Later this year I will have spent a decade coaching people, with all but a few months of that time spent as a full time Life Coach.

I have no idea how many clients that equates to, but it’s several hundred and they have been scattered across the globe in countries as diverse as Taiwan, Macedonia, Qatar, Argentina, Russia, Botswana, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, France, Peru, Kenya, Finland and a great many more.

Clients On Every Continent…….Almost

I’d like to say I have coached clients on every continent but as I still have Antarctica to crack that’s technically not true.

By the way, if you know anybody in Antarctica who isn’t a penguin and would like coaching, I’ll do it for half price.

No penguins though, they’re trouble every time and every fucking goal includes fish in it and it becomes tiresome.

I have learned a LOT from my clients.

In fact there have been occasions, especially early on in my career, where I thought I should have been paying them.

I have also learned a lot from running a business at a time where the explosion of the Internet meant a lot of the old ways of doing things that I had become used to, became ineffective.

Who Cares Where You Live?

Suddenly geographical boundaries no longer existed.

With VoIP phone systems like Vonage as well as video conferencing services like Skype and other such platforms anybody who could speak excellent English was a potential client.

In my first year of coaching in 2005 I made about $3,000. My second was a tad better at $8,000 and my third marginally better than that at $12,000.

Shocking figures aren’t they?

Even now when I think of them I gulp.

I realize I got very lucky in having a supportive wife and a few bucks saved up to live on.

I got even luckier when I realized that I needed help.

To begin with, other than my first website design, which by the way was truly horrible, I was trying to do everything myself and getting nowhere.

I’d be lying if I said I can remember the exact moment the light bulb went on and I realized I was being an arrogant dick for thinking I didn’t need help, but it was sometime in 2008.

Yes my business was on an upward trend, but at that rate I would be in a nursing home recounting stories about how I single-handedly stormed the Normandy beaches and defeated Hitler in hand-to-hand combat before I earned enough money to actually live on.

I Needed Help

It was then that I made the decision to get professional help.

I hired an SEO (search engine optimization) company.

I hired a company to redesign my website.

I hired a marketing coach.

And I hired somebody to help with my Social Media.

Basically I took all my eggs and proceeded to cram that into a very small basket hoping not to end up with an omelet that tasted of wicker, or whatever it is they make baskets of.

Things started to change.

I rose up the search engine rankings.

I got compliments on my website.

I understood more about marketing and put it to good use.

And I made an absolute killing on Twitter in 2009 gaining over $20k worth of business directly from that one platform.

The Catalyst

Do you know what caused this change, other than a financially perilous decision that threatened to send me back on to the job market?

My clients.

I suddenly realized I was telling clients that asking for help was a sign of strength not weakness.

That behind every successful person was a team of people helping them.

In fact, the more successful somebody is/was the more they relied/rely on the help of of others.

Yet, I wasn’t listening to myself.

Slowly it dawned on me that I wasn’t taking my own advice, and in the words of my hero Dr Gregory House, I was ‘an idiot’.

A Daring Adventure As You Know It Is Soon To Be No More

This is the last post you will read on the current A Daring Adventure as at some point over the next few days we are switching over to the new design.

Note: If you read this after June 1st 2014 you may wonder wtf I’m talking about as the switch will have already taken place and all you will see is the new site. Sorry!

I’m fairly sure that I could figure out how to design a website.

It may suck, it may not gain me any clients and it may scare young children, but it would be a website.

Fortunately, I now know that to have designed my own website would have been a fools errand when it is the shop window for my business.

So instead, I hired an expert, I hired Chris Gaskill.

Chris hasn’t just done a good job, he absolutely fucking nailed it!

And then after he nailed it, he trotted off to Home Depot, visited the hardware department, bought some extra nails, and then nailed it again.

You will get to see it next time and I hope you will agree.

But even if you don’t, that’s fine, because I truly believe most people will and all this kind of thing is subjective.

This current site has done a fantastic job and I am so grateful for Louise my previous designer for her wonderful work (plus she’s a super lovely and caring person and I thoroughly enjoyed working with her!).

However, time moves on and things change.

She’s back in Sweden and the current design is dated and doesn’t reflect me at this particular point in my career as well as it could.

Are You Prepared To Do What Successful People Do

I knew I needed help and after a lot of thought and conversations I realized that Chris could help me best.

I have said many times that asking for help is a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness.

But it doesn’t matter what I think, it’s whether you are prepared to ask for help that really matters.

Nobody is an island (except for my friend Bob Island and his wife, Beth and maybe their kids) so don’t think that you have to do everything yourself.

So What Do Successful People Do?

They build a team around them of people they can trust and rely upon, and that’s what you should be doing.

Drop any belief you may have that you can do everything, because you can’t.

I need help, you need help, we all need help.

So just ask, and be successful.

Do You Need Website Help?

By the way, if you need a website designing I really couldn’t recommend Chris more highly.

There are few web designers that know not only design, but conversion, SEO and social media like he does.

I know he is in the process of redesigning his own site, so this link is nothing more than a way of contacting him should you so wish.

You do get a very, very tiny sneak peak of my new site, but that’s all it is.

I am so pumped and excited for the launch and I hope you will be back when WE launch the new design shortly.

Important note: I am recommending Chris because I totally and utterly have confidence in him. I don’t stand to benefit in any way whatsoever if you like his work and hire him.

Except maybe by that warm fuzzy feeling we get from helping others, just because we can.