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I've been teaching this course in its many forms for the past several years. Thousands and thousands of hours teaching people the same things over and over again. The real question is: what did I get out it the deal?
You would expect that if I'm teaching a thinking methodology or a coaching system, then at the end of the day it should be helping the teacher, right?
Step 1
The first what that I have benefited has been an indirect benefit. By chatting with 100s of people over 1000s of hours, I've listened to people talking about their struggles at work. Then I introduced the same ideas to everyone and at some point, I reach the point that I have a pretty good idea of what people do at work.
Knowing what people do at work, finally gave me the confidence to start my own business. So, step 1 is that I have had enough conversations and have a deep enough understanding of the principles, that I now have the confidence to push forward with my project.
Step 2
What does it mean to develop a product? I didn't know for a very long time even though I was in the process of doing it. I remember one lady that I was working with. She was one of my first clients. She was probably smarter than me and had more management experience. It was an odd coaching experience because she would ask what I was up to and would always ask why I don't apply the same checklists to my own project.
Specifically, she would always tell that I needed to focus on personal branding and that I should release something quickly and then adjust it after getting feedback from the customers.
Everything was fine and dandy, but I really wanted to release something that made sense and something that I could be proud of. That took me many years. Now, I've got it. I made it. I did it.
Step 3
What I learned from teaching my course is that we have to continue to develop products and continue to improve personally. The end of one project is the beginning of the next project. Having a product made meant that is was time to start marketing. It's funny looking back and realizing all those years that I wasn't sharing my journey. I was telling anyone about what was happening in my business. I wasn't showing the world my 1.0 and then 1.1 and then 1.2 and then 2.0 versions of my understanding.
Well, actually, I did. I recorded 100 videos in a 100 day challenge when I was living in Belarus. You can see that I didn't have such a deep understanding of the principles and I was really working to understand them better. That was the time that I launched the coaching business. Between that video series and the course that you can buy here on the website, there were 3000 coaching hours and 300 students in a 3 year period of time.
I also wrote a blog. The very first blog article was written 9 years ago. I literally had the idea to work on this project for a decade and started recording my thoughts 9 years ago.
Step 4
The video from last week. If you click that link, you'll be able to see the YouTube video where I calmly explain a problem I faced when I started working with a new marketing intern. I was upset because I felt like I wasn't getting enough out of her. I felt like she didn't lead the meeting and wasn't giving me clear direction about what we needed to do with the marketing efforts.
In the video, I talk about how I realized that I am the CEO. I am her manager. And as her manager, I have the responsibility to coach her. I learn to be a CEO and I learned to be a coach by teaching CEO the principles in the course I sell on the product page. The whole point of the course is for the exact situation I was facing -- to help my staff articulate their value, set clear objectives, and create a path that will lead to us achieving the best results possible.
Step 5
The course itself teaching business in kinda an abstract way that can be applied to all business endeavours. It teaching about game pieces and game flow. It's kinda like looking as business as a game of chess. You wouldn't be able to play a game of chess unless you knew the layout of the game board and how the game pieces moved. That's the point.
Thinking in an abstract way about business is like understanding computer code. The building blocks can be combined in different ways to produce a variety of results. If there are issues with the results than we need to be able to diagnose the problem. If we understand the flows and patterns of the game then we can quickly identify where we are in the story and make the needed adjustments to keep people interested and progressing.
Conclusion
The main point is that business is an at-risk activity. I wanted to have as prepared as possible before putting myself out there. Now that I'm running a few businesses, I'm really going to be tested to see if the ideas I sell are powerful enough to help my businesses up in the air and also whether the market agrees with me and they also see more success in their endeavours.
I guess at the end of the day, it's all a big social science experiment and this just happens to be the one that has captured my attention for a decade.