
Ivo Piskov
CEO and Managing Partner of Mentor Coach Partners, LLC
NEW YORK, LONDON, LUXEMBOURG
EXPERTISE: ONLINE BUSINESS AND INTERNET SALES STRATEGY CONSULTING
BACKGROUND: Goldman Sachs Executive, Private Consulting, 5000+ clients, 450+ industries
APPROACH FOR: Starting and growing online businesses, new online business development, unsticking stuck internet businesses, fixing stale online sales, turning around struggling e-commerce sites
No Ordinary Online Business Consulting
Ivo has spent the last 15+ years of his career helping business owners and executives win new online business, solve online sales problems and fix their online businesses.
As an Executive at Goldman Sachs, founder and CEO of Mentor Coach Partners, and thru active engagements with initiatives like 10,000 Small Businesses, Ivo has spent the last 15+ years solving online business problems and significantly increasing the bottom lines of thousands of clients in hundreds of industries.
Thru the years, Ivo has become a trusted adviser to 5000+ clients in 450+ industries worldwide. Known for his hands-on, down to earth, no-bullshit approach and his ability to apply simple, practical, tested, effective, and easy-to-implement power-sale concepts, Ivo has been repeatedly recognized and praised by his clients as one of the top online business marketing strategists, online business innovators, internet sales entrepreneurial advisers/mentors, and masters of revenue, performance enhancement and acceleration.
Ivo and his team have identified the patterns that drive online business growth as well as those that restrict growth, and they have developed unique ways to apply these online business strategies, best practices and quick-wins to virtually any online and internet business.
ABOUT ME
Hello, my name is Ivo.
I am a highly skilled hands-on online business and internet sales expert, wizard, consultant, coach and mentor.
I specialize in starting and growing online businesses, new online business development, unsticking stuck internet businesses, fixing stale online sales, turning around struggling eCommerce sites, and generally moving the needle for any online business, retailers, eCommerce, and internet sales companies.
My passion is helping companies, business owners, executives, and individuals win new online business, get more new internet sales, increase the rate of repeated online sales and grow their online business.
I’ve been engaged with online business activities ever since the Internet emerged in it’s more recognizable form in 90s, when computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. Since then, I’ve worked on solving online business problems and significantly increasing the bottom lines of over 5000 clients in 450+ industries spanning 5 continents.
I’m a Bulgarian-born New York-bred British man who currently calls Luxembourg home where I live with my wife and two daughters, whom I absolutely adore.
I am an Ivy League educated, old-school Goldman Sachs executive with 20+ years of experience in IT, economics, finance, business development, marketing and sales. I am an online business consultant by choice after walking away from a lucrative Wall-Street executive job. Helping companies and people grow their online business and internet sales is what I love to do and I am very good at it.
I am a whisky enthusiast with a nice although constantly dwindling whisky collection, and a skillful culinarian who can whip up hollandaise sauce with the same ease as making spaghetti Bolognese (one of the reasons my girls adore me). I love American cars, watching and playing hoops, and my happy place in the world is any place where the landscape is abundant in palm trees (though South Beach in Miami is a definite front-runner).
WHEN AND WHY YOU SHOULD WORK WITH ME
You should talk to me if you are looking to start and grow your business online, i.e. get more new online sales, increase the number of your online clients, and increase the rate of your repeated sales. Chances are that I will help you do that.
I specialize in starting and growing online businesses, new online business development, unsticking stuck internet businesses, fixing stale online sales, turning around struggling eCommerce sites, and generally moving the needle for any company that does online business in any way – selling physical or digital products products, offering services, generating leads, engaging visitors, etc.
Unlike most business consultants and strategists, I will not just sell you wisdom, promise you results, or throw you some tactics, leaving you to implement them yourself. I take the success of your business personally, and act like my own livelihood depends on your progress. I will sit down with you and implement the strategies with you, in your business, in a way that you get the results that you want.
I take the guessing game out of growing your online business and sales.
My methods and strategies work. They have been tested over 15 years, across hundreds of industries, and thousands of clients. They work for large corporate clients, small and mid-sized businesses, startups, and individuals. I am yet to find a business or a industry in which my method won’t work.
