that investment and my value proposition says three to one, because you have to pay for the coach’s time. You have to pay for your time, because coaching is not a watch it, or set it and forget it kind of thing. It’s a huge participation sport. They’ll help you figure out what to do, but ultimately it’s up to you to manage it or get it done yourself.

You have to look at that investment and say, “Okay. Am I going to see that return?” Now, in the coaching world there’s something I like to call the Five M’s. This is what you should really get out of that coaching…

1. Mindset
   
2. Methodology
   
3. Mastermind
   
4. Measurables
   
5. Money

Those are the Five M’s.

Mindset

Let’s start out with Mindset. Mindset is getting the clarity to help you to get beyond some barriers that you’re having. For example, I wasn’t really good at sales conversations. I felt like I was taking advantage of people, even though I was really providing value for them. I just couldn’t get my mind around that and working with a sales coach really helped me to understand how to have those sales conversations and how to make people feel like they’re comfortable with the purchase or whatever it is they’re doing. Whether they’re doing websites or I’m teaching them they’re marketing system, however we do it, that’s number one. You have to get clarity and you have to get the mindset to say, “I can succeed at this.”

Methodology

Number two is Methodology. If a coach can’t explain to you how they get you from point A to point B, then chances are they don’t have a system in place. That’s what my whole bacon system is all about. It is twelve steps and every single one of those steps has a purpose that builds upon the next one and the outcome at the very end should be a large return on investment. I can outline each one of those twelve steps and say, “This is why it’s here and this is the success that we’ve had from certain people using it in a way.” I’ll give you guys an example later.

Mastermind

Next one is Mastermind. There has to be a brainstorming component. I mean, you’re not all of a sudden just going to be handed the key and it’s all going to be done, because every business and every businessperson is unique. There’s some masterminding going on, meaning that they’re going to provide some ideas, you’re going to provide some ideas, and the two of you will massage that and get it to the point that says, “You know what? This is the path we have to go down.” That’s one of the reasons why I created my courses. That’s one of the reasons why I now get paid to speak instead of speaking for free like I used to do all the time. That masterminding really helps you understand the opportunities that maybe you did not see when you first started working with that coach.

Measurables

Next is Measurables. You have to have some way of measuring the progress and measuring the outcomes of what it is that you’re doing. In my bacon system, I have two measurables that are incredibly important. Number one is Google analytics. Are the activities that you’re doing, blogging, podcasting or getting interviewed increasing traffic to your website? Can you measurably see that people are getting to the pages that you want that will help you grow your business?

The next piece is QuickBooks. Can I see an increase in my income? In which categories am I seeing an increase in my income? I could see that certain things that I offer have actually decreased where my coaching, consulting, and speaking have skyrocketed because of working with these coaches. I need those measurables. I need to see that I’m generating more traffic, but more importantly the right traffic to the right pages. Then ultimately I have to see that return in investment in my accounting system.

Money

That breaks down to the last M, which is Money. All right, you have to have a set goal of what it is that you want to achieve. Now, it could be in a percentage, it could be ten percent, twenty percent, a hundred percent. Whatever it is, it could be in the hundreds, or thousands in new client income. You have to set those goals and you have to measure them and report back and you have to trust the person that you’re working with. You really have to trust that the coach is doing everything in your best interests and that you’re seeing the return on investment from the time that you spent with them.

Again, let’s go over those. Mindset – do you have clarity of what it is that you need to do? Methodology – is there a set plan that you can follow to get from point A to point B? Mastermind – is the person good at helping brainstorm and coming up with new ideas? Are they good at thinking outside the box? Measurables – is there a way for you to measure the outcomes of all of the activities that you’re putting out there. Are you generating more sales? Is your sales team generating more sales? Do you need a virtual assistant so that you have more time? There’s way to measure what’s going on and to see the results of that. Money – you have to have some, we’re in business, right? You have to have some kind of return on that investment. That’s why it’s so incredibly important.

Final Thoughts

Now in my bacon system, like I said, I guide people through a twelve week, twelve step program. Every single week, people are doing an activity that helps them move further and further down the line. I have one client that followed this system and I was talking with him the other day and he’s paid for it. We’re done. I’m not coaching him anymore. He called me up to say, “Brian, my numbers are through the roof. I’ve made double the income last year and I made fifty percent more of that this year.” Every single year he’s adding fifty percent to his business and it keeps growing and growing and growing. He just called literally to thank me since he sees the results of what we did. Literally what I helped him do was learn how to blog and how to post those blogs. I taught him how to measure the traffic and how to communicate with the right group of customers. Finally, he found the customers that had the money to be able to afford to pay him in ways that he’s never been paid before. He’s seen some great results.

I would love to hear your thoughts and comments and maybe some other tools you love!

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