What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

Reading Time: 4 minutes

When I was ten months old, my family was barbecuing outside on our small patio in Minnesota. At one point, my parents went into the house briefly to prepare the side dishes, and while they were inside, I decided to explore our patio. Since I had started walking when I was nine months old, I was pretty mobile for a youngster.

For some reason, I was captivated by our grill when I began my patio explorations. I’m not sure why I was, but I was. The bad part was that our grill had already been turned on, and it was extremely hot.

Filled with curiosity and ignorance, and before my parents could stop me, I turned around and touched the grill.

Ouch.

I burned my hand badly, and had to be taken to the hospital. Although I had second-degree burns, I would recover in time. It was only a temporary flesh wound.

You could learn a lot from this story, but one big takeaway for me was this: what you don’t know can hurt you. Ignorance has a price. This time the price of ignorance was second-degree burns, but when we’re older, the price can be much greater.

“You helped me more in two meetings
than they did in 1 year”

I once had a coaching client, who told me she had found a web development company on Google who she ended up paying $12,000 to build her an e-commerce website, and another $4,000 to get her setup on Facebook and Twitter. Shocked by this, I asked her why she had overpaid so much for these services. She told me that she didn’t know she was being overcharged, and realized in hindsight, that it was a bad move. She didn’t know the other website building options available to her, and the company hadn’t been straightforward with her about all that was required to run a successful e-commerce business. Now, she was $16,000 in debt, hadn’t made one sale, and was in deep panic mode.

Five months later, she sent me this email:

After I asked her to clarify, she sent me this reply:

I was grieved to read these emails, because not only was it the death of a business, it was also the death of a dream: the dream of being a full-time entrepreneur running her own business.

What you don’t know can hurt you, in life and in business. And sometimes, it can even put you out of business – such as the case with this former coaching client.

This is one reason why training and coaching are so important. Investing a little time and money in training and coaching can go a long way in preventing collateral damage – such as wasting $16,000, or closing down business completely.

Whether it’s a book, an audio course, a few podcast episodes, taking someone out for dinner to pick their brain, or paying for 1-on-1 mentoring, training and coaching can reveal blindspots, empower you with knowledge and skills, and help you avoid huge financial mistakes.

This is why we created Digital Marketing Academy. Digital Marketing Academy is our interactive coaching membership and resource hub for small business owners, churches, nonprofit organizations, and their staff. It’s designed to help organizations get found online and increase their reach, revenue, and impact. We want you and your team to be able to ask your questions, get direct feedback, have access to useful resources, and avoid colossal mistakes due to not knowing something.

Inside Digital Marketing Academy, you get the following:

• Email Coaching: Stuck? Need advice? Not sure where to start? Ask a question, and get professional feedback from my team and I within 24 hours.
• Worksheets and Action Step Checklists: Useful digital marketing worksheets and checklists for you and your team to print off and use.
• Swipe Files: Collections of digital marketing ideas and examples, to help you brainstorm ideas for your own marketing campaigns.
• Resource Vault: In-depth lists of the best business, web, and digital marketing tools and resources to use. Don’t waste time and money trying a bunch of different tools; we’ve already done it for you.

While we’d love to charge $297 per month for this service, we wanted to make this training and coaching accessible to organizations at all different levels. That’s why, we’re offering Digital Marketing Academy memberships for only $97 per month.

What makes Digital Marketing Academy different?

1. Email Coaching: Personal coaching is invaluable. Had my former coaching client had this beforehand, it would have saved her $16,000, and prevented her from going out of business.
2. Knowledge with brevity: Many courses and online trainings overwhelm you with knowledge, but that’s not what we’re trying to do. Your time is valuable and limited, so we want to be concise and effective in our worksheets and checklists.
3. Useful Resources: We know the resources, tools, and swipe files inside digital marketing academy are useful, because we use them ourselves – for our clients and for our own business. We’re confident you’ll find them practical, helpful, and useful as well.

Your membership comes with a 30-day money back guarantee, so if you aren’t satisfied 30 days after joining, we guarantee to refund you your money.

Remember, ignorance has a price. What you don’t know can hurt you. Investing a little money and time into training and coaching can prevent mistakes that cost 10x more down the road. Join Digital Marketing Academy today and avoid common online pitfalls.