Over the years, I have encountered every imaginable online business problem out there. I have tested and identified strategies and methods that work in different situations and could be applied to virtually any online business.
For example, in some cases I’d use the automated systems, business development concepts and market strategies like the ones I developed and perfected first hand during my time at Goldman Sachs. In other cases I’d use online business growth strategies that I have continuously tested and improved with thousands of clients in hundreds of different industries.
Together, we’ll identified the patterns that drive your online business growth as well as those that restrict your growth, and we will implement those online business strategies, best practices and quick-wins that work for your business.
So, let’s talk and make your online business an incredible success! And if I am not convinced that I’m the right person to quickly and effectively help you, I will refer you to someone else.
COMPANIES BRING ME IN WHEN THEY NEED TO...
I provide online business and internet sales strategy coaching and consulting to CEOs, companies management, and business owners.
My clients bring me in when they need to:
While other consultants would draw the line at advising only, I go a lot further, staying with you all the way into implementing your online business strategy, making sure your business grows as expected, and leading you to the final outcome you need.
I am typically hired by companies, but in the right circumstances I work with individuals too.
I take the guessing game out of growing your online business and sales.
HOW I WORK
Clients experience tremendous success and rave about my extraordinary work because my approach is very different from what you’d normally find.
- I use an über-simple approach and a very different online business development and growth framework, developed and perfected for over 15 years, with 5000+ clients in 450+ industries.
- I talk and explain in easy to understand, plain language, making sure you understand every step of what we are doing with your online business and why we are doing it.
- I roll up my sleeves and get dirty working with you and learning your business, until I understand and appreciate exactly what you need. I will not try to apply any one-size-fits-all pre-prepared, collection of random tactics that supposedly will help you create or grow an online business. Don’t be surprised to find me asking you a ton of questions, previous sales data, or talking to your existing clients to observe and understand how you do your business.
- I am an online business consultant by choice after walking away from a lucrative Wall-Street executive job. Helping companies and people grow their online business and internet sales is my passion, it has been for the last 15+ years, and I believe I can effectively grow your online business and sales, I have done so for more than five thousand clients worldwide.
- I am not a fan of the phrase “those who can’t do, teach”, in fact I am a real-life example that it is highly incorrect — I’ve been running my own successful online business and internet sales companies since 2001.
- Don’t call me if you are simply looking for someone to manage your online sales for you because I won’t do it, and there are better choices for this than my services. You only want me if you are serious about increasing online business and getting new online sales.
- It is personal. When you engage me, I behave like my livelihood depends on your online business and internet sales success.
TIMELINE OF WORK
Scroll the timeline to see more…
10kob First Year Class Graduates
Though considerably delayed by the global pandemic, 2021 saw the graduation of the First Year Class of online entrepreneurs from the 10kob program and the start of the Second Year Class. We consider the program a huge success – our 10kob graduates are consistently increasing their online businesses’ revenues following the strategic training they received during the program. According to the statistics, on average, the first year 10kob graduates are outperforming other similar online businesses in revenue (32% increase), job creation (41% increase) and productivity (25% increase).
Finding and recruiting online businesses for the 10kob program is a highly selective process, designed to ensure that participants have what it takes to succeed in the program. While participation in the program is free to accepted business owners, it is currently not open for general access, though you are welcome to get in touch if you’d like more information about it.
Luxembourg Go Digital Initiative
Launched a joint project with Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce and its House of Entrepreneurship and House of Startups departments to educate new entrepreneurs about online business and e-Commerce. The workshops are part of the Luxembourg Government’s Go Digital initiative and include topics like Introduction to e-Commerce, Build Your Online Business – From Scratch to Launch, Advanced e-Commerce workshops, Online Business Regulations, Copywriting Best Practices, The Art of Online Selling, GDPR and Privacy Policy Best Practices, Online Pricing Methods and Sales Strategies, and more.
10k online businesses launched
10k online businesses launched as a dedicated initiative to provide business owners with the tools to successfully operate and grow their online businesses, much like its predecessor, Goldman Sachs 10K Small Businesses, provided entrepreneurs with greater access to education, capital and business support services.
