‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ is a book written by Joseph Campbell.

The first time that I heard about this book was from Chris Payne at the KISS 2 seminar last weekend 19th/20th October 2013.

Apparently, both the storyline of Star Wars and also The Lion King are built around the framework that was outlined in ‘The Hero With a Thousand Faces’.

Chris Payne told us that this was an excellent story framework to use when selling yourself as a coach or consultant (or indeed in any setting) as our life stories almost always follow the pattern set out in the book.

This story framework does indeed mirror my own experience with internet marketing.

I wanted to get online as a business consultant but didn’t have the necessary computer skills.  I was in the wasteland!

I initially started with internet marketing by going to a local college to learn how to create a website with Dreamweaver.  All the students were at different levels of skills and the whole experience was a nightmare.  But I had received the ‘call to adventure’ – I was desperate to express myself online.

However, the experience at the local college put me off – I was no longer confident that I could do it.  I ‘refused the call’

To promote my business consultancy, I was part of a local BNI Group to network with local businesses.  One of these businesses was a network marketer called Avril who signed me up to the Telecoms Plus network marketing opportunity.

It only took a short while trying to generate leads offline before I realised that I needed to generate leads online or risk losing all of my friends and family.

In 2009, my sister then introduced me to Ann Sieg and her partner, Mike Klingler, who were teaching internet marketing skills online to network marketers.

It was in this comprehensive training, for which I was paying $33 per month, that I was introduced to WordPress.  My love of internet marketing took off from that point – I accept the call as a result of meeting my first mentor.

Of course, the subsequent 3/4 years have been a real adventure, because I quickly transitioned from wanting to generate leads for my network marketing opportunity to providing internet marketing services to offline businesses.

This part of my journey is documented on http://businessrenegade.co.uk (- incidentally, at one time Alexa listed this site as being in the top 1% in the world as far as traffic is concerned which proves that I also know a little bit about SEO.)

Rather than focusing on one business niche and one service, of course, I made the mistake of trying to be all things to all men and learn a lot of different skills.  This led me into thinking that I don’t want to mess around with local businesses.

I discovered that most local businesses have been badly treated by so called web design experts who have charged them a lot of money and given them a website that doesn’t perform.  As a result they are rightly suspicious of anyone offering internet services – the motto is ‘one bitten, twice shy’.

I am constantly shocked how web designers and SEO companies are ripping off small businesses and leveraging the business owners ignorance of the internet. (99% of business websites receive hardly any traffic and are therefore almost totally ineffective in my opinion.)

Converting offline businesses to customers ethically requires that you have the patience to educate them about what it really takes to succeed online or alternatively take their money and give them something that you know won’t work (which is what most people do!)

I therefore decided that I would prefer to create information products that teach what I have learnt about internet marketing in an ethical way.

So as you can see, for a while things got worse as I explored many blind avenues and I have been through many adventures and created many websites in the process of getting to where I am today.

In May this year, I hooked up with Marc Milburn as my coach and started implementing the strategy he outlined.  In a very real sense this was the point at which your ‘hero with a thousand faces’ – me 🙂 – triumphs and transforms.  Since that time I have been highly productive by creating this new blog and numerous products that I can now promote.

I now have a solid business plan and strategy that I know will work and I am loving doing what I do.

[features_box_grey width=”75%” + border=”2px”]My products have been created to share what I have learned on my journey so far.  For example:

• The Sky Inside sets out the mindset required to succeed in any business, including internet marketing, and the time management strategies that I use to be as productive as possible as a self-employed entrepreneur
• The Way of the Warriors and Business Storyboards set-out the business strategies I have learned
• WP Website Wizard sets out the exact processes and systems I use to build WordPress websites
• Product Creation Renegade sets out how I build digital information products that I can sell
• Membership Millionaires Bootcamp sets out my system for building membership site products
• Measure n Manage sets out the key performance indicators that you need to monitor when running an online business and how to get the data
• List Building Renegade sets out the importance of building a list and how to do it

I have several other products planned such as:

• Email-ATM that covers email marketing
• Easy Web Page Graphics that covers how to create stunning images and graphics because websites are a very visual medium and graphics are very important
• Outsourcing Renegade that will cover the opportunities for outsourcing to scale your business
• Business Creation Mastery which will be my high-end coaching programme bringing everything together

In addition to these products, I want to cover various traffic strategies.   For example, I am helping a friend of mine to put together a traffic product about solo ads called Solo Ads Assassin.  As a quid pro quo, he is selling my products on the back-end of his funnel.

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If you are not convinced about the value of telling stories in your business, then read this article to see evidence of how stories can add huge value to any brand, product or service – in one experiment, stories added 2,706% to the value of the products concerned!  In the circumstances where YOU are the brand (as in the case of people like consultants and coaches), then it is critically important that you tell your own story.

As you can see from my own story, in a very real sense I am bringing back the elixir for others to  partake of and my story definitely follows the framework set out in ‘the hero with a thousand faces’.

If you have a similar story, I would love to hear it – alternatively, you may still be ‘in the wasteland’.  Let me know below where you think you are on your business or life journey!