There is a belief for some people that if you are an entrepreneur you have to do everything yourself. It is the belief that says that you have to have all the answers, and that all the success rides on your shoulders.
Not only is this belief completely wrong, it is also extremely dangerous!
I used to think this way. And to be honest, at times I still do.
I have a high belief in myself and have always felt that I can come up with the solution to any problem that I am faced with.
This held me back from leaning for a short time. I guess I believed that being an entrepreneur meant that you just somehow magically knew all the answers. But then I realized that the only way to get where I wanted to go was to learn the things I would need to know to be in that position.
And there is no better way to learn those things than to learn them from someone who has been there and accomplished what you want to accomplish.
So what did I do?
I began to learn everything I could. I read every book I could get my hands on. I began reading blogs from people who had the success I wanted to achieve. I began joining groups, and taking courses that taught the material that I needed to know.
And through the process I realized that to truly have success there is no way to do it alone.
Nobody has all the answers. Nobody is born knowing how to be a success.
You have 2 options. You can try everything you can think of to see if it leads to success, and learn from the failures that you are sure to have, or you can learn from the people who have already had the success that you want to achieve and then implement the things that have worked for them to see if they will work for you as well.
I don’t know about you but option number 2 sounds a lot better to me.
So what does that mean?
It means that you NEED a mentor.
You need someone, most likely multiple people, that you can learn from.
It can be someone you know and meet with on a regular basis, or someone who you follow and learn from at a distance.
The best option is to have someone that you personally know and get to spend some time with. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time, but having the ability to sit down with someone in person and form a relationship with is extremely helpful.
If you don’t have access to a mentor that you can personally get to know, you can still receive many of the benefits of a mentor by closely following someone and learning from what they teach.
This is the option I have chosen most often, and while it may not have as many benefits as having a personal relationship with a mentor, I believe that you still receive many of the most important benefits.
No matter which route you choose to take, working with and learning from a mentor will help you out in 3 powerful ways.
Accountability
One of the most important benefits of a mentor is the ability to have someone to hold you accountable.
We are all guilty of saying what we want to do, and not following through at times. It is easy to talk the talk, and much harder to walk the walk.
Having a mentor that you have to check in with regularly will help keep you focused on the importance of taking the actions that you said you were going to take.
Have you ever wondered why some people hire a personal trainer?
It may be because they don’t know what to do to get in shape. And that is a great reason to hire a trainer, but the more likely reason is that they know they need someone to push them to workout. They need someone to hold them accountable for going to the gym and putting in the hard work while they are there.
It is the same in your business. You need someone that can hold you accountable. You need to find someone that you can talk to about your ideas and plans and have them hold you accountable for taking action on them. There is nobody better at this than a good mentor.
Motivation
Another great benefit of a mentor is that they can help provide motivation in times that you are in need of it.
It is easy as an entrepreneur to have very high highs, and very low lows when it comes to motivation. It is easy to get caught up in what is working well, and equally as caught up in what is going poorly.
To have long term success we need to be able to take a step back and focus on the bigger picture.
A mentor can help you with that. They can help you not to get too exited in the god times, and not to depressed in the bad times, and refocus on the big picture for your business.
They can also be a great source of motivation through their ability to help you see ways that you can change course and turn a low into a high. Through their experience they can provide motivation as to how something that has worked well for them in the past may be the solution you need to have success in the future.
Zig Ziglar says:
People often say that motivation does not last. Well, neither does bathing – thats why we recommend it daily.
Having a good mentor, or a number of mentors, can help you to receive motivation daily – or at least more often than you receive it now.
Growth
The biggest benefit of having a mentor of some sort is in the growth department.
Whether you realize it or not, you have not gotten where you are by yourself. You have been helped along your path by others at many points.
This is the part that I didn’t recognize at first. My initial belief was that to be a entrepreneur you had to do it all by yourself. But that couldn’t have been farther from the truth.
How did I realize that was a bad idea? I began to look at what other successful entrepreneurs have done to make them successful.
What I found was that every successful entrepreneur had help along the way. They either had a mentor they trained under, or had a connection to another successful entrepreneur who they would have conversations with every so often.
Once I realized that, I began to make it a habit to find mentors who I could learn from.
While I don’t have many mentors that I meet with in person, I have joined a number online courses, and signed up for some coaching services that have helped me to grow myself and my business in the direction that I want and need it to go.
I have also been trying to make a habit of connecting with those that I learn from in some way, so that over time I can begin to build relationships that may lead to more of an in person mentoring.
So What Now?
If you don’t have a mentor it is time to find one!
Whether you want to find a local mentor that you can sit down with for a cup of coffee every so often, one you can Skype with for your meetings, or even if you want to go the route I have gone and find mentors you can just follow closely and learn from – the key is to take action and do it today.
Don’t wait. Be a person of action. Find one person today that you can either ask to grab a cup of coffee, or someone that you can begin to follow and learn from.
It won’t take you much time, and the results that it will give you over the next year will be worth the time you spend.
If you are looking for people to follow in the entrepreneurship space I highly recommend the following people, I have learned so much from them:
Question: Who are you going to get as a mentor?
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