Getting Help Through Mentorship – Episode 294

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Hello, listeners, and welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Today, we’re going to be talking about how to find people to mentor you or guide you or help you get to that next level in life. And Kim, you have some wonderful wisdom that you’re going to share with us today. Oh, thanks, Spencer. Happy to share this. And I think I’ll address it both mentors in finances, as well as just mentors in other areas of life, because I am a huge believer in getting help. And it’s interesting. I think it works both ways. I turn very quickly to get help when I need mentorship or coaching, if you will. And I’ve shared before, but Dan Sullivan has been my coach for almost 25 years. And or maybe even more,

[00:55] I can’t remember. 90 doesn’t matter a long time. And I’m just super grateful for the strategic coach program and what it’s done for me from a business standpoint as mentorship goes, but it’s also very much a holistic program. So there’s a lot of personal growth that has occurred there as well. And then secondly, people come to me all the time, asking for help with their finances from a mentorship or coaching standpoint. And it’s interesting, actually back to Dan Sullivan, he said just recently that he believes where management was kind of the business thing of the early 2000s, that coaching will be the business thing or business model, if you want to use that term, for the era that we’re heading into right now. And when I’m helping people with their finances,

[01:53] I absolutely believe that I’m coaching, I believe that I’m mentoring, I believe that I’m educating. And in all of these areas, both the business, the personal and the financial, I think it’s so beneficial to get help. And I could even add in the physical, like from a workout standpoint, and we could drill down even more to the mental because, of course, mindset is such an important thing and it impacts everything that we have going in our lives. So in all of these areas, I think seeking a mentor is awesome. I think paying for mentorship just up levels it a notch. And I think it’s fabulous when people can say, I need help, when they can just get clear for themselves that there’s something that they

[02:49] don’t have a lot of knowledge in and they don’t really know where to go or how to get something done or make progress. That’s when it’s time to bring in a mentor. Yeah, that’s a great point. So if a person is at the point where they realize they need a mentor, what would the prerequisites or the filtration process of choosing the right mentor be? Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think it’s always important that the mentor walks the talk. One of the things I love about the strategic coach program is there’s no full-time coaches other than Dan Sullivan himself who owns the company. There’s about 20 or so associate coaches that have businesses that then also coach very part-time. And so to me, that really increases the credibility of those coaches.

[03:41] Because if you’re looking for a mentor, let’s switch gears and talk about the financial for a moment. If you’re looking for a mentor, you want them to not only have walked the talk, but to be walking the talk on an active daily basis and to have done what it is that you’re seeking to get done and in a very relevant way. In other words, I love it when clients say, well, who are your typical clients? Because a client or a prospect, I guess I should say, should want to be a typical client. You don’t want to be on the edges. You don’t want to be an outlier. You want your mentor to have done what you want to get done in a relevant way, in a fairly recent way so that it’s still very alive for them. And they’re mentoring you based

[04:33] on reality, based on today’s technology, based on what’s going on in today’s marketplace even. I don’t mean that like stock market oriented, but just the business world as a whole. You don’t want to be talking to somebody that is making recommendations to you about marketing and all they know about is snail mail as an example. Hey, there’s this thing called the web and it has some new marketing that goes along with it. So that’s what I mean by recency and relevancy for your mentor. Okay. That makes sense. Now, if you can go back to the time when you were first getting mentors in your life, I would imagine that it was probably a little intimidating to decide, okay, who should I go after? Now, what do I say to them so that I can form this relationship?

[05:25] Help us understand what that was like for you and how you overcame that. Yeah, that’s a toughie. And there’s two categories for this because if the mentor has a coaching program and you’re paying them for coaching, then I think that’s a really easy step to take. Where it gets more challenging is if the mentor doesn’t have a formal coaching program or maybe you don’t have money for a coaching program, then what do you do? And thankfully, in today’s world, there’s so much available from people that we respect typically in the form of either a blog, a book, or a podcast. Now, back when I was early in my career, it was cassette tapes. We listened to cassette tapes in the car constantly. I say we just because I always included anybody that was in my life.

[06:19] Then it graduated to CDs. And I remember my children used to play with the CDs and they’re kind of iridescent. And so they were young and that was a shiny object for them. And I would have them listen and they would kind of roll their eyes. Oh, I’ve heard that music before. All the CDs had intro and extra music. So in today’s world, there’s just a lot of information that you can get for free, thankfully, from people that we typically respect in the various formats that I’ve mentioned that make it available. But to specifically answer your question, I think gathering mentors in your life, first of all, should be an ongoing thing. Like I’m still doing it today. I’m very, very picky, but I still am always looking

[07:07] to learn and I want it to be a win-win. So maybe it’s that I do pay them for their expertise. I love it when I can find a situation that the payment is for results. In other words, I can pay you X dollars for your program, but what I really like to do is where there’s a little bit of pay and a little bit of results based pay or involvement in some way that the person that’s doing the mentoring can get more of whatever it is that we’re trying to get themselves while they’re also helping me get more because then I think the rubber really meets the road. So thinking back to maybe a time when I didn’t have the capacity to take on that kind of relationship, I still think you can give first. I still think you can

