Internet Marketing | Lead Generation

How to Maintain Business Focus in Joint Ventures and Coaching - and protect your self from Business Wannabe Energy Vampires

One of the hardest things in business (or life) is to keep our FOCUS.

For me that personally means using my time as productively as possible. Occasionally something comes a long that appeals to our “ego” (sorry, can’t think of another word) - and while there is nothing necessarily wrong with that - it is in my experience those things that distract us the most from our objectives and goals and ultimately make it more difficult to reach our goals.

For example, I pretty regularly have people approach me with ideas and Joint Venture proposals - but almost without exception these approaches are from less “successful” people than myself. (Hey, I know successful is a subjective word)

I even have requests for coaching and proposals offering shares in future profits. Now these approaches are flattering (well, for the ego at least) and if I was not more careful, I would find myself getting involved in quite a number of them

You see, TIME (not money) is the most precious thing we have in business and the idea of giving up any of your time to focus on anything other than your core business objective has to be treated with caution. Many the potentially great business have remained a mediocre business because the owners could not maintain their focus or allowed their EGO to get the better of them.

You see, with that time invested in my own business, using my skills and contacts, I could “earn” considerably more in the long term by building up a new business that could be sold etc than I might ever in a JV or individual coaching.

The other issue that I have with “coaching” (not so much consulting) is that when you coach, you almost inevitably become responsible for that other persons “success” or “failure”. Now of course, professional coaches have ways of “re-framing” this so it is not their responsibility but none the less it is I believe an issue. I have several friends who are coaches and they have said this is one of the “negatives” of what they do.

People even come along and offer you a share of their “profits” (it has happened to me) - but that in my opinion is a JOKE, as frankly those profits would not be there had it not been for your involvement.

As a generalisation - I will only ever Joint Venture with someone who I at least consider my “equal” or someone who can bring something to the table that I cannot. Someone who is not yet successful on the web, who is offering you a share of his / her future profits and you have to JV / Coach them is not in my opinion an “equal”. They need you a whole deal more than you ever will need them. For me, one expression of ENERGY, IS MONEY and BUSINESS SUCCESS and anything that drains me of Energy (like listening to other people and their issues and why they are not successful) drains me of business success - so I avoid it whenever I can.

The only realistic alternative I would consider - is in the longer term to offer an “apprenticeship” or “mastermind” program - but I don’t feel that can be offered until your existing business is highly successful and is running almost on auto-pilot or perhaps even better, after you have exited your existing business.