I wired my house myself when I built it.
After a lot of research studying the residential electrical codes, I carefully created the circuits in the house to make sure everything was organized and labeled correctly.
Then, I hired an electrician to look at the job before I closed everything up just to make sure that I’d done it properly. Essentially, I hired an electrical coach.
That was 10 years ago.
Everything worked great until 2 years ago.
That’s when the porch lights began flickering. And the microwave oven caused the DVR and the satellite receiving dish to get wonky.
And then, one day, I was sitting at my desk when I smelled something burning. The odor was coming from the storage room next to my office, where the electrical panel is. I saw two coax cables sizzling as they melted together and burned the edge of a FedEx envelope next to them. Thank goodness I was right there.
Panic set in.
I’d done something wrong wiring the house.
And now, 8 years later, something big was wrong and the house was going to burn down any minute. Or at least that was what was going through my head.
The local REMC power company showed up immediately when I called.
Kenneth was a senior troubleshooter and he was Johnny-on-the-spot. But he was baffled. “It shouldn’t be pulling that much voltage through the satellite cables,” he said. “It has to be a loose ground somewhere in the house.”
For 2 weeks, I worked on finding that loose ground wire.
I pulled the ceiling in the basement, rewired a bunch of circuits, tightened everything down, and double-checked everything. I put the TVs on their own isolated circuit.
And the problem went away.
Then it came back.
Then it went away.
Then it came back.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I turned on the microwave and TV satellite went out. I called Kenneth.
The crew showed up and put a voltage regulator on the house meter to measure the incoming voltage over a 5 day period, something they’d never done before.
After they collected the meter and went back to the office to look at the data, they came back in force with 3 technicians.
There’s a problem with the electrical coming into the house they said.
My first thought was, “Thank God, it’s not my fault!”
I had done everything right I thought. But I needed the confirmation of an avowed expert to give me the confidence to move forward. And once I had that, I could let it go and move on.
That’s why it’s so important to follow people who have answers when you’re wading into new territory. It’s that way in business too.
My mailing list is pretty small, but it’s a list that has driven hundreds of thousands of dollars into my business with about 40 percent of those being buyers.
But I still want know the best list building techniques from the people who have mastered their favorite tactics and can show results with that.
That’s why I’ve started the MyNAMS 30-Day List Building Challenge. Each day during this challenge, we’re tackling a specific aspect of list building and bringing in at least 30 experts – one per day – who have specific expertise in an aspect of list building.
Then we implement.
I’ve set a goal for each of the students taking the challenge to increase their list by 1000 people.
Many of them have no list or website yet, but they are making great strides towards having their first.
The key is getting the right information from people who know. And that’s why it’s so important to make sure that those experts know what they’re talking about such as:
- List Building is the Key to Your Business Success with Kathleen Gage
- Leveraging Long-Term Traffic with Karon Thackston
- 20 Minute Interviews Turn Into List Building Gold with Cathy Demers
- Monetize Your List – Even the Freebie Seekers! with Nicole Dean
- Forgotten Features Of Aweber And The First 5 Messages Of A Stellar Autoresponder with Bob “The Teacher” Jenkins
- Getting Great Leads from LinkedIn with Josh Turner
- Can You Build A Six Figure Business From an E-Book? With Dennis Becker
- Step by Step List Building wth Kevin Riley
- I’m a writer! How do I build a List? with Kristen Eckstein
- How to Create a Sales Funnel in WordPress with Paul Taubman
- The Awesome Power of Video Squeeze Pages with Lou Bortone
- Kick Start Your Content Creation in 20 Minutes or Less with Jeff Herring
- Making Big Money With A Tiny List with Connie Ragen Green
This is just a partial list…
Coaches and Mentors are key to your success!
One of the reasons you read Christine’s blog is that she’s such a great mentor and coach.
I was looking at one of our colleague’s sales pages on a webinar the other day and an attendee asked, “How did you…”
It was a question about specific functionality on the sales page. The colleague said, “I don’t know.” And the attendee, “Oh, I thought that might be a Christine-thing.”
We laughed, but the point was a really good one. When you become the authority on a topic, like Christine is on building some special sales page functionality, people recognize your work everywhere.
And you get the benefit of working with that coach.
And they affirm what you’re doing as you go along.
And you’re absolved of the responsibility for nearly burning down your house.
My wiring was fine!
There’s a little thing in a transformer called a capacitor. It releases a set amount of electricity to even out the flow of power just like water comes through your faucet at the proper pressure. (You wouldn’t want a firehouse to wash your dishes with.)
The capacitor was mislabeled. It said it was 100 somethings when it actually was 200 somethings. So every time it fired off, it shot a little extra power into the house causing things to flicker and smoke.
Because I had a good electrical coach, I was very happy to see that I was on the right track…even though the house could have still burned down.
But I was right – and that’s always worth something :)
To help you build your list, I invite you to join us in the MyNAMS 30-Day List Building Challenge as an ongoing challenge. Come in and succeed today. As part of the challenge, David is touring the blogosphere and posting marketing and list building insights on different blogs. You can find the complete schedule of all the blog posts – past and future – here.