[08:06] find a way to pay it forward in some manner. I’ll tell you a fun story from a recent family visit that we had. My nephew wanted a particular thing that I had a couple extra of and was more than happy to hand to him. And he said, do you want me to pay for them? And I said, that’s so good of you to ask. And I had been thinking about it. And so I already knew how I was going to answer. And I was kind of waiting to see whether he would bring it up or not. So I said, no, I don’t want you to pay me for it, but I do want you to pay it forward. And I want you to report back. So that’s what I would do is recommend to people that if they don’t feel like they can actually pay for specific mentoring or coaching and they

[08:53] want to have a relationship with somebody, they’ve got to bring something to the table. It can’t be, I want to take you to lunch and pick your brain. That works, maybe once. But to bring something to the relationship, to make it be a win-win for both, to have a good first attitude, to find a way to pay it forward and then report back. Those are all examples of where there’s contribution in the mentee to the mentor, which is maybe a little backwards and most people might think about it. Yeah, absolutely agree. The reporting back and the contribution is so valuable. One of the things for me that I was thinking of how I like getting a mentor is when I pay for services that I often need, but I’m very diligent in finding the right person. So for example, accounting,

[09:53] I’m going to do all that I can to find the very best accountant for all of my needs, but I also want that person to teach me. I want them to help educate me. And I would assume that for you, a client or a person can read your books and listen to the podcast. And then when they transact your services, they’re not just getting the services, they’re getting the education and the experience. Is that how you see it as well? I do. And the fun thing about the various mediums that are out there these days, the blogs and the podcasts and the books, is that it enables me to educate at a higher level when the person has already done a lot of the base education with the podcast, blog or book. And I love that because it just steps up the relationship and it makes it exponential. It makes

[10:50] it go quicker to a deeper level where I can really make a difference for them at a very personal level and a deeper level because we’re not covering surface basic things. Yeah, that’s a great point. So I think as we are wrapping up the episode, I would say if people haven’t read the books that you’ve written, to go and do that. And if you don’t have the time or don’t like reading books, well, listen to it on Audible or check out the podcasts. What are the suggestions you have for people to take in their next step to find a mentor or even to deepen the relationship with you? I always encourage people to figure out how they learn. And so if you learn by listening, as you brought up, then turn to the podcasts and the Audible versions of the books. If you

[11:44] learn by reading, then go to the physical book or Kindle version and the blog. And then, of course, there are some people that learn by watching and they want video work, which we don’t have as much available of. And yet I definitely do have some video. There’s public ones on YouTube, and I have some private ones that I share with clients on very specific subjects that I think are helpful. So again, get clear on how you learn because no matter who you’re going to seek a mentor relationship from, you need to be clear on how you learn because if you’re just not going to read and the mentor is piling you with books, then that’s not going to be a good relationship because they’re going to expect you to read

[12:26] the book and you’re not going to want to read the book. So you want to be really up front with that right away. I think, too, in answering your question in terms of furthering your relationship with me, for our clients and prospects that listen to this podcast, I love our listeners. I’m so grateful for them. I’m so grateful for the podcast itself because it has helped us reach an additional audience because not everybody wants to, even though they may learn by listening, not everybody wants to listen to a whole book, especially up front. And so to me, once you get to know a person and you respect what they’re sharing, then no matter what your style of learning is, you are a little bit more committed

[13:09] to turning to the other methods that they have out there that enable you to learn for them. So for example, somebody’s listening to the podcast, you know, they’re short, sweet little segments. They like the podcast. That’s great. Well, when they decide to get serious to answer your question, I would absolutely have them read our books. I love our books. I’m so grateful that I took the time. And as anybody who’s ever written a book before knows, it’s an immense amount of time to get those books out there and to make available something to really study because finances, just in case you weren’t aware, actually deal with numbers on occasion. And so sometimes there’s calculators in the books and you need

[13:49] to take some time to study with them. And so that’s a great way to deepen the relationship. And then as well, if someone was listening to this and they really, really were stuck and not being able to read or they didn’t get enough information from the listening, like I said, I have a couple specific videos that I like to share with people and I hesitate to put this out there too much because I don’t want people to feel overwhelmed. The videos are 20 minutes and they’re something that should be treated carefully. They’re not just simple little YouTube videos or they would be on YouTube. But if somebody really, really wanted an extra video, I could be conned into sharing it. I think if somebody

[14:32] sent me an email to hello at partners, number four, prosperity.com. And that would absolutely alert me that they were serious about their learning and their education. And they really wanted a specific video on a particular subject of finance. And so that’s the request that I would have is what is it that you want to learn? In other words, if you’re going to send me an email for a video, don’t just say, please send me a video. I want to know what it is that you want to learn. And then Spencer, that’ll give you and I a great thing to maybe do as a podcast, because we might be able to share some of the information just verbally. And of course, that will enable me to share the specific videos that I do have on the particular subjects that people typically have questions about.

[15:18] Oh, I love it. I think that’s great. I’m going to add one more piece to this, if you don’t mind, please. And here it is. In order for us to obviously you’ve made these videos, you want to share them. And Kim talked about paying it forward. So how about this before you send the email requesting the videos, leave us a review and let us know what you think of the podcast. And that way we get the feedback publicly. And it could just be like wonderful podcast five stars, or it could be something more thoughtful. And then you get the videos. How does that sound? I love that. That’s a great idea. Thank you so much. Wonderful. Well, listeners, you now have a wonderful call to action and potentially some valuable videos that you’ll get to view.

[16:06] All we need you to do is leave us review. You can do it inside of the show notes, or you can click on Prosperity Podcast and leave a review in there. And we would love to hear what you say. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.