While a student at the University of Alabama School of Law my fellow classmates were constantly amazed at the fact that I owned several Internet businesses. Many simply wondered why I was going to school while others wanted to follow suit. Those who were interested in testing the e commerce waters would often ask me how could they get started. This was such a frustrating question because I have gigabytes of information in my head that I wanted to just download into theirs. Obviously, that was not going to work. My next inclination was to tell them “all of the information is online and you can get to it for free” which although absolutely true is completely overwhelming to the listener. So, finally they would say, “well how did you get started”? I would then answer, “I used to be a coach at Prosper Inc”. This response would elicit a blank stare. So to all my old law school classmates this post is to answer those questions once and for all – What is Prosper Inc and what is a coach?
Prosper Inc is a company that provides coaching for individuals who desire to be entrepreneurs. Prosper offers one-on-one coaching and curriculum for several fields including real estate, ecommerce, and the stock market. Each Prosper student is assigned a personal coach or mentor who works one-on-one with that student for a set period of time (usually somewhere between 6 to 20 weeks depending on how much $ you have paid). Your coach will schedule a weekly call and answer your emails in between calls. In addition, students have the opportunity to call a “hotline” if they get stuck during the week. Prosper Inc has developed loads of written curriculum and has a very cool webinar seminar circuit which the student has unlimited access to. A webinar is a 60 minute targeted seminar instructed by an “expert” in some field. For example, my friend Mat Siltala will often host webinars on search engine optimization because he is a nationally recognized “SEO”.
In my opinion, the value of the program is in the organization of the materials. As I stated earlier, ALL OF THIS INFORMATION can be found for free somewhere online. However, pretty much NO ONE IS GOING TO FIND ALL OF THIS INFORMATION ON HIS/HER OWN, therefore a coaching program makes a lot of sense. You get the chance to be spoon fed the information and you get the chance to choose your best learning forum, i.e. one-on-one coaching, reading curriculum, or attending a webinar.
So if you think you would like to make a living on the Internet and do not feel good about deciphering the countless number of websites and blogs dedicated to the subject take a look at Prosper Inc..
I love these kind of honest posts.
Devin Willis
Comment by prosperstudentcare — September 26, 2008 @ 10:35 pm