Your dreams of success are more than likely bigger than your mentor
Do you really need a mentor to start your business and become successful? I’m going to say NO! You don’t need a mentor in this modern age of tech. I think I heard it best on one of my kid’s animated movies “Boss Baby” when he said, “Mentors are for people that can’t think for themselves”
I will be honest with you, there are people in my life that I consider my mentors, but I don’t have a super success mentor that is guiding me up the path to business success. To tell you probably the truth of this whole matter, no one really wants to be your mentor anyway. Most of us that read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill know that Hill says in his book that it’s very important that you have a personal success mentor. After reading the book, we all went out and found the most successful person we knew and asked them to be our mentor! If you were anything like me, the people I scheduled mentoring with really had no interest in being my so-called mentor.
I found out some very interesting things about the people I sought mentoring from. First of all, these people that seemed to be super successful, were not very forthcoming about their own success and just answered my questions with generic answers. Second, turns out they were not quite as successful as they appear from the outside (this was an eye opener). Third, I was much more enthusiastic and ambitious about becoming successful than they were. They had found some success but was good with where they were at in life, therefore my goals were set higher than they were ready to coach for. And Fourth, I probably knew more about what I wanted to achieve than they did.
It’s not to say there’s not the right success mentor out there for you or me but the best “mentorship” I have been able to get is that no one is going to do it better than you are yourself! You probably don’t need a mentor as much as you need motivation. Mentors are supposed to motivate you, that’s kind of the idea, but they are people too and people make mistakes and have a bad day and give bad advice. The other aspect is, your mentor will most likely be older than you and may not have the interest or energy in keeping with the fast lane of technology in business. My suggestion is to use authors as you baseline mentors. Yes, read books! (Or listen to books). Find a way to self-educate as much as you can and don’t just read them and put them away. Read, reread and read again. Completely immerse yourself in the teachings of all books. Book create motivation and they stay consistent with the lessons (Books generally don’t have a bad day and give you bad advice or show they have no interest in teaching you)
Alexander the Great marched to take on the Persia and conquer what his father could only dream of doing. Alexander crossed into Asia with an army numbering 35,000 to take on a Persian army that numbered in the millions. As they marched they passed through the town of Gordium. In the town’s square was an ancients chariot wrapped in a huge knot of cords of the rind of the Cornell Tree. Legend had it that he that could untie the knot (The Gordian Knot) would rule the world. Many men tried to untie the knot but to no success. Alexander approached the chariot and brandished his sword and with one well-placed slice cut the cords and freed the chariot. This was a symbolic gesture that Alexander was going to do thing his own way and counsel was just that, counsel. Soon after Alexander went on to conquer the dreaded Persian army. The idea behind this story is that after Alexander’s father, King Philip of Macedonia died, Alexander became king and Philip’s advisors tried to counsel and coach him to do as his father would do and rule and conquer with cunning. Alexander had his own ideas on ruling that far out shined anything his father could do or his counselors and could advise, and that’s why you know his name more than his father’s
Take the advice others give you with caution but always be open to some level of mentorship if it presents itself. I think you will find that there is nothing you can’t learn on your own and that the modern world is teaming with limitless and freely published information at your disposal. Only you know what you want and you won’t get there alone but you can have your own ways of doing things that will be different than the person before you. That’s the whole idea of innovation! You probably don’t need a mentor as much as you need your own desire to become super successful!
Daniel J Bockman
