It is interesting to see how more and more people are turning to forums to obtain the answers to their business rather than going to a mentor or coach. It is practically an untapped resource that many more people are getting into, here’s why no matter what you do in this life there is usually someone out there that is a lot better at it than you. You could teach yourself until you get good enough to beat them or you could learn from them gain all the knowledge in less than half the time and beat them at their own game.

This can be related to forums, for an example, I will use someone who wants to succeed in an internet home business. We will call her Jayne, Jayne has just got his webpage promoting a product or service Jayne doesn’t know where to start. So, she starts researching, she finds all the info he needs after a few months and applies it. After a few years Jayne is making some money but nothing serious, she knows it will take her a few more years to be successful. Let’s take the alternate path Jayne starts her product or service and joins a forum relating to it, she asks people questions only to come back the next day to find they are answered. After a couple of months, Jayne is making a bit of money, after a few years, she makes a full-time income.

My point is it increases your learning curve dramatically, hence this accelerates your growth exponentially. Let me explain further from a more practical point of view, say we want to promote an affiliate service. First, we go to the search engines and type something related to it such as a home business forum. The search engines come up with various home business forums join one, make sure that it is centred around a home business, not multiple subjects. The reason for this is that it will take a lot longer for your question to get answered. Once you have joined anything that you are unsure about just ask about it if you want more information on a subject just ask. People in forums are generally very experienced and will be happy to help you never be afraid to ask a question regardless of what it may be.

Take the time to get familiar with the forum and try to post at least once a day, this will get you credibility and build up backlinks to your website. After a while of posting you will notice that you are learning a lot quicker and realise how long it would have taken you to learn yourself.

However, if you want to build up a business very quickly and have accountability to make sure that it happens then you will need a mentor/coach. Your mentor/coach needs to be experienced in the field that you are looking at so that you can be guided correctly. You may also need more than one mentor/coach due to the nature of the business. For example, you may have a mentor/coach for investing in property, but that person may not be versed in setting up systems or know how to take waste out of your business. If you want to scale up you will need a variety of mentors, think of how corporations work, in that they have specialist departments and leaders to run the business, your mentors can be compared to these specialists.

In conclusion, forums are a good starting point if you want to take it steady and stay small, however, if you want to move quickly and scale up then you need mentor/coaches to help you.