Why Finding Three Great Teachers Ended A Decade Of Struggle
And how you can reach each of them yourself
And how you can reach each of them yourself
In 2015 after my friend, the founder of a company I’d worked in for over a decade, passed away, the future looked bleak.
Every employee but me left.
His wife and I had to run the business on our own.
The organization had been on a boom and bust cycle.
He’d create a great idea.
I’d help him market it.
We’d bring in a boatload of cash.
And a few months later, he’d say, we really need cash again.
I didn’t think to ask “What happened to the last pile of money?” I just helped him market the next idea and the next and the next.
Now that he was gone, there was no one to create new products and services to sell.
And I wasn’t ready to do that yet.
But I couldn’t give up.
And not because I’m virtuous.
It’s because I didn’t want to look for another job.
I really didn’t.
I worked from home. I really liked working from home. I knew if I went to get another job I’d have to commute at least 50 miles away.
I might make the same or more money but I’d have far less freedom and time.
The turning point?
When I got a book on business fundamentals called The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman.
I took one idea from that book called Target Monthly Revenue to keep finances in check and applied the heck out of it.
I found a teacher named Sean D'Souza and I ate up everything he could teach me about creating consistently effective marketing.
I found a coach called Christian Mickelson and learned everything I could from him about one-to-one selling.
By 2020, all the learning added up.
We had nearly doubled revenue from just a few years before.
And even better, by this time, I was loving the job.
Succeeding feels good.
And one of the best ways to succeed is to find other successful people to learn from.
The one big takeaway:
When you struggle, assume that others have solved the same problems you are currently facing. Seek these people out. Learn from them.
Such learning makes all the difference.
Who has taught you something that made your life better? We’d all like to know. Leave a comment.
Note: you can reach each of these teachers by clicking on their names when mentioned in the article. But here they are in case you just skimmed: Josh Kaufman, Sean D'Souza, and Christian Mickelson.