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Introduction – The Mentor-Protégé Relationship

What is Mentoring?

There are few experiences more rewarding than teaching what you know to someone else. The mentor-protégé relationship is perhaps the ultimate teaching experience: a one-on-one transfer of accumulated knowledge and wisdom designed to benefit both parties involved.

Protégés are a common occurrence in the business world today. Experienced people in every industry often decide to "adopt" a protégé—whether the arrangement is through a formal mentoring program, or an informal mutual decision to take a new employee "under your wing" and show him the ropes. The reasons to enter a mentor-protégé relationship are many, but the most common is when the protégé candidate shows promise from the start.

Mentor-protégé relationships can be either formal or informal. Informal mentoring relationships often develop on their own, with the more experienced person offering advice and assistance and the newcomer taking that advice to heart. Many organizations have formal mentoring programs, which can be either within the company or within the industry. For example, the Small Business Administration runs a mentoring program where retired business executives dedicate their time to developing protégés.

College interns also figure into the equation. Though protégés are not always interns, the relationships are virtually the same, while the reasoning may be different. But whether you work with a protégé or a college intern, becoming a mentor can be one of the most rewarding experiences of your professional life.

A Brief History of Mentoring

The actual origins of the mentoring process are unknown. However, the word "mentor" is derived from Homer's Odyssey. The original "Mentor" was an older man who served as an advisor to the king. Unfortunately, Mentor was rather ineffectual in his advice. However, the term in this context refers to the goddess Athena, who took on the form of Mentor to advise a younger man in the art of war.

Figure 1 – Telemachus and Mentor

There have been many famous mentor-protégé pairs throughout history. One of the earliest and most well-known was Paul of Tarsus and Timothy, a first-century Christian bishop. Minister, activist, and Morehouse college president Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays served as a mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr.; and the poet Ezra Pound guided a fledgling T.S. Eliot through his literary career.

Most recently, the protégé concept has been illustrated through billionaire Donald Trump's reality television show The Apprentice, where young men and women compete for the opportunity to claim Trump as their business mentor. Learning a trade or an industry from someone with more experience has been a consistent occurrence throughout history, and it is still a viable and successful approach.

This book explains how to find and develop a protégé in the modern business world. You will discover the benefits of taking on a protégé, both to yourself and your apprentice; where to look for one, how to cultivate a relationship, and how to know when it's time for your protégé to spread his wings and fly solo.

You don't have to be Ezra Pound or Donald Trump to offer something worthwhile to a protégé. If you've had experience in a business or industry, you can benefit someone new to your field and have the pleasure of watching a new talent unfold.

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
--Mother Teresa

Chapter 1 – Benefits of a Protégé

It's a Two-Way Street

Most people understand that having a mentor is beneficial; the advantages are obvious. However, there are quite a few kickbacks mentors receive from participating in the process—some more apparent than others.

What's behind your desire to become a mentor? Perhaps you work for a company with a mentoring program, and you feel ready to lend your expertise. Or maybe you've noticed someone who has that same spark of motivation and drive you possessed when you first entered your career. Whatever your reason, you will find that mentoring gives as much as it takes.

Here are just a few of the benefits you will receive by taking on a protégé.

Sharper skills

As a mentor, you may already be in a management position—and you may not. Regardless of your current career designation, working with a protégé will help you develop those skills that are essential to leading others, which could in turn lead you to a promotion.

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When you change your attitude through your mindset you can completely change your life. If you want to be a winner rather than live a life of mediocrity then you need to change your attitude to life. Successful people in all walks of life all have a winning attitude that drives them forward every day. You are not born with a winning attitude. It is something that you cultivate throughout your life. Only a small percentage of the population has a true winning attitude because it takes time and effort. Most people prefer an easy life – but then complain about how things are not the way that they want them to be.

If you want to be successful in life then the best way to do it is to model someone that has experienced the same or similar success. Most people do not do this and tend to take advice from people that have not achieved what they want to achieve.

In this powerful report we will show you 9 ways that you can develop a winning attitude in the fastest possible time. If you are looking for some overnight miracle then you will be very disappointed as this doesn’t exist. But if you are willing to use the techniques in this report on a consistent basis then you will get the results that you desire.

Our world is full of negativity. Turn on the news on TV and it is there. A lot of people spend their life complaining about what a raw deal they have. Of course this is never their fault it is always someone else’s.

The truth is that the way you choose to see life and your future is totally down to you. If you see it in a negative light like so many people do then you are not going to achieve much. But if you make the switch to a positive outlook then everything seems possible.

All of use experience negative thoughts in our heads no matter how successful we are. It is how you deal with these negative thoughts that makes all of the difference. We are also surrounded by negativity from the media, our friends and family and other sources. Again how you handle this negativity is very important.

The bottom line is that you can ensure that you only allow positive thoughts to permeate your mind. It takes a bit of practice but you can certainly do it. If a negative thought enters your head such as “you will never be able to do that” then you can neutralize this with a positive thought such as “I can do anything”. It is going to take some effort and time to perfect this process but it will work and will certainly be worth it for you. You have a conscious mind and a subconscious mind. Your conscious mind deals with the things that you interact with in this world including the thoughts in your head.

