TES 021 - What Should You Do First as an Expert, Consultant or Coach

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there. I'm Mel Abraham, the author of the brand new number one best selling book the Entrepreneur Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy where we teach you how to design a business and create a life. Create a life of financial freedom and peace of mind. And in this episode of the Entrepreneur Solution show, I get a chance to answer a question that came in through our askmailnow.com line. And this is a place that you can go if you have questions about money, success, business, entrepreneurship, those types of things, or any other questions for that matter. Go to askmelnow.com and you'll get a chance to record your question and I can bring it on one of my upcoming episodes. And this is from a young lady, Cheryl, out of Michigan, who was watching what I've done. She's been part of my book release and watched the book release and she got introduced to some of my training courses. And she's part of the training courses. She's in the portal and she's in the groups and seeing some of that and she was trying to understand God. Mel, what did you do first? Did you write the book first? Did you do the training courses first? There's a bunch of stuff out there and there's things that you're doing. What did you do first? And I think that there's a lot of people that may struggle with that. What do I do first? Because I know I did when I came about. I was trying to figure that out. So when we come back after this brief introduction, I'm going to answer Cheryl's question and hopefully give you some guidance of what do you do first? Where do we go from here? Where do we start? So look forward to seeing you right back after this brief introduction. See you soon.

Welcome to the Entrepreneur Solution, where highly successful entrepreneur Mel Abraham becomes your entrepreneurial mentor. Here, Mel reveals his business building strategies and even gets a chance to answer your questions. Mel Abraham, a CPA by education, but an entrepreneur by exhilaration and a true believer in the entrepreneurial way of life.

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Hey there. Welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solution show. We're going to get a chance to get to Cheryl's question, but before we get there, let's listen to her question. Let's see what she's got to say and see what she's got to ask and let's see if we can give her some guidance and use some guidance along the way because I think this is a question that comes up rather often. I know that I had it and I know that a number of entrepreneurs in this expert space have it as what do I do first? Where did I start? So let's listen to a question. I'll see you right back after we're done listening to it. It.

Hi, Mel. This is Cheryl Vowles. I had the pleasure of meeting you and hearing you speak at Brendon Burchard's most recent Expert Academy in Santa Clara. And I quickly purchased your book and really enjoyed your presentation and have gotten a lot out of it so far. I've also taken advantage of your many online resources and just bought the business Builder toolkit today as well. My goal is to become a thoughtpreneur and I'm just in the very beginning stages of developing my plan. And I'm curious about your journey specifically, how and when did you start? Did you create your online courses first? If so, which was your first course and how did you progress online? Did you write your book first or did you create it all sort of simultaneously? If so, how long did that take? I'm really impressed with your comprehensive offerings and really curious how you put this all together. Thanks.

Great question. Wonderful question, Cheryl. And as I said, this is something that.

Many of us struggle with, including myself, when we're talking about building an expert business, a business that's based upon our experience, our expertise, our background, our message, our purpose, our wisdom, if you will. Many people call it our good friend Brendon Burchard calls it the expert business. I call it the thoughtpreneur business because that's what it's about, taking my experience and education and expertise and using it to create a difference in people's lives, a positive impact in people's lives. It may be in the healthcare industry, maybe in my case in the entrepreneurial business success and wealth space, it could be.

In Brennan's case, it could be in high performance, motivation, influence.

In that space. That's the. So it's in that arena. And I know that, Cheryl, you mentioned that this is something that you're starting into and you've got a base of knowledge, you've got a base of experience that you want to take to the world and give them the opportunity to grow from your experience in education. And what do you do first? What did I do first? Did I write the book first? Well, my journey is a little different than most journeys. I didn't come to this business or this industry to be in this industry. I'm educated as a cpa. So I was out there to build a CPA practice. I was out there to build a consulting practice, to be a strategic consultant to businesses, to board of directors, to entrepreneurs, to help people build their businesses, to build success in their lives and to do that. And at the same time I was someone who valued businesses for a living and testified at trials as a financial expert. So all of the work that I was doing was to try and build that practice based upon the degree I got, the licenses I had and that type of thing. It wasn't necessarily to write a book, it wasn't necessarily to be in this expert space because I had been corralled, if you will, to thinking the CPA mentality and there's only one way to do things. But I broke out of that mold. I went through a 12 step program and I'm healed in that process. But so it's a little different my book, and I know that, Cheryl, you watched the launch of the book and you're part of the training courses and you've seen that dynamic. The book is an offspring, if you will. It came out of the business that I've done. It came out of the 30 plus years, years of being an entrepreneur and consulting with businesses and taking that and distilling it down into the book. And along the way I also realized that in this expert space that I had to find a way to be able to deliver my expertise, my experience, my background and all of that wisdom in a way that was separate from me a little bit to allow me to do what's called leverage my business. That's when I started to create the training courses, the live events and those types of things. Because the business model that I had was really one on one consulting. I would go into a Business or into it with an entrepreneur, and it would be one on one. That meant that it took the hours out of the day for that one person. I couldn't help other people, and I felt like I was confined and not able to help as many people as I wanted with my message, with my mission, with the wisdom that I had. And so I tried to help figure that out. So once I got my business off the ground, then the question was, how do I not scale it, but leverage it? And that's when I started to do some of the other training programs. And then from that came the book. Now, does that mean that that's the journey that you need to take or you should take? And the answer is no. That journey was right for me based upon my experience, based on my background, based on where I was and where I was coming from and where I wanted to go. It may not be, and in all likelihood, it's not right for you or anyone else out there. The question is really what's right for you? If we look at this expert space, there's really six primary modes of delivering your message, delivering your wisdom, delivering your experience. You can do it as an author, you can do it as a speaker, you can do it as a, a trainer, you can do it as a mentor, you can do it as a facilitator, or you can do it as a coach. So those are the six primary ways of delivering it. Now, it's the same message, it's the same mission. When I go out and speak to a large audience of a thousand or two thousand people, my message is the same. It's about entrepreneurship, it's about bringing possibility in their life. It's about shaking up those dreams and bringing them to life and giving them a new paradigm and for their life by building a business that's based on purpose, based on meaning, that gives them something beyond just profit. Or I can go in and do a three day training like my Business Breakthrough Academy training, where I spend three days with a smaller group, where we roll up our sleeves and we dig into the businesses and say, let's design our lives, let's design our businesses, let's create it. But the message is the same, the journey is the same. Or I can write an article or my blog posts or my podcast. And again, it's all built on the same messaging. The book is built on the same messaging. The question is just the mode of delivery. And as you asked, you know, what did I do first? I think I went to what was native to me, what was natural to Me first. And I think that's the easiest way for us to look at it. And the idea here is this, to figure out what mode works for you once you have your message. So get the message first and figure out what mode works for you and what market you want to work with, and you combine those three together. And I spent a fair amount of time doing this in the thoughtpreneur academy, which I'll talk about somewhere down the road. You'll hear more about it. But the point is this is to figure out. I get my message straightened out, I figure out how to do that. I figure out how to build it into a framework that's teachable, memorable, commercially viable, and something that is sellable, protectable. In the process, I figure out who I want to take that to, and I figure out what is the best way to take it out there. And when I say the best way, there's two things to consider. What your audience wants in the way to digest it, and what you feel comfortable doing. For instance, let me just, let me clarify that your audience may be the type of audience like. Let's just use accountants for a moment. Accountants are the type of people that want to go in, sit at desks and chairs and go through a training program. They want to go through workbooks and worksheets. They want to do that. So the best way to get some of my messaging out to that audience in their preferred mode is training. So I'm going to create training programs.

