Do You Really Need Mentors?

– One of the main reasons why I am where I am today is because of mentors and their guidance, their support, and their willingness to help and be a pillar that I could sort of rely on and come to with questions, concerns, or just like hey here’s what I’m thinking, and they start poking holes in my thought process. And as Dan Sullivan would say, “They start challenging the way “that I’m thinking about my thinking.”

So they’ve really helped shape me not only personally but professionally and vice versa. And sometimes you’ll have mentors who are really good in one field, in one pillar, and what will happen is they’ll really help you get moving forward with that one thing, maybe it’s a business, maybe it’s relationships, maybe it’s health, whatever it may be. But what I find mostly is people who want this all-encompassing mentor, when in reality they don’t exist.

You need to find mentors who are specific in their field and rely on them or come to them with questions that they know inside and out. So someone who may know business inside and out may not know something else that you’re interested in, maybe it’s health or maybe it’s freedom and lifestyle, but they don’t really know business, so vice versa.

So you need to find your tribe of mentors that will really, that’s interesting, that will really help you navigate where you want to go and what you want to do in all aspects of your life.

So here’s the way that I look at mentors and why they’re so important. And there’s sort of three types of mentors that you can have.

So in life you’re going to have, you’re gonna have this mountain that you’re gonna climb, whether it’s health, whether it’s business, whether it’s relationships, and where you want to go is the summit. And let’s make this just a little prettier, right? You could call me Bob Ross. (laughs)

I’m making mountains over here, I’m drawing mountains and painting them. But anyway like this is the challenge of where you want to go.

Here’s where you are. And here’s where you want to go, right?

And this is sort of how you look at life. Now the beauty about this is you’re going to have people who’ve reached the summit, and what you want to do is ask them how did you get there? What’s going on? How could I get to the top safely, derisk a little bit, not really sort of fall of the cliff and crash and burn? And what you’ll have is a roadmap, and this roadmap will help you get to the top, right?

What is interesting is that there’s three levels of mentorship. There’s people who are just walking the path in front of you, and these are sort of mentorship number one.

And what happens when they walk the path in front of you, they could say hey guys follow me and I’ll make sure you’re safe and sound at least up until this point, right? And that’s great because it’s very relevant to them, and sort of you can learn a lot really quickly and sorta shortcut a lot of what happens between where you are and where that mentor is just a couple steps ahead of you.

They can tell you hey there’s a snake right there, don’t step on it, or that rock is loose, watch out, or just follow my footing as you’re climbing up this mountain, and as long as you take the same exact steps that they take, you should eventually get right where they are.

You have a next phase of mentorship, and they’re actually in like a snowcat, right? And they’ve figured out okay I got to here now, what’s the vehicle that I can use to get to the next level? And this would be mentorship two.

And what’s great about them is they’re pretty far advanced, maybe they’ve sold a company, let’s talk about business, let’s talk about business, maybe you’re starting a business, and this is a person who’s a successful business owner, and you’re trying to replicate their success and you can learn a lot from them.

Or maybe someone who’s been in and out of business several times, and they know the vehicle that’s a lot easier to get to the top, and what they do is say hey I’ve built and sold a business couple times, I’ve built a snowcat now that helps me just get up and down the mountain really quickly and effectively, and it’s my system and it works really really well.

The third mentor that I seek and that I try to surround myself with, now I do surround myself with people and I have one and two, but the ones that I really value their time, I really try to reach out and show value and try to give more than I take from them, which I will get to in a second, if you’re looking for a mentor, what’s the one thing that you have to do as a mentee.

But the third person that I look for is someone, someone who’s got the helicopter. I wanna find the person who’s got the helicopter who I don’t have to go and walk the walk all the way up this long trail or take a snowcat up, a snowcat’s great, but what I’d rather have is a freaking helicopter that can fly me right to the top. And this is who I look for in mentors.

Now these people are far and few between, and if you can find them, you have to stay in touch with them, and sort of makes sure that you’re providing the value to them, and also giving them what you need, and really cultivating this relationship really well, because what they’ll do is they’ll shortcut your learning and what you can do and what you can achieve in such a short amount of time that you wouldn’t even imagine, imagine climbing Mt. Everest, oh my gosh it takes forever to get up there. While they’ll just say, hey I got this helicopter, let’s just go right to the top.

So now what’s the one thing that you can do regardless of whether you’re at a stage one mentor, whether you’re looking for that and working with them, stage two mentor or stage three mentor, the one thing that you have to do as a mentee, when you get value from them, when you ask for help and assistance and advice, the one thing that you have to do is take action on the advice and then report back. That is the only thing.

What you’ll find is that mentors really care about helping people who help themselves. So the best part about this whole thing is I pay for mentors in stage one, I pay for mentors in stage two.

The mentors that I have in my life that are at stage free or stage three are free.

I swear I don’t pay them a dime, but how I pay them is whenever I get advice from them or I come to them with a challenge that I’m facing and say how would you look at this?

What should I be looking at? And anytime I get something back from them as far as advice or recommendations or a connection or something like that, I always take action. And that is how I pay them.

I pay them in the action that I take and then I follow up and say, hey I did what you said, here’s the result of it, here’s what I found was interesting that didn’t quite work out so well, so I tweaked it to this or I adjusted that, or hey thank you so much for putting me in touch with your friend who’s helping me with what I’m working on, I really appreciate it.

And just follow up with them and don’t leave them hanging. That is the biggest thing with stage one, stage two, and especially stage three. What gets them juiced is they love just helping people, but they love helping people who help themselves.

So whether you pay for a mastermind group where you’re trying to learn something new, whether you attend a seminar where there’s people way more advanced than you, and you’re trying to learn from them, or whether you have a mentor who’s leagues and leagues above, the one thing that you need to do is take action and report back, and just make sure that you are constantly not just sucking from that relationship, and make sure that you get back.

So this is how I look at mentorship, and I hope this helps you in finding yours. And maybe I’ll do a video on how to find mentors later on, but right now I’ll plant the seed here, and I’ll talk to you guys later.