Online Sales Dynamo launched
Online Sales Dynamo launched as an independent initiative. Online Sales Dynamo is a fully managed step-by-step system that helps business owners take their online business through all stages that are needed to start, grow and run a successful online business.
Client base passes the 5000 client mark
My client base passes the 5000 client mark, and 450 industries mark, leaving me humbled and absolutely happy by just looking at all businesses and individuals who I could help make a difference.
BITE's popularity shoots up
BITE’s clients now come from 4 continents. It popularity shot up because of the impeccable quality of services provided and the super affordable fixed monthly fee plans it offers to clients.
Business IT Essentials launched
Business IT Essentials (BITE) launched as an independent agency that provides all-round hassle-free care and unlimited support for business and personal websites. BITE was born out of the need for support-only website and internet services of many of my existing clients.
Managing Partner of Private Consulting Luxembourg
Briefly owned a brick-and-mortar business consulting company in Luxembourg. A great experience that helped me learn a lot and make a ton of new contacts. While with them, we launched an European-wide initiative to help entrepreneurs create jobs and economic opportunity by providing them with a unique combination of education, access to capital and business networking support.
MCP expands in UK, Europe and the US
The unique methods and business model of MCP helps it quickly expand to Europe and the US.
Mentor Coach Partners launched
Mentor Coach Partners (MCP) is launched as an independent Online Business consulting, implementation and operation agency. It’s the first consulting agency providing online business strategy consulting to small business owners, helping them to actually implement the strategies successfully in their business and, if needed, operating the business with/for them.
Client base > 1000
The number of my online business and internet sales clients is well in the thousands with clients in countries across 5 continents.
Expand client base to the UK
My move to the UK helped expand client base to small and medium-sized businesses, institutions, and non-profits in the UK.
Executive Director at Goldman Sachs
Moved to London as an Executive Director in Asset Management Technology at Goldman. Helped built proprietary trading platforms and other FinTech software, supervised a large portion of online business tools and processes, among other things.
10KSB expands to the UK
Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses expands to the UK and later on to South America.
Client base in the hundreds
The number of my online business and internet sales clients shoots up to high hundreds; the number of my own Internet based businesses jumps into the double digits.
Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses launched
Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses launched. 10kSB is a philanthropic initiative launched by Goldman Sachs that pledges $500 million in various aid to small businesses, and a large part of the participating companies needed help with their online business and internet commerce, where online business skills were fundamental. To date, more than 8,200 business owners have graduated from the program in the US alone. I am, to date, still involved with helping graduates and participants of 10kSB grow their online businesses.
Vice President at Goldman Sachs
Joined Goldman Sachs as a VP in GSS/Risk department. Pioneered many web based tools for a wide range of proprietary and client business activities – trading, lending, compliance, regulatory, risk management, legal, etc. – all created bespoke, in-house, by me and my teams.
Launched a dedicated online business agency
Launched a dedicated online business and internet sales services agency. At that point, I already had a good number of clients who needed those services specifically and I had several online businesses of my own, so there was an apparent need for dedicated online business activities.
Started creating web-based solutions
Started creating internet-based software for clients. In the next several years I built a wide range of web based apps and tools for online time and people management, data sequencing, authentication systems, scholastic software, dynamic web apps and systems, eCommerce websites, etc.
1st Internet-based business launched
Launched my first own online business. It was an online trading company that still exists and generates revenue today.
Technical Director at Brown University
Started working as a Technical Director at Brown University supervising, coordinating and implementing University departments’ online presence, activities and affairs, among other things.
Expanded client base in the US
Moved to the US and expanded my client base to private and public companies, political organizations, non-profits and universities.
Started offering commercial web and internet services
Broadened my website and internet services and started creating complicated commercial websites for Tech Invest companies.
Created first web pages
Consumer Internet revolution starts, number of websites on WWW baloons. There is a clear demand for more and more new websites. Together with a group of friends, we started a service for creating public and private web pages for companies and institutions
Netscape Navigator comes out and transforms the way people interact with WWW
I experience the WWW first hand and get fascinated by it and its endless possibilities. I get my first email address – an account at my friend’s university, the first school in the country to start using the Internet.