Your subconscious mind is a lot more powerful and stores beliefs and habits that you have accumulated over the years. The reason that you experience negative thoughts in the first place is due to your subconscious mind. Maybe you failed at something in the past and your subconscious has stored this and will remind you of this. The good news is that you can changed what is stored in your subconscious mind. And you need to do that if you want to develop a winning attitude. Your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between a negative or positive thought. It will allow anything in if your conscious mind allows it.

Your conscious mind is the gatekeeper to your subconscious. If you allow yourself to be dominated by negative thoughts then this will have a significant impact on your subconscious. The same is true if you let positive thoughts dominate your mind.

When you neutralize negative thoughts with positive ones you prevent the negativity reaching your subconscious. There are other things that you can do to train your subconscious to provide you with a positive outlook such as visualization and positive affirmations.

Please answer this question:

Do you believe that you can achieve anything? If you do then you already have a winning attitude and mindset. If you don’t then you have work to do.

What do you want from your life? Where do you see yourself in the next five years? How would you answer these questions? Most people will tell you that they don’t know or they have never thought about it. It’s pretty sad that so many people never take the time to think about what they want from their lives.

For a lot of people, deciding what to have for dinner is a major issue for them. You do not want to be in this situation. You need to be totally clear on what changes you want to make in your life and have some goals to pursue.

The reason why most people do not know what they want is because it takes effort to think about it and make the decision. We live in a world that is full of distractions so it is much easier to waste your time with social media than it is to think about your future.

People with a winning attitude know exactly what they want from life and when they intend to get it. They set themselves challenging goals and achieve them due to their winning mindset. They don’t sit still and wallow in contentment. Instead they push themselves to achieve even more in life. So you owe it to yourself to identify what you want in life. Get a pen and paper and go somewhere quiet where you won’t be disturbed. Think about the different areas in your life such as your career or business, your finances, your relationships, your health, your skills and so on.

Ask yourself questions to determine what you want. So for career or business you could ask “what kind of career or business do I really want?” For health you could ask “what can I do to improve my health?” Write down the answers that you get from your subconscious mind (yes your subconscious will provide you with answers).

Write your answers in the positive. So if your subconscious tells you that you need to start an online business to earn extra income then write “I will start a successful online business” or something similar.

Spend as much time as necessary repeating this process for the different aspects of your life. At the end of the exercise you should have a fairly long list of things that you want to achieve. An important piece of advice here is that you do not want to take on too many things so you need to prioritize what you will do.

The best way to decide which of your “desires” is the most important to you is to read each statement and then imagine that you have already achieved them. Note how you feel when you imagine this. If the feelings are very strong within you then these are the things that you really want and you need to prioritize them.

Being comfortable with what you have is not something that people with a winning attitude ever settle for. They do not set goals for themselves that are easy for them to achieve. This is a total waste of time.

The reason that most people do not have a winning attitude is because they like the safety of their comfort zone. They went to school and learned all that they could and then did the same in their career. Now they are comfortable and don’t need to do much learning any more. Winners never stop learning. They never stop pushing the boundaries of their comfort zone either. Human beings have all of the tools at their disposal to grow. With the right attitude they will do things that they have never done before and break out of their current comfort zone. But few people will do this.

Their current comfort zone is safe and warm and the thought of moving outside it fills them with horror. If you want to develop a winning mindset then you need to be prepared to be constantly challenging the boundaries of your comfort zone.

This is not an easy thing to do but completely necessary if you want to develop a winning attitude. Don’t set yourself goals that you can do standing on your head. Make your goals challenging so that they will push you to enter unchartered waters. You will need to do things that you never did before. Today with the Internet you can learn about almost anything very easily. If you don’t know how to do something then there will be web pages or videos that will show you how. There really is no excuse. So take the bull by the horns and push the boundaries of your comfort zone so that you can continually grow.

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It is pretty easy to get started as an online coach and many people rush in and set themselves up as coaches without giving much thought to how they will get clients for their business. After a while they give up on the idea of being an online coach because they do not have sufficient clients to make it worth their while.

In this special report we will provide you with 6 proven ways to get clients for your online coaching business. It is not enough to just setup a website and expect the clients to come. You have to stand out and prove that you know what you are talking about.

People want to hire online coaches to add to their knowledge and increase their chances of success. So you need to put the message out there that you are the coach that can really help them rather than the others that are available. So please read every word of this short report and take action so you can become the “go to” online coach.

There are not many other things that shout “expertise, authority and credibility” than a book on your niche. Authors are perceived by most people to be experts. It doesn’t matter if they have read the books or not! The fact that the person is an author in the niche is all that matters.

Now you are probably thinking that it takes a lot of work to write a book. Yes you are right it does! But you will certainly stand out in a crowded market if you have written a book because most of the other online coaches that you are competing with will not have been bothered to do this.

You do not have to write the book yourself. There are professional writers out there that will do most of the work for you. This is not going to be a cheap option but if you don’t have the time or the writing skills to write your own book then use a writer to do it for you.

