I’ve been working with Pat Rigsby for the past year. I knew one of the biggest things for me was that I had run a business before and I was really scared of failing again. I did it four years and I knew coming into this, I was like, “You know, I don’t want to do the same thing again. I don’t want to make the same mistakes.” I knew I needed to do something different and that’s when I decided to work with Pat as a business coach.

I had read a lot of his stuff. He’s really great at writing emails. I heard about him through the grapevine and it just seemed like a good fit. He had a good reputation. His stuff really resonated with me, so I was like, “Well, let’s give it a try.”

I knew I had to do something different and that I wanted to be successful this time. I always hear that people who are successful have coaches. It’s the same thing I do with my clients. I coach them to be successful and I thought “why I’m I not doing the same thing?”

I always try to look at, “Okay. Well, if this investment every month is going to turn into two, three, four times more income a month, it’s definitely worth it.”

I know for me, I’m one of those people that tend to think like, “Oh, I can do it all, so I can start an online business and a local business, and do all these things all at one time.,” But sometimes it’s way too much. Then, you’re like, “I want to help everybody. I want to help women of all ages and people that have injuries and people that want to be better at sports or whatever it is.”

What he’s really good at is helping you to focus on what you need to do. So, for me, it helped me to say, “You know what, I really need to focus on getting my local business going and getting it running before I try to do all these other things.” Also, even with my members, it really helped me to start focusing on things like, “Who do I want to work with? Who do I like working with? What kind of market can I do after?” instead of trying to be that person that helps everybody. It helps you to narrow in on who your market is, which makes everything else easier, so you can market better, you can start working with people you enjoy working with instead of people you’re like, “I wish they weren’t here.”

And I would definitely say stress is lower because the more you can simplify something, the more specific plan you can have and the better you’re going to be. Because when you’re using a lot of energy just to figure out what you’re doing, or you’re trying to do too many things at once, you really never get anything done because you’re all over the place. You’re tired and you’re stressed out and you’re never really good at one thing because you’re trying to do all these different things at the same time. I know for me it definitely helped me to feel more energized and more focused and to really put everything I had into one thing.

Now, I’m finishing up on my second year in business and I joined with Pat’s Mastermind about a year in. Since last year, I’ve already doubled my income. We only still have a few months left this year, so I’ve doubled my income already from last year with more to come. So, financially wise, that’s really helped a ton.

Financially wise, time wise, and even just feeling more confident, because like I said, I have failed before and I was really scared about doing that again. I almost didn’t want to start my business again because I was like, “Oh gosh. What if I fail again?” Even just, it’s allowed me to be more confident because now I have a little bit more of a plan and I have more systems in place. Now, I can do things and I know it will bring in more clients.

I can just implement this strategy that I learned from Pat and I know that it’s going to have some kind of return and it’s going to help grow my business.

I didn’t even have employees before, so now my clients are seeing employees and they understand that it’s part of growing. I think they like it because there gets to a point where I cannot be everything to everybody. Now, if they need help with something techy, I send them to my admin.

Then, having another person that’s helping me to hold them accountable and that means there’s two of us looking over all our members. I think it’s really helped them to stay on track better and they’re really excited because we’re always adding new and different things.

I didn’t even used to do challenges, so now we’re doing challenges and they get really excited. When our last one finished up, they were like, “When’s the next challenge? I cannot wait to do it.” Just learning how to implement challenges not only as a way to bring in members, but also as a way to keep our current members engaged.

When they get excited and they refer their friends in and then they stick around for longer. We’re coming up on almost two years, so we’ve got members that have been here a year, a year and a half, coming up on two years. It’s great that they want to stick around that long instead of like, “Contract’s up. I’m going to leave now.”

I don’t think I could have accomplished this without Pat. I mean, I have drive and I definitely would be doing okay. But I probably wouldn’t be anywhere close to where I was last year. I’ve learned so much stuff to implement in my business. It’s really helped me to be focused.

Just like we help keep our clients focused, sometimes we need somebody to help us stay on track and keep us focused and wrangle us in when we’re getting off track. You’re really investing in yourself and your business in a way that’s going to grow it faster than it would if you just try to do it on your own.

Pat is thoughtful and caring. I mean, he cares about you. You don’t just feel like it’s a transaction. He wants to see you successful. He’s like a friend. We go to our Mastermind meetings and he’ll take us out to dinner and he’ll spend extra time talking with you. It’s not like, “Oh, my time’s up. Mastermind’s over. See you next time.” He really wants to get to know everybody. He really wants to make sure that we’re successful and I just really feel like he actually cares about his members.

If I could say something to Pat, it would be to thank him for making such a difference in my life and… It brings me to tears to say, “Thank you for helping me to become more confident and allow me to believe in myself…” Now, I don’t even see failure as an option anymore. That’s what I would tell him.