With that marketplace and give them my message that way. There may be other folks that just want to go to a conference. So you're going to do a 90 minute or 60 minute keynote, or you're going to follow it up with a webinar, or you're going to do a book. So the question is, who's your audience in your market that you want to deliver to? How are they used to digesting the information, making sure that that coincides with what you want as your delivery mode? Because if it's something that you hate doing, if every time I got on stage I hated getting on stage, that wouldn't be a good way to live. Now, we need to develop those skills over time. But that's probably not the first place I'd go, Sheryl. So what I would do is look at what have you done? What's your experience in the past? How have you delivered your message, your mission, your purpose, your wisdom in the past? Has it been in a coaching environment where you're coaching people, which is one of the easiest ways to do it. And typically the place where a lot of people start, maybe that's what you do, is you take that and say, I'm going to do a coaching program first. I'm going to build my content and refine my content through that to this group. And as I build that, I can go from coaching and now I can bridge that to maybe speaking or an actual training program. And when I say training program, it doesn't have to be live, it can be recorded. Just like you, you're participating in some of my programs or even this is somewhat a, it's a recorded training. So that's the key behind it is, is to understand that you're not tied to a specific mode only, but where you're going to start in all likelihood is the place that you have the most comfort. It's the place that you have the most history. It's the place that you have been able your expertise, your experience and your wisdom most readily in the past because that's what's comfortable for you. And then bridge out from there. There's a lot more we can go into that, go into digging deeper, but we'll get to that another time. I hope that helps you to just understand that. Let's get the message right. Let's figure out what it is your wisdom is, your experience, your background is right. Let's figure out who you want to take it to. Figure out what your most comfortable mode is of delivering that information. Make sure that it coincides with the audience preferences, your market preferences and go out and deliver it and you'll build from there. When I first started, all I was doing was consulting. Then I started speaking and writing. Then I started getting paid for speaking and writing. Then I did training programs, I did a live.

Training program, three day seminars and training programs. Then I did recorded programs and now I have the book. That's my journey. That's the journey I've been on. There's going to be more books coming, there's going to be continually training programs coming. There's going to be a lot more live training coming. So there's a lot of things that I have in the works, all of it revolving around the same message to the different markets that I want to serve and the perspective to do that. That's the way I would start. Hopefully that helps you as you, as you move forward. I'm going to get put together a little bit of a guidebook here. If you want to get the guidebook for this episode, go ahead and go to melabraham.com session021 and if you happen to not be at your computer where you can write that down, just text. If you're at the gym or you're running or out and about, go ahead and text mylegacy to 38470. That's mylegacy with no spaces. One word 38470. It'll give you the download link. And if you have a question just like Cheryl did you that you want me to answer on one of the upcoming episodes, go ahead and go to askmelnow.com leave me your question. We'll make sure that we get it on one of the upcoming episodes and make sure that we guide you to move you forward. That's what I'm here for. I want to be your entrepreneurial mentor. I want to be there to not only help you through the struggles of your entrepreneur journey, but to celebrate the successes, to hear about the successes, and to work with you to bring those dreams to life. And so I hope you found this of value. If you haven't already, go ahead and subscribe so you can continually get these, the free trainings and the resources that I'm going to give you. And might as well while you're at it. Share with a Friend let's give a friend the gift of bringing their dreams to life. And until I get a chance to see in one of the next upcoming episodes, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant. See you soon. Cheers. Bye.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you subscribe so you get access to all of Mel's business and success tips. And if you like this episode, share it with a friend. If you have a specific business or success question, you can ask it at www.askmelnow.com. remember, it's all about being bold, dreaming big, and living life your way. Because the world needs you. Until the next episod, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant.

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