How a Virtual Mentor Helped Me Double My Business

Feeling stuck in your business? Consider a mentor. Want quick results? For free? Get a virtual mentor. Here’s how it helped me double my business in just two years.

Working in our business day in and day out, we often get stuck. We’re not sure where or how to grow. Or we know we need to up our game in social media, our website design or marketing generally, but there’s so much advice out there that it seems there’s too much for any of it to be useful.

Oh – and we’re crazy-busy. So, in the chaos, we don’t move forward with anything dramatically new.

This is why an absolute key for focus and growth in our coaching business is to have a mentor.

And here’s the good news: We can have a mentor we’ve never met, spoken to or even corresponded with. A virtual mentor.

Whether a leader in your coaching niche or a marketing or business-building influencer, a virtual mentor is someone you’ll follow online, whose free tools you’ll download, podcasts you’ll listen to and webinars you’ll attend.

Now, you likely follow or subscribe to a number of people online whose webinars you attend, etc.

But the idea here is to identify one as your virtual mentor, and then really focus on doing what that mentor does or teaches.

After all, a mentor is someone who’ll challenge you. And your virtual mentor challenges you to learn and implement their best business practices.

I’ve “employed” several virtual mentors since creating Crusher Solutions, LLC, 10 years ago, but I’d like to share the story of one in particular who helped me double my business.

My Virtual Mentor, 2018-2019

For two years I latched onto online marketing guru Amy Porterfield. I absorbed everything she talked about and practiced in specific areas relevant to my business goals. And by implementing much of what I learned, I got the kind of results any real-life mentor would love to take credit for.

Why Amy Porterfield? Well, besides being the host of a popular podcast called “Online Marketing Made Easy,” where she dispenses marketing and business-building advice for solopreneurs, she happened to be extreeeeeeemely successful herself.

It was clear to me that everything she did in her own branding, marketing and business model were best-of-the-best-practices.

So, I figured, “If I just do more of what she’s doing, I can’t lose.”

Now, some of you may have heard of Amy or someone like her and taken in some of her teaching, maybe even bought a course from her.

But my relationship with my virtual mentor involved NO purchases. Everything she “mentored” me on was publicly available and free.

Here’s some of what I did…

• In building a new website, I replicated parts of hers, taking cues from her design, messaging, and functionality. (Go ahead – look at mine and hers. Ain’t no shame in “stealing like an artist,” as they say!)
• I used some of her emails as templates for my own, sometimes using her structure paragraph-by-paragraph.
• I used the many list-building tips she provided in her podcast episodes and freemium lead magnets.
• I closely studied her hugely successful webinars and “stole” key slides and slide flow, and took inspiration from her clean slide design.

I implemented her recommendations in many other areas – too many to mention here. But whenever I heard any best practice on her podcast that might help my business, I noted it and put it into my planner to try.

How My Virtual Mentor Helped Me Double My Business

What’s the math on my claim of “doubling of my business”? First of all, in less than a year after starting to use her best practices in webinars during which I made a special offer to join my Crusher™TV membership, that business doubled. But more generally in support of my overall business…

• The improved structure and writing of my emails helped boost open and click-through rates.
• I got tons of inspiration for new freemium lead magnets, clever social media posts and fresh blog ideas – all of which helped me grow my following and email lists.
• Better-designed and -written landing pages improved conversions.

And even though Amy doesn’t teach specifically about profitable group coaching or masterminds, all of the above helped me successfully market and sell-out six Crusher™ Coaching Groups and my Coaches Mastermind in 2019.

So, I think it’s fair to say that those two years with Amy as my virtual mentor gave me know-how and inspiration across my entire business (three brands, nine active revenue streams) that helped double overall revenue in that time frame.

And keep in mind, this was before I made any purchases from her (she sells online courses for list-building and course creation).

Not a bad deal, huh?

Interested in “Hiring” Your Own Virtual Mentor?

Indeed, the majority of influencers out there provide so much free information of such great value that you needn’t necessarily hire or buy from them.

And an ideal virtual mentor gives you the goals to shoot for, the to-do list, the roadmap – and even the templates – to up your game across any of a range of business best practices.

But if you’re now thinking about latching on to your own virtual mentor, know that there are some best practices for that, too. And in a follow-on post, I share some tips for choosing and then “working with” yours.

In the meantime, feel free to “steal” something from me!

Bless!

APB

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