“We’re not here to collect thank you’s, we’re here to sell products. Grow some teeth.” – Paul Reddick, my first business coach
It’s late December, 2009.
I’m at my then-girlfriend’s cottage for the holidays, paying embarrassingly little attention to her…
(hence the “then-girlfriend” thing)
…Because I’m paying all of my attention to starting this new thing nobody has ever heard of called an online business.
It’s not exactly the dark ages of the internet, but it’s close.
Twitter is brand new, IG doesn’t even exist, and people still think everything you buy online is a “scam.”
Plus, building a janked-up website costs thousands of dollars, months of time, and requires a bunch of mysterious voodoo known as “code.”
“Creators” won’t become a thing for a decade or so, and I’m critically low on examples to follow.
So, like a good little entrepreneur, I’m bushwhacking:
Slashing and hacking my own path through this wild, unknown territory.
That’s when I discover an interview.
It’s just an mp3 file, about 45 minutes long, found on an obscure page of some backwoods website at the deep end of a rabbit hole I’d fallen down.
The subject:
A then-40-year-old baseball pitching coach named Paul Reddick.
Paul is about the O’est-G you’ll find in the marketing game.
He got his start selling VHS tapes by direct mail, to a customer list he kept via. a stack of paper with a brick on top to keep it from falling over.
Then he moved online.
By the time I listened to the interview, Paul was running a 7-figure online business teaching pitchers (pitchers!) how to throw harder.
(take that in: not baseball players; pitchers — seven figures in a niche within a niche)
The doors of my mind blew open.
My thoughts raced.
Realizations tumbled like dominoes, one after another, as my then-girlfriend begged, scolded, pleaded with me to close my laptop and stop being such a holiday-ruining twat.
“I can do this in basketball” I thought to myself for the first time.
“I can definitely do this in basketball.”
So I did.
Two years later, my business, Basketball Renegades, is thriving.
I’m living in a brand new house, with a flashy new BMW in the driveway, and somehow (though not for much longer) the same girlfriend who managed to tolerate two more years of twattery for the sake of my cause.
Life is looking pretty shiny at this point, but there’s a problem:
To keep my new business thriving, I need to hustle.
Launch new products, scrape together new joint venture deals, find new ways to build my list, whatever.
So my revenue is fluctuating wildly — some months 10k, other months over 50k — with very little predictability.
Then Paul Reddick re-appeared.
Grizzled old pitching coach Paul Reddick, who’s contact details I dug out of some internet back-alley and begged to coach me.
Within a single phone call, Paul had:
- Identified exactly what was keeping my business stuck (relying on affiliate traffic and new launches to generate sales)
- Given me a precise action plan to solve it (build a funnel to run on Google pay-per-click traffic)
- And connected me to contractors and agencies who could solve it for me (media buyers, designers, and compliance specialists)
Within a few months, my revenue had completely stabilized.
And within a year, we were on pace to break 7-figures in revenue.
This is the power of coaching, and it cannot be understated:
The right advice, from the right coach, at the right time, can change your damn life.
Period, full stop, end of story.
Finding the right coach is like being caught in a street fight that you’re losing, when a sniper emerges from the shadows and drills your opponent in one shot.
Problem solved. Next.
It’s been 15 years since I first discovered Paul Reddick.
And while I haven’t seen everything, I’ve seen a hell of a lot.
And, on top of what I’ve seen through my own journey…
I’ve guided many up-and-coming entrepreneurs through the same process Paul once guided me through:
Scaling from 0 to 10k per month…
To 100k per month…
To, in one case, 1M per month…
…While helping those entrepreneurs develop the razor-sharp business skills and internal mastery required to play at the higher levels of this game.
That’s what makes The Path such a uniquely powerful platform:
Combine nearly 15 years of deep business experience with advanced self-development practices, personal coaching and a private community of like-minded entrepreneurs…
…And you won’t find anything else like it in the world.
Here’s where you can get the full details, if you’d like to join us inside.
The price increases permanently at midnight on Thursday, so move quick.
And hey:
That was a long one — well done 🙂
I hope you enjoyed my trip down memory lane.
And Paul, if you’re reading:
Thank you, man. For everything.
– T
P.S. Path link, one more time.
“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” – Franz Kafka