If you outsource the writing of your book then you will need to provide a plan for the book to your writer. You will also need to tell them the style that you want the book to be written in and provide them with specific information that you want to include. It is essential that your book provides good value to your readers even if you give it away.

So think clearly about what you want to include. Your target market will have a number of problems that they need to resolve so write your book around some of these. It is important that the book is valuable but you do not want to give everything away (otherwise why would they want to hire you as a coach?).

Talk about how you have implemented your own ideas in your book and also how you have helped others achieve the results that they wanted. It is really important that the reader gets the sense that you can help others as this will make them much more inclined to purchase your coaching services.

You do not need to write a lengthy tome. We would suggest 6 to 10 chapters that are concise and clear and have actionable elements to them. Add an introduction to your book and tell them that you are now an online coach. Mention this a number of times throughout the book and tell people how they can find you online (website, social media etc).

What about publishing your book? The easiest way to do this is to go down the self publishing route. It is unlikely that you will be able to use a publishing house for your book because it will not have the potential numbers that will excite them. You don’t need them anyway as it is so easy to self publish.

Save yourself a ton of money by using platforms like Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble to self publish your book. It is a good idea to create hard copies of your book as well and you can use Create Space to do this for a reasonable price.

One of the most important thing you must do for your book is to create a compelling cover for it. If you are not good with Photoshop or graphic design this is not a problem as you can go to Fiverr.com or similar gig websites and find a good cover designer there. You will need to tell them what you are looking for and what platforms you are using (Kindle etc).

You will be amazed at the quality of the designs that these people can create for only a few bucks. Even if you can do it yourself why spend your precious time on this? Use your time to find clients for your coaching business!

Once you have your book in digital form and physical form there are a number of things that you can do. You can provide it as an incentive on your website for visitors to opt in to your email list. People are reluctant to give out their email addresses these days as they know they will receive promotional messages. Your book will be a good way to persuade them to do this.

Don’t worry too much about making money with your book on Amazon Kindle for example. Price it at around $2.99 so it is low enough for people to make an impulse buying decision. You can actually give your book away for free to encourage people to leave reviews on Amazon which is an excellent idea.

You could create a competition on Facebook to win a copy of your book. If you do a lot of networking then give hard copies of your book away. Make sure that you add your contact details in your book such as your phone number, your website address and your email address.

Go and write your book to boost your credibility and stand out in the market!

You cannot launch a successful online coaching business without a professional website. If someone tells you that you can do this they are wrong. Another thing that you must never do is to use a free website service such as Weebly.com or a free blogging platform such as Blogger.com. This screams cheap!

It will only cost you around $10 a year to have your own domain name such as TheDigitalMarketingCoach.com or JohnSmithCoaching.com. Choose a domain name that reflects your coaching business. It is OK to use your name but remember that not many people will know who you are at the beginning.

Once you have chosen your domain name you will need a web hosting account. If you don’t know what this is it is where your website files are stored and is the way that you make your site live on the Internet and available to all. There are thousands of web hosting companies out there that will host your website for a few bucks a month.

It is unlikely that you are going to get hordes of visitor traffic to your website especially when you are just starting out. So you can go for an affordable shared hosting service from BlueHost.com or HostGator.com. There are many reviews online about web hosting companies that you can read.

You must choose a web host that offers one click WordPress installations. WordPress is a free blogging platform that is ideal for your website. You can easily customize it without having to know any web code. It is very simple to add your content to the WordPress platform as well.

Once you have your domain name, web hosting and you have installed WordPress (this is easy and there are many tutorials available on YouTube) you will need to choose an appropriate them for your website. A WordPress them is the design of your site. How it looks and feels.

There are lots of free WordPress themes available and there are premium themes too. Search for “online coaching wordpress themes” and have a look at the results that you get back. If you have to invest $50 or so in a theme that really works for you then do that. Otherwise go for a free theme that suits you. Install the theme from your WordPress dashboard.

The aim of your website should be to prove to potential clients that you are credible and that you can help them. Testimonials are valuable social proof and you need to add these to your website. If you are just starting out how can you get testimonials?

Offer your services to people that you know free of charge or heavily discounted in exchange for their testimonial. If you don’t know anyone then find a suitable place to advertise this. It doesn’t matter what method you use to obtain your testimonials. Just get at least 3 that you can add to your site.

Tell the people that you are requesting testimonials from that they must agree to provide a video testimonial or at the very least a photograph of themselves and their website address so that you can add this. This all helps with authenticity. Never be tempted to add fake testimonials to your website.

Invest in a professional logo for your website. It is important that you create a brand that you can use consistently on your website and your social media accounts. There are plenty of good graphic designers on Fiverr.com that will create a very professional logo to your instructions for a small amount of money.

On each of your pages and posts on your website add a call to action. This can be for a prospective client to contact you via your contact form, call you or join your email list. Make your website work hard for you 24/7 and set up analytics so that you can see what is working. Your website is a lead generation machine and it needs to convert.