First steps in the online world
WWW becomes popular with the introduction of the Mosaic browser, the first graphical browser developed by Marc Andreessen’s team.
EDUCATION AND TRAINING
Brown University
Computer Science
2001-2004
Georgetown University
Economics, Political Systems
2000
Charles University
Economics
1998
Harvard Business
HBR Corporate Learning Courses and Training
2003-2005
University of National and World Economy
Economics, Finance, Macroeconomics
1994-1999
QUICK NOTES ON SOME WORK AND HOBBIES
In 2017, I was approached by the owner of a little-known company, which had no existing online presence. He wanted to have an online store. I suggested we do a little bit more than that and he agreed we do as I suggest. Fast-forward a year — his company had a full-blown online business including eCommerce, subscription service, exclusive club memberships, a huge mailing list and tons of followers on social media. The best part for him tho was a fresh brand new 6-digit revenue stream. We still work together and his online business enjoys a steady 30% yearly growth on average.
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I created one of my first own online businesses around a hobby of mine. The idea came to me in my dorm room at Brown University and I didn’t think twice to start making it happen. It took several failed attempts to launch it before it took off but it was all worth it as it was a great learning experience. That same online business today is an international internet trading company with thousands of clients around the world, and offices in 8 countries across 4 continents.
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I once helped a friend turn around her troubled online business, which she was considering shutting down. A few years later she still runs the same business, only now her eCommerce company generates brings in annual online sales in the high 6-figures.
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In 2002, I started working with a client to build out their online sales strategy and consecutively their internet based business. For the years since then, they have achieved a lot — they graduated the prestigious 10k Small Business program (run by Goldman Sachs) with flying colors, their product is top 3 in its niche market in the US, they’ve attracted a ton of resellers both domestic and international, and their annual revenue is well past the 7 digit mark.
A few years ago, I briefly ran a Business consulting company based in Luxembourg, called PCL. While I am no longer with them, for the short time I was on board, we manged to turn the company from one of the many small local start-up adviser businesses, to one of the leading business advisory service providers in the heart of Europe.
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I was born in Bulgaria and I’ve loved Bulgarian yogurt since my childhood. I have also made my own yogurt ever since I can remember. When I moved to the US, I continued to do so because it was easy, economical, and most importantly, the yogurt I was making was far superior to the yogurts on the market. As it turned, a lot of people who tried my yogurt thought so too. So when more and more of them started asking for the starter so they can make yogurt themselves, I had one of those ‘a-ha!’ moments and set up a small online business around selling that starter. Fast forward to today, the same online business still exists. It produces and delivers the same great Bulgarian yogurt starter, which makes the world’s best yogurt, to clients in 78 countries (and counting).
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While I studied, worked and lived in the US, I was fortunate to brush elbows, shake hands, work with and side by side, have drinks, share loughs, and learn from the best in many industries: Jeff Bezos, Meg Whitman, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Sidney Frank, Larry Ellison, Jay Abraham, Zig Ziglar, Warren Buffet, Jay Z, Danny DeVito, Jennifer Aniston, Anne Hathaway, Ema Watson, the list can go on.
I am an old-school Wall Street banker with 20+ years of experience in finance, IT, economics, marketing and sales. A part of it I accumulated during my years at Goldman Sachs, where I looked after the strategic development of several of the main bank’s business lines. I like to use the phrase old-school, because I was with Goldman before, during, and after the financial crisis so I can say I’ve seen some good times and some bad times.
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I am a vivid whisky enthusiast. I have a nice e (and constantly dwindling) collection of various single malts and blends. I’ve been a part of the whisky scene and milieu in New York, London, Islay, Luxembourg, Sofia, etc. for as long as I can remember. I love hanging out at the Brandy Library in Tribeca (NYC), the Boisdale in London (the one adjacent to Chelsea), and the entire island of Islay (Scotland) especially in May when their whisky festival is. People often ask me about my favorite dram, which is yet to be discovered but I have a special place in my heart for Caol Isla rare auld editions.
