I still look back at 2016 with mixed emotions.
That was the time I left the Beer Store and had no idea what I was going to do with my life. The one thing I did know, I wasn’t going to work for a place that didn’t appreciate the blood, sweat and tears I put into everything I do.
For those that don’t know, in October of 2016 I was let go by the Beer Store after a 16 year career. A career that started out as part time all the way up to management. A career where I was chosen to be a brand ambassador, and highly respected for countless hours of volunteer work for the Returns for Leukemia Bottle Drive.
It wasn’t because of my performance or my ability to manage my teams, it was because I was simply that, in management and after being assaulted by my full time employee, it was easier to let me go instead of all the red tape around disciplining a union employee. Even more so when the union rep was my employee’s father.
As heartbroken and upset I was back then, I look back at that time now and I’m very grateful. That was a failure that I learned from. It was the time when my life finally turned around and it helped push me towards my entrepreneurial journey and the passion I had for helping others.
Don’t get me wrong, that was an extremely scary time trying to figure out what I wanted to do and not only that, dive deep into a new skill so I would be able to help others.
That’s when I took my passion for social media and turned that into something I could use to help others. The question then was how?
After taking every known webinar, course and seminar online I could find, it wasn’t until I came across Russell Brunson and his books that really helped me scale and learn the skills I needed to not only grow my business but help others do the same with theirs.
Over the past month I talked a lot about the Dotcom Secrets book and how amazing that is. Taking small parts of the book and showing you how you can use them with a splash of my own experiences in there.
Now I want to transition into his second book, Expert Secrets and dive deep into helping you tell your story.
One of the first things he talks about in this book is “Finding your Valueâ€.
It’s really cool looking back at my journey and seeing the process I went through from day one, when I started learning as much as I could from webinars, courses, podcasts and so on, until now. Having not read Expert Secrets then, it maps out the exact process I took and I love seeing that.
Starting off, Russell talks about 5 phases broken down into 2 areas and when I left the Beer Store and started my entrepreneurial journey, I was unknowingly in the first two phases, The Dreamer and The Reporter. The Growth Stage.
What is the Dreamer and Reporter Phase?
When he talks about the Dreamer phase, we’ve all been there. As entrepreneurs, my hope is we never lose that.
For me it was the dream of finding a way to turn my passion into a career and I haven’t stopped dreaming since. Although I said I hope we never lose our dreams, we do in fact need to dream but continue to take action and make those dreams a reality over and over again.
The cool thing about being in this phase is you can experiment as you go and continue learning. I’m entering my 5th year now in this business and I continue to experiment and learn as I go. That’s something that will never change and it shouldn’t for you either.
The next phase Russell talks about is a lot of fun and again, something I still do. The Reporter phase is ALL about learning!
Well maybe a tad more, it’s all about learning and publishing. When you think about the job a reporter has, they investigate a story, learn as much as they can about what they are reporting on and then compile that story and publish it to print or into a script they read on air.
As entrepreneurs, we go through the same process in the beginning and to be honest, still continue to do.
Just the other week I attended an online event Russell Brunson hosted with Alison Prince. The event was called Ecomm vs Expert and although going into the event I knew the framework they were going to use, I attended anyway so I could perfect that framework for myself.
Now, I don’t in any way copy what they are doing or what they did but I took that framework like I have been doing and modeled it with my own twist. Adding new things to make it my own.
The way this event was run, was through a private Facebook Group and having it run this way, we were able to network with those in the group.
Like myself, I found dozens of others doing the very same thing I was doing. We were being the reporters and there to observe how the framework was taught so we could go back and “reportâ€, create the content we needed from what we had just learned.
Once you have this growth stage down, the fun stuff begins. It’s time to be a contributor!
That’s what we’ll dive into next week though.
With everything I talked about here today, and like I talked about in January. It’s all from the lessons that Russell has taught me by reading Dotcom Secrets and now Expert Secrets.
I am not exaggerating when I say that these books as well as Traffic Secrets are for one a lot cheaper and definitely a lot better than a marketing degree from any college.
I know that’s a bold statement to make but the way Russell teaches, buying these books was hands down the best thing I have done for my business.
That’s the reason I was offering Dotcom Secrets for free and now offering Expert Secrets to you for free.
All you have to do to get either of those books for free, is click the buttons below.