Internet Marketing Mentor: 5 Essential Success Lessons

Okay, this one is as real as it gets. My best internet marketing mentor story isn’t about the person you’d expect, and it’s overdue for me to finally tell it.

Most of you already know some version of how I “came up” in this business, so I’ll spare you the long-winded version. But there’s one relationship I don’t talk about enough, and today I want to fix that.

Various people have played a role in my success. If I’m being honest about the order, it looks something like this.

God. Then me, for better or worse. Then Melinda. Then John Thornhill. Then Mike Filsaime. Then Dave Nicholson.

Why Every Serious Marketer Needs An Internet Marketing Mentor

You’ve probably heard me talk about John dozens of times before, and it’s not just because he’s been influential in my success. It’s because we’ve become genuinely good friends over the years.

John went from being my internet marketing mentor, to my business partner, to my friend. That order matters, because it’s rarely the other way around.

Our businesses became so intertwined that for years John and I spoke almost every single day. We were business partners in the most literal definition of the word, and honestly, that kind of closeness doesn’t happen by accident.

There are very few people I trust with my business. Very few. John was one of them, and still is. It lines up with what Harvard Business Review has written about mentorship, that the strongest relationships come from mentors who challenge your thinking rather than just agree with you.

But what does “trust with my business” actually mean? It means I would take his advice on nearly any aspect of my business, even when it contradicted my own gut instinct. He rarely steered me wrong, and most of what he ever taught me eventually led to real money in the bank. I actually wrote a much longer, no nonsense breakdown of exactly what that training looked like in my letter to John Thornhill, if you want the full story.

The Decision That Changed My Trajectory

Every internet marketing mentor relationship starts with one hard decision to trust someone else’s experience over your own doubt.

A lot has changed since I first started building my business. Melinda and I have generated millions of dollars in sales together, but more importantly, we’ve helped thousands of people start building businesses of their own.

We now have coaching students of our own too, and in a lot of ways, the student became the teacher. If you’re reading this, there’s a decent chance you’re one of those students.

I want you to take one thing away from this post more than anything else. I would not be where I am today had it not been for the mentorship and partnership of the right internet marketing mentor showing up at the right time in my life.

I worked my ass off to get here, but I couldn’t have done it alone.

I remember exactly how hard that decision was. Well, let me clarify, the decision itself was easy. Coming up with the money was the hard part.

Melinda and I were pretty broke at the time. We literally put our bank account into the negative to invest in that training. But let me be crystal clear about something.

Knowing everything I know now, having lived through it myself, I wouldn’t hesitate for a split second if I had to choose again. If I went back in time, I’d refinance the house or sell the car if that’s what it took.

What Makes An Internet Marketing Mentor Worth Following

I’m a coach myself now, and I don’t casually promote other people’s coaching. I’ve made plenty of friends in this business over the years, and I respect the work of quite a few marketers, but there are still only a handful I’d actually trust to coach my own students.

An internet marketing mentor earns that kind of trust slowly, usually by being consistent long after the excitement of a launch has worn off.

The lesson underneath all of this isn’t really about John, or me, or any one person. It’s that the right mentor doesn’t just teach you tactics. They shape the way you think about risk, about partnership, and about what’s actually possible for you.

That’s the part nobody tells you when you’re starting out. You’re not just buying a course or a coaching call. You’re borrowing someone else’s belief in you until you build enough of your own.

If you’re on the fence about investing in yourself right now, I’d rather you hear this from someone who’s lived it than from another polished sales page. The right mentor, at the right time, is worth more than almost anything else you can spend money on in this business. John still runs his coaching through Higher Level Strategies today, and it’s the same caliber of mentorship that changed everything for me.

And if you’re already deep into building something of your own, take a minute today to think about who your internet marketing mentor is. Then go tell them.