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A few years ago, I teamed up with a long time whisky expert, and we turned our passion for whisky into a profitable whisky online business, that allowed him to expand his whisky sales and tasting brick-and-mortar company into an internationally recognized online whisky business.
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I’ve been a MENSA member since a young age. Mensa is the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world. It is open to people who score at or above the 98th percentile on a standardized, supervised IQ test. My IQ score was 168 when I tested. They say that your IQ goes down with age so I am not sure how relevant that is anymore.
I’ve been fascinated by the Internet ever since the Internet came into our lives. I remember when Netscape Navigator ruled the world and it took a good 5 minutes to load a text page with a single image, and that was before dial-up sped things up! Those days are now long gone but my passion for all things web is still as alive as it was back then. And as you might have guessed, I have turned that passion into an ever expanding online business. It started in the late 90s with creating websites for a handful of clients, and has since then turned into a large scale international online business that provides hassle-free support and all-round care for business, personal and eCommerce websites.
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I have been fortunate to be around, be involved, and experience firsthand the birth and growth of companies and services, which are nowadays synonymous with the Internet – Facebook, Google, bitly, Instagram, etc. An interesting fact — I was a part of a small group at Brown, who were the first people outside of Harvard to get their hands on, explore, and sign up for a new social network called The Facebook. In fact, my Facebook ID was a 3 digit number (FB have since then changed their IDs format several times). Many of my colleagues and friends from college are still at top executive positions at FB, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle, etc.
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I’ve practiced and applied my online business developing strategies in over 400 industries. Not all of those have been for profit. I have done a lot of pro-bono work as well. For example, I helped develop my school’s alumni association from 3 scattered groups that met occasionally, to an international non-profit association with 27 active clubs in 13 countries.
While at Goldman, we launched a philanthropic initiative called 10,000 Small Businesses. We designed the program around helping small and mid-sized businesses grow. We wanted to help 10,000 small businesses boost their bottom line, hence the name of the initiative. The program pledged $500 million in various aid — from education and financial backing, to services and networking. The program proved to be so successful that it launched in the UK and soon after that it became a global initiative. It was widely popular on Social Media too — in Feb 2014 we launched the Twitter handle @GS10KSmallBiz In Dec 2015 the account had over 18,000 followers. Profiles of the 10,000 Small Businesses graduates can be viewed on the Goldman Sachs YouTube playlist titled: Meet the Owners: 10,000 Small Businesses in the US. It still runs today and although I am no longer with Goldman, I still work with clients graduates from the program.
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I am a passionate foody and a fairly good cook. I love Bulgarian food, not only because it’s my heritage but also because it’s great. I always love to prepare traditional Bulgarian dishes and I have also published several Bulgarian cookbooks (some are available on Amazon). I’ve often been approached and am often consulted by food magazines and online journals when it comes to Bulgarian cuisine.
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I have many years experience in managing full SDLC and building trading platforms for investment banking. In my early years in Goldman we were doing FinTech before FinTech was yet a word. My team built proprietary trading software from the ground up in more than one banking area – securities, fixed income, investment management, etc. The experience includes all stages of the SDLC – from getting business requirements to creating front to back end systems to ensuring continuous global support. A little known fact is that my team pioneered Scrum agile development framework in the banking industry.
I am always on the look out for exciting and challenging opportunities. Usually clients come to me but it’s been in more than one occasion that I had approached potential clients who operated in areas, which fascinated me and about which I wanted to learn more or get involved with. Needless to say those have always turned out to be a great win-win collaborations.
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My technical experience accumulated over the years combined with my business knowledge in areas like finance, academia, entrepreneurship, non-profit and government make me a valuable contributor for any type of business – from startups to established companies. As a result, I have built a comprehensive knowledge base and a network of connections that spans across US and Europe. I have worked with many teams where our joint expertise allowed us to deliver customized solutions to a wide range of problems.
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I spend a good chunk of my time mentoring startups, SMEs and company executives on various topics other than online business and internet sales. My favorite ones include UI/UX, software development best practices, management skills, decision making, leadership, negotiating skills, process improvement, change and process management, risk management, etc.
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Apparently I do a great at managing people. I do this on a daily business, and I have managed teams for more than 20 years now, including project management, interviewing, recruitment, career development, performance reviews, etc. My 360° reviews have always come back in the 98th percentile.
