DISCLAIMER: I don’t make one thin dime if you hire any of the people I recommend in this post.

”Dear Naomi,

I need help!!! I’m just starting my IttyBiz and what I need the most right now is traffic to my website. Can you help come up with ideas for that?

I know about guest posting and comment strategies and social media, but everybody’s talking about those. How do I REALLY get traffic? How do YOU do it?”

I get this email a lot. Like, a lot. And I thought I’d take the time to answer it, and the dozens that are kinda sorta like it.

A good portion of the people who come to me for brainstorming or marketing consulting are people that are brand new to owning a business. They are still in the reconnaissance stages and figuring out what their plan of attack should be.

To these people, I thank you for sending me your money, but in future, you might be better off if you didn’t.

Nothing I come up with — and nothing any other marketing coach comes up with — is going to be any different from what you can figure out for yourself. We are not revolutionaries. We’re just creative.

When you’re first starting out, you don’t need creative. You need to get off your ass.

Unless you have a decent amount of start-up capital — and in “start-up capital” I include your own salary, as well as being able to pay service professionals and still have a marketing budget at the end — what you need is elbow grease. And I can’t give you that. No marketing coach can.

Here’s the biggest problem I see. People want to someone to give them a magic solution to increase conversions and get customers to throw their panties onto the stage. And that IS possible. But it’s not possible until you have some infrastructure in place.

And how do you get that infrastructure in place? Cue big ass red text…

If you have a business, and there’s only one of you, and you struggle with getting shit done, you don’t need a business coach. You need a life coach.

You need someone to help you do what you already know you should be doing. And marketing coaches are way too expensive to be retained for that purpose.

There are a lot of life coaches out there, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. I think I know every life coach north of Mexico and I could recommend all of them for various purposes. But you might want one who can specialize in getting you to analyze exactly what it is you’re trying to do, and WHY YOU’RE TRYING TO DO IT. Because the answer isn’t always what you’d think.

If you want someone to help you launch a product, talk to Dave (he launches mine). If you want someone to help you get your Big Thing organized, talk to Charlie (he organizes mine). And if you want someone to help you get off your ass and do all the shit YOU KNOW DAMN WELL YOU SHOULD BE DOING, talk to Tim.

(I also have it on good authority that people who sign up with Tim this month can have four sessions for the stupidly low price of $249. As in, four hours with Tim for a dollar less than an hour with me.)

Just less than a month from now, the universe is going to conspire to convince you to part with large sums of your money so that you can make your New Years’ resolutions have a hope in hell of actually happening. Try not to succumb, because very savvy marketers like myself have been retained to convince you that your Visa cards are better off in our hands than in your own.

So yeah. If you think you’d like to hire me one day but you don’t really know if it’s the best use of your money, go talk to Tim. He’ll talk to you for free to see if y’all get along. Then send him $249, make a shitload of progress, get making some money and THEN think about if you should hire me.

And even if you have no intentions of ever hiring anybody, you should really watch this video. Killer.

Oh. And just so you know? The magic secret to getting traffic? Blog commenting, guest posting, and social media. AdWords and well-written banner ads if you can afford it. Wasn’t that easy? I just saved you $250.