Why Having a Mentor Is One of the Most Powerful Things You Can Do for Your Business

One of the questions I get asked all the time is why should I have a mentor for my business? Or why should I have a coach? Why should I go and invest in having someone else tell me what to do? 

Well, do you know what, I was exactly like you a few years back. I was in the world of corporate, I was stuck, I was earning decent money, but I wasn't happy in what I was doing. And I didn't know what to do. Now being the kind of proud Australian, with a bit of an ego, I decided that I'm just going to try and nut it out and just try and sort of battle through, but you know what, when I sat back and reflected on what was going on, I realised I needed help and that help wasn't going to come from my immediate peer group.

It wasn't going to come from my family and it wasn't going to come from my work colleagues. So what I did is I started to look out there and see what really successful people were doing, what successful entrepreneurs and business leaders were doing. And what I found is that these people don't do it alone. I think it was Arnold Schwarzenegger who said, there's no such thing as a self-made man or self-made woman. There are people who help you get there and you've got to literally stand on the shoulders of giants to get to where you want to get to in life. And around the same time I read a fantastic book, it was called Think and Grow Rich. And in that book, it talks about the success formula of finding others who have been on the same path as you, maybe even be just a few steps ahead of where you are. And if you can learn from them, if you learn from their mistakes, you're going to be able to get to where you want to get to significantly faster.

So, I didn't know any of that at the time, but when I started to research it and started to ask people outside of my normal peer group, I started to get absolute clarity of what I needed to do. So I now have two mentors and a coach, and I don't think I would do anything moving forward, particularly with the goals that I've got set, if I didn't have someone in my corner, on my side, challenging me, supporting me, holding me to account. All the things that I know work in terms of trying to achieve big things in your life. So what I want to do quickly is just give you a bit of an insight about how you go and find a mentor.

So the first thing to do is go by recommendation, go by referral. It's so important to have trust, rapport, and a relationship with whoever you have as a mentor. It's not just about someone who has the skill set or the mindset that you want to learn from. You have to be able to get on with them because it is a personal relationship and it is absolutely built on trust.

So first and foremost, make sure that you have that. That's either going to come from someone recommending someone that they have worked with, or it could be that you've got someone out there that you've seen in the media or someone in your extended peer group that you think, you know what, I just want to find out a little bit more about them.

So my challenge to you, my recommendation to you, is just to reach out, have a go, put yourself out there and ask the question; you never know what's going to happen. They may say yes. That's certainly what happened to me. 

The second thing is just be a little bit cautious of people who are out there for whom mentoring is just about a quick buck, or it's about them trying to make lots of money off it. It's about that being their career. Now let's be super clear on this, you will have to invest in a mentor. It's not going to be something necessarily that is free, and I actually suggest that you do that because you want there to be that level of accountability between both parties.

But if you're going out there searching for someone and that's their whole career, then my personal view is anyone who's desperate just to bring in clients, they're not going to be the person who has your best interests at heart.  

And the last tip is don't try and go to someone who's necessarily miles and miles ahead of you, go to someone who you think is, as I said, only a few steps ahead because a few steps ahead is all you need to make the next step. And it's absolutely fine for you to outgrow your mentors. You shouldn't be with a mentor forever. In many cases, I will always review what I'm doing every year and see if I've got the right team around me to progress, and quite often I'll swap people in and swap people out and that's all part of the journey, it doesn't mean you're not going to be friends with these people going forward, but from a business standpoint and what you're trying to achieve, you need to have very, very clear goals aligned to what you're doing with mentorship. So my message today is really simple, you should have people in your corner.

If you haven't got people in your corner, you're missing an opportunity and you're probably not getting to where you want to get to fast enough. You have to invest in it. And investing in yourself is by far and away the biggest return you get on anything - people don't get that either, but it's a massive thing.

Just go out there and ask people, go out there and start to play this world. As soon as you start doing that, you'll be surprised who shows up. And I'm a big believer that the right people show up exactly when you need it. 

I hope that's been useful.

Nick Bradley

Scale Up Your Business: suybacademy.com

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