I have always been and still am quite hands on with many technologies. The reason for this is simply because I love doing it. I have done design, development, testing and support of multi-tiered distributed computing systems, SOAs, web applications, mobile software development, etc. I have a deep understanding of UX and an eye for UIs that work. I have a natural talent for building attractive sales pages that actually work.
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When I work with clients we don’t just go in and do all things online. A big part of and a requirement for running a successful online business is a smoothly operating main business lines. So we go in and implement, and often pioneer, improvements to many existing underlying business and technology processes – we introduce standards and best practices, aim to deliver quick wins, automate manually or labor intensive processes, adopt quality enhancing development tools and application of agile, scrum, lean, extreme, Kanban, etc.
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My clients satisfaction rate is one of the highest in all the industries that we operate in. The businesses I work with enjoy a 97% on average client satisfaction rates.
QUOTES AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Ivo is praised by many businesses for his unique approach of partnering with them and growing their online business and sales. Unlike most business consultants and strategists, Ivo will not just sell you wisdom, or promise results, or throw you some tactics, then leave you to implement unclear methods yourselves, he will instead sit down with you and apply the methods so you get the results.
Ivo’s unique ‘coaching by doing together’ method and his nature to take his clients’ business personally, and act like his own livelihood depends on their success, are two of the main reasons that old clients stick around for many years, and those who leave, come back within a year.
Ivo’s friendly personality combined with blunt ‘tell-it-as-it-is’ language, his online business acumen, together with his practical suggestions that work for your business in the real world, make him a highly successful online business marketing strategist, an impactful master of revenue, performance enhancement and acceleration, an authority of online business and internet sales growth, an online business innovator, and an ideal entrepreneurial advisor and mentor
Ivo is a very resourceful business strategist, who will find inspiration and identify the patterns that drive your business growth in the most uncommon of places. For example, Ivo show his clients how to create a powerful advantage over their competition by taking success concepts from different industries and adapting them for their own specific businesses, an approach that has proven to work brilliantly and with high impact on business growth, over and over again.
Ivo knows how to get the best results using a limited set of resources. He is great at pinpointing quick wins and at charting your way to achieving maximum results with minimal friction and efforts. When I told him that our growth budget is fixed he went out of his way to devise a strategy, which used resources that we already had and that got us much further than we’ve ever gone.
CONSULTING, COACHING, MENTORING
I am the Founder and Managing Partner of Mentor Coach Partners, LLC.
Mentor Coach Partners is an Online Business consulting, implementation and operation agency. What does that mean? It means that we provide Online Business and Internet Sales strategy coaching and consulting to business owners. And then we help them actually implement the strategies successfully in their business and, if needed, operate the business with them. While other consultants would draw the line at advising only, we go a lot further, staying with your business all the way into implementing your online business strategy, making sure your business grows as expected, and leading you to a successful outcome.
We, at MCP, offer consulting, coaching and mentoring for successfully launching, growing and running online businesses. We give you the knowledge and resources to help you develop your online business or we do it all for you so you can concentrate on whatever is important for you. Either way the result is the same — You get a fully functioning online business that generates revenue even while you sleep.
To inquire about consulting, coaching and mentoring for your business, contact MCP directly.
IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING APPROACHING ME
Often businesses and individuals reach out to me for personal consulting, coaching, or mentoring.
There is no standard engagement format, and there is no typical way to do this. Some engagements last hours, most go several months, and a few clients have kept me by their side for more than 10 years now.
To start working together, just get in touch with me. Please send an email with a brief description of your situation along with your specific objectives for a potential engagement.
If I am not convinced that I’m the right person to quickly and effectively help you, I will refer you to someone else.
Email is possibly the best way to contact me, although Skype, LinkedIn and even Facebook messages also work.
*LIMITED AVAILABILITY: Please keep in mind that there is usually more demand for me to consult, coach and speak than availability. If you are considering engaging me, I strongly encourage you to contact me now with a range of dates to inquire about availability. Alternatively, you can always reach out to my company Mentor Coach Partners and we will be happy to help you.