Why I Built All of This and Gave It Away

“You can’t share what you don’t have.” I have said that sentence to clients, to sales teams and to myself, and for years I only half understood it. Sharing is easy once you have something worth sharing. Getting to that point is the part nobody sees.

This site is what I have been collecting for a long time. It took years of watching small businesses win and lose, of answering the same questions over and over, and of writing things down because I was tired of watching good owners learn them the expensive way. Today it is a free course called Marketing Mastermind Club. I want to tell you why I built it, and why I am giving it away.

Where it started

When I was starting out, I did not know what I did not know. I made mistakes in front of customers. I called them failures, because that is what they felt like, and I carried them around for longer than I should have. It took me a while to start calling them feedback instead, and that one change of word changed what I did next. (If you are carrying a mistake right now, the lesson on handling mistakes and customer complaints is for you.)

Here is what I remember most. Every time I got stuck, someone who had already been through it gave me some of their time. Business owners with their own problems and their own deadlines. They did not have to, and nobody was paying them. So who gave you your start? Who took the call when you did not even know what to ask?

What finally got it out of the folder

For a long time this project sat in a folder on my computer called unfinished projects. Everything in it was there: the lessons, the worksheets, the explanations. What it needed was finishing, and I kept finding reasons to do that later.

What changed was a man I met through networking. He asked questions, a lot of them, about cash flow, about marketing, about things nobody had ever explained to him. I ended up as his mentor, and later his friend. Every answer I gave him was something I already had sitting on my computer.

It made me wonder how many other owners are in his exact situation. They are smart, they are working hard, and nobody ever explained cash flow or marketing to them in plain words. Who do they ask? How many of them never get the chance to sit down with someone and ask?

I knew I had the answers. They just were not finished, and they were not anywhere people could reach them. If it helps even one person, it was worth the time to put it all up.

Why it had to be free

An earlier version of this course asked for your name, your email, your phone number and your address before you could read a word. Not many people signed up, and I understood why. If someone had asked me for all of that when I was broke and unsure, I would have walked away too.

So I asked a different question. If the goal is to help owners, what are we protecting by putting a wall in front of the help? There is no login here. There is nothing for sale. You can start at lesson one and go in order, or jump to the one you need tonight.

What is on the site

There are 128 lessons in four tracks: planning and building the business, building the brand, getting found and getting leads, and selling, delivering and keeping customers. You can see them all on the lessons page. The first track begins with the idea and the numbers, and ends with an honest go or no-go decision, because sometimes the kindest thing a course can tell you is to wait. There is a glossary for the words nobody explained to you, and worksheets and templates you can use the same day.

Where a lesson touches taxes, legal matters or insurance, it tells you to talk to a professional, because it should. Where a number is made up to show how something works, the lesson says so. I would rather be plain with you than impressive.

I also run RedKnight, a marketing agency for local businesses in Bucks County, so I am not pretending to be neutral about marketing. Most of what is here comes from the work we do every day, and a good part of it is going into a book I am writing. You can read more about me if you like to know who is talking.

Where to begin

If you are not sure where to start, go to Start Here. It will point you to the right lesson for where your business is today.

Our time is our life. If this saves you a wasted month or a wrong hire, that is what I built it for.

So I will leave you with a few questions. Who gave you your start, and have you thanked them? Have you passed it on yet? And what do you know today that someone starting out would pay to hear?