What if I told you that you were just one step away from success?
As someone who has both mentored and coached people and also as someone who has spent tens of thousands of dollars on coaching and mentoring myself, I have come to realize one important thing about success…
In most cases, people are just ONE STEP away from success.
The sad truth is that whenever we pursue success in some area of our lives, we often do 99% of all things right, but we get tripped up on 1% and never achieve the results we want.
Let me give an example that just happened to me today.
Last year I decided to get back into making money online more seriously and one of the things I wanted to get good at was generating leads with Facebook.
I bought several different courses, and went through hundreds of hours of training, setup, testing and tweaking of facebook ads, and various different funnels.
I managed to get to the point where I was starting to produce some consistent results, but there was one missing piece to my strategy.
Based on the conversion rates I was getting from my funnels, I needed to be able to get traffic from Facebook for less than $0.50/click at the most, and ideally more likely somewhere around $0.30-$0.40/click.
Unfortunately, no matter what I did, I was not able to get my clicks that low while still maintaining lead quality.
So what I did is I started looking for different businesses / funnels out there which could still be profitable even while paying $0.75-$1.00/click, like I was playing.
After several months of trial and error, and quite a bit of frustration, I decided to put my Facebook testing on hold as I just couldn’t get my costs down low enough for it to make sense for me to keep spending money with Facebook.
After you spend several thousand dollars in testing, and can’t get it to be profitable, it can get frustrating and it’s easy to give up.
I put my campaigns on hold, but I didn’t give up.
Instead I put out a “call” to the Universe to help me figure out what it is that I’m missing, while I focused on getting other things done.
About two weeks ago, the Universe responded to that “call” by having someone pop into my life who had figured out a way to get highly targeted Facebook traffic for around $0.05 per click, and in some cases even lower.
After verifying a few things, I asked the guy if he would be willing to coach / mentor me on how he is achieving these kinds of results, and he agreed to do it for just under $500.
Now, to most people, spending $500 for a single coaching/mentoring call may seem like a lot of money, but I have learned that in a lot of cases in life you can be SO CLOSE to success that all you need is just that one little extra piece of advice that will change everything…
… but if you’re too cheap to invest in getting that advice from someone who is producing the results that you want, then you can continue to struggle forever!
So this morning I had my coaching / mentoring call with this person, and he showed me EXACTLY how he’s producing these results.
And you know what?
The crazy thing is that when I learned exactly what he is doing to produce those kinds of results, as compared to what I was doing before, I was already doing about 98% of what he is doing.
Like all I had to do is change about 1% – 2% of my strategy to do exactly what he was doing.
Our coaching call was only about 1 hour long, but honestly it could have easily been 5m – 10mins long to just teach me the one piece I was missing.
Now, the question is… would that 5m – 10mins be worth $500 to me?
ABSOLUTELY!
See, most people continue to struggle in life and in business, because they’re too cheap to invest in CONSULTING services from someone who knows what they’re doing, and who can come into the picture, analyze the situation and find that small 1% or 2% difference that is MISSING in your strategy.
This principle applies in virtually EVERY area of your life.
For example, let’s say that you’ve been wanting to lose weight and you’ve tried EVERY diet on the planet and you’ve failed over and over again, losing weight and gaining it all back etc.
Do you realize that there is probably just ONE small belief change, or strategy adjustment that you need to make and you could SUCCEED in your quest to lose weight?
Or if you’ve been trying to make money online, and nothing seems to be working for you.
The truth is that you could already be doing 98% – 99% of everything RIGHT, but you’re just missing that 1% or 2% that will change EVERYTHING for you.
So how do we find that missing 1% or 2%???
Well, there are really only three ways to do it.
Method #1 – The Long Way – Trial And Error
The most common way that people try to figure things out is by trial and error.
They essentially scour around the Internet, looking for free advice from people on forums, and facebook groups, trying to see if they can figure out what is the missing piece and why things aren’t working for them.
