Rob
Cuesta
interview
Editor: Hello, and
welcome. In this edition of the show, we're chatting with Rob Cuesta, and if you
stay listening, you'll find out how Rob learnt a very sobering lesson that
almost cost him everything. He also tells us how setbacks can actually be a
good thing in business, and why he thinks writing a book really can make a
difference to your life.
Editor: Rob Cuesta,
welcome to the show.
Rob
Cuesta: Hello.
Editor: Great to
speak with you, Rob. Now, I have to say, your CV is incredibly impressive. So,
I wanted to start by asking, how did you start in marketing?
Rob
Cuesta: Back
in 1997, I caught the coaching bug, when coaching was an industry that hadn't
even just started. I attended an NLP, a neurolinguistics programming course. At
the time, I was working for one of the big consulting firms, in London. I
thought, this would be a great thing, we should be building coaching into what
we do. Of course, nobody agreed with me.
A
few years later, I decided this is it, coaching is the way ahead, I'm going to
set out on my own. With that impressive CV that you mentioned just then, of
course the world would be my oyster, and everybody would be beating a path to
my door. In 2002, I walked out what, at the time, was a $140,000 a year job,
not realizing that I had just become a $14,000 a year coach. Because
predictably, nobody knew how I was, and nobody wanted to hire me.
That
was how I got started, by making the mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make, which
is not thinking about what my market was going to be, or what I was going to be
offering, and just taking a great idea, that I thought the world needed, and
deciding that I was going to go out and offer it. It took me a few years to
figure out that I'd make that mistake, literally until about 2005. So, three
years of earning very small amounts, and the only reason that I can say it was
$14,000 a year was because in the first year, I actually made about three times
that. In the following two years, I made virtually nothing.
Rob
Cuesta: It
wasn't until 2005 that I got ... what I always call my Lost Days. I'd got to
the beginning of 2005, and I realized, I've got not clients, I've got no money,
and I was very rapidly heading towards bankruptcy. I spent two days being mad
at the world, being mad at my prospective clients for not hiring me, being mad
at myself for being so stupid. At the end of those two days, I sat down and I
did something that I should have done in the very first place, which was I
actually sat down and started setting some goals. The first goal I set myself
was that, by the end of the year, I'd be making 100,000 Sterling which, at the
time, was about $160,000 US.
I
made it, by the end of 2005, to something like $96,000, so I fell $4000 short
of my goal, but I let myself off for the extra $4000, I'd gotten close to the
intent. But, I'd managed to turn it around in that year.
Editor: It sounds like
you learnt a really sobering lesson as well, off the back of that. That's quite
a story, in terms of ... I just say, sometimes it's the false security, isn't
it? You're in a job, you're being paid, and you think, if I leave, I'll take
all these clients with me. But of course, it doesn't always work like that?
Rob
Cuesta: No, it
really doesn't work like that, a lot of the time. I always say, if you want to
make God laugh, show him your business plan. But, I hadn't even gotten to the
point of having a business plan, it was literally I'd decided one day that I'd
had enough, and that I was going to go and set the world on fire.
Instead
of doing it the sensible way, by tapering in, and doing some work on the side,
and building up the business in my own time, I went cold turkey. I literally
walked into my boss' office and said, "Hey, I quit." Yes, as you say,
it was a sobering lesson.
Editor: I was going to
say, in terms of once you'd done that, and you'd gone through that process
yourself, I guess that also gave you an insight, if you'd like, into how not to
do it. If you train other people, this is like, "Don't follow this advice,
do the complete opposite."
Rob Cuesta: Well
exactly, because I'd got to 2005 and I'd three years of, basically, treading
water. It was only in 2005 that I thought, well, I don't have a client base.
So, I need to find a way of building clients, very quickly. Quite by chance, I
started doing joint ventures. That was, literally, what saved the business, and
saved me, was finding...
The
first joint venture I tried wasn't as successful. I can remember, I'd arranged
a ... it wasn't even a webinar, it was a teleconference, with a
competitor/peer/JV partner in North America. I remember dialing in from a
hotel in Newcastle. Dialing in, in hotels, on an international line, was
ridiculously expensive. So we were on the line for however long, for an hour or
whatever, doing this teleconference. Of course, at that point, I still hadn't
learnt my lesson. We got to the end of the webinar, and I suddenly realized, I
hadn't really thought about the call-to-action. I very quickly came up with a
call-to-action, and that joint venture netted me something like $100, which
didn't even cover the cost of the phone call.
So
I went back to the drawing board, set up another joint venture with a joint
venture partner that was a better match for me, and for my skill set, which was
personal branding, which is ironic. That joint venture got me up to a few
thousand. And then, at the end of that year, what literally got me to the
$100,000 mark was that, during that year, I found a partner that was perfectly
aligned, and I had the right offer for their audience. They were desperately in
need of what I was offering. By the end of that year, that had turned into
almost a six-figure, in Sterling, business partner. It was around $160,000 of
business, in US dollars.
But,
it was just finding that one partnership, which is something that I say to
people now, is if you can find the right partners, and the right alliances to
make, that can be the difference between having a very expensive hobby, or
having a viable, and valid, and successful business.
Editor: That's
really true. I guess, the really interesting part in this, is it's almost like
you went from ... As you say, you quit a well-paid job, a relatively well-paid
job, so it was riches to rags. And then, almost back to riches again, from the
joint ventures that you started to develop in that time.
Rob Cuesta: Yeah.
Editor: Can
we just put a timeframe on this, Rob? You mentioned that you quit your job in
the early 2000s. Then, how long was it before ... You say, three years before
you realised you had almost a failing business? Then, off the back of that, how
quickly was it before you started to turn the corner, and see that actually,
this now is moving in the right direction?
Rob Cuesta: That was
literally a 12-month shift. At the start of January 2005, I thought, this is
it, everything has failed. I'm going to have to go back and get a job, and I'm
going to have to eat humble pie, maybe, to my old employer and things. But
literally, by the end of that year, that big joint venture had delivered the
big payoff.
Editor: That
was the turnaround year, I guess?
Rob Cuesta: That was
the turnaround, yeah.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS A BRIDGED VERSION OF THE INCREDIBLE INTERVIEW
Together We Can Succeed Online
Steven Morton
Founder-Marketing Mastermind Tips
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