My Mentors are Everything

OK, maybe they are not everything, but they are paramount in my life.

I didn't realise the GOLD that mentors can be in my early twenties. I started a Mortgage Brokerage at age 26, and I knew less about starting a business than you would hope. The mentors started showing up- but I was too immature (and egotistical) to fully grasp their teaching, understand their profound questions, and metabolise their feedback. It cost me a lot of time, money, and most importantly, emotional stress, to not receive what they were speaking into me fully.

Fast forward to today, as I have stepped into my current startup that just turned 6 years old, Women Ignite. It has evolved from a conference, to a multi-faceted movement, designed to help professionals authentically live in full capacity at work, and in their life.

Thank God for my current mentors who speak bold, sometimes brash truths, to get me where I need to be, to support this calling that is so much bigger than me. I simply do not have all the strengths and expertise to understand it all- alone.

Becoming a public figure, by nature of this business, has for some reason sort of ambushed me. I've received many social media attacks from women, saying I am not "feminist enough" in my trajectory and energy, or because I include men on almost every level. And sometimes there is a lack of faith from some in Idaho, who have been around a long time, and see us doing things very differently, from how we speak, serve, and model out this movement. And yet, it is fair that people make me prove myself, and earn my stripes.

The judgement comes in waves sometimes, as I do not hard align my platform with a political side or figure, or segregate off with certain specific groups... because we are intentionally a co-ed, intergenerational movement, bringing all adult humans together, vs dividing us apart. In fact, that IS the point of Ignite; Diverse Collaboration.

My mentors are many. I have three brilliant, servant leaders on my advisory council right now, and I know that if they had not been on my path in this complex journey, I probably wouldn't have made it this far.

This journey is challenging, and full of joy, too. It's frightening at times, when I get the enormousness that this is, and yet I know, it's time. I get to breathe, buckle up, work my face off every day that I can, and trust these mentors, as we conspire to in our own way to be a domino that changes the world.

Thank you, mentors, advisors and friends. Thank you for helping me get out of the way. I am grateful every day that you help me to translate this divine download, into reality.

Sheli G Founder/CEO WI International