Often times they’ll even ask questions on forums, which are full of people who are ALSO struggling with the same issues, and they usually get bad advice or in the best case scenario good advice that is INCOMPLETE.
You can spend a LOT of wasted time and effort this way, and 99.999% of all people who try to figure things out with trial and error end up giving up.
Method #2 – The Short Way – Join a Community of Successful People
A much better way to figure out what is the missing 1% or 2% in your strategy is to become part of a community of like minded people, who are producing the results that you want.
For example, if you wanted to learn how to train to run a marathon, from scratch… yes you COULD just go outside and start running (ie. trial and error), but you probably wouldn’t do too well if you ran into any issues.
A much better option would be to join a running community, such as for example The Running Room, or a some sort of running club where maybe 10-20 people get together and train for a marathon.
Ideally, you’d want there to be at least a few people in the group who have already ran a marathon successfully, so that you could get some good advice.
After joining the group, you would simply pay attention to what YOU’RE doing and the results YOU’RE producing, and compare those to the results someone else who is successful is producing.
So for example, if you started running and you started getting shin-splits, you might ask someone in your group if they had that issue and how they solved it.
Then you would try whatever solution they found to work for them, and hopefully it would work for you as well.
This is the process of MODELING SUCCESS by being part of a community where at least some of the people are already producing the results you’re looking for.
As another example, for someone who wanted to make money online, they could join a community like the Empower Network, where there’s already a proven track record of people producing success.
Then, by going through the trainings, attending events, and getting around other people in the community, you can figure out what the missing 1% or 2% is in your strategy.
This is a MUCH faster and better way of achieving success than trial and error.
This method also has the benefit of usually not being too expensive either.
Method #3 – The Ultra Short Way – Hiring a Coach / Mentor / Consultant
The third and most effective method of figuring out what the missing 1% – 2% is in your strategy is to hire a coach / mentor or consultant.
With this method, you hire someone who has the ability to either coach you or mentor you to produce the results that you’re trying to produce and they work with you 1-on-1, or in a small group to help you achieve that result.
This is usually the most effective method IF you can find someone who can teach you to produce the results you’re looking to produce, AND if you can afford their services.
Personally I like to combine methods #2 and #3 together, where I try to get most of my training from groups and communities, because then the costs of training are much cheaper than trying to learn everything 1-on-1, but when I get stuck on something, I prefer to hire a coach/mentor/consultant to help me get “unstuck” like I did this morning.
For example, as a member of Empower Network I get access to all of their recorded group trainings which are awesome to learn everything you need to make money online in MOST cases.
Then in some cases where you get stuck on some very specific thing that’s not covered in the trainings provided, I then seek out the help of a 1-on-1 consultant.
How to Get Coaching and Mentoring From Me
If you’re looking for 1-on-1 coaching from me, you can get more information about my rates and such on my coaching page.
However, one of the benefits that I offer my Empower Network team-mates is that they get free coaching and mentoring from my in my private group for my team.
The cool thing about that is that in the majority of cases, in my group trainings I can usually figure out exactly what is the missing 1% – 2% in your success strategy online because chances are I already ran into it myself and overcame that obstacle or I hired a consultant to help me overcome it.
So one of the benefits that my team mates get is that they get the best of both Method #2 and Method #3, and if there is some really strange, rare issue that they’re struggling with that I can’t help them with, I usually know someone I can refer them to who can help them.
If you’ve been struggling in some area of your life, be it with your health, or relationships, or in your career or in your business, I strongly recommend finding a way to apply Methods #2 and #3 as much as you can.
Don’t waste your life in constant “trial and error” mode. It may seem like a cheaper way than joining a community or getting help, but it will cost you WAY more in the long run.
Rick Burnett says
Great post Paul. So many people just at that point….three feet from gold.
Paul Piotrowski says
Yes. If you’re in the middle of it, you don’t know how close you are to the finish line. That is why working with coaches and mentors can be so effective.
Tamara Hawk says
Thanks Paul, great post, sometimes we just need a little help to push us that last little bit.