Episode Transcript

What’s up, guys, welcome back to THE a.m and if you haven’t noticed, I’ve been hoarse the past couple episodes. I’ll be getting over the crud. So thanks for bearing with me. I don’t even know if it’s a problem I’m probably more concerned about than anybody else.

Anyways, guys, getting back on track, I actually want to talk about something my business mentor shared with me, and if you don’t have somebody who mentors you in business, I think it’s one of the bigger things that you need, right? And it is so important to talk to somebody further down the road than you are in in any area of life, whether it’s professional career, whatever, and to have that, because they’ve got years and they’ve got experience moving down.

And here’s another thing, here’s a fallacy about mentorship, by the way, oh, they’ve been through it, so they know what they’re doing. Not everybody learns along the way. Think about that, not everybody learns along the journey, and so when you’re picking a mentor, you need to go through and be like, okay, cool. Do they have they, like, actually learned? Do they care about learning? Because we’ve talked, and I’ve talked to a lot of business people, and I when I say, We Andrew and I over the years, and there’s some great ones we’ve met, and then there’s some ones where it’s like, oh yeah, you just kind of stumbled into us.

And it reminded me I watched a shark tank forever ago. Not a shark tank, but I watched a Mark Cuban interview about shark tank, and he talked about this, one of the first companies he invested in. Lady was selling millions of dollars worth of product, but then she offered free shipping, and never did the math, and her free shipping ate up all her profit margin, and it was costing it like $1 or $1.50 more. So you watched all the cash tank, and she couldn’t figure out why she was running out of cash. And you look at that, and it’s like, cool. Success doesn’t necessarily, necessarily mean somebody has learned along in the journey and success can be repeated, but it doesn’t also mean… What I’m trying to say is this, it just doesn’t mean that somebody’s learned along the way.

And just because somebody has been successful also doesn’t mean they have a gift of teaching. They can’t transfer it, and it’s non transferable out of them. And I think it’s really important. This wasn’t what I was planning on talking about today, but I think I’ll just continue down this path, because I think it is important to get a mentor in life. So if you’re pursuing professional goals, talk to somebody, go up to somebody who’s done it, and then sit down and be like, okay, cool. They actually can teach. They will teach. And you’ll be able to tell you, you won’t be able to gage the specific knowledge that they’re giving you, and be able to measure it, but you’ll be able to know that they actually want to help you and serve.

And most people who are in mentorship and business, they’re older, but that’s part of their vision, is to give back at that point. And you can meet people like that, I think it’s super important to find somebody, especially if you’re a young entrepreneur, find somebody who will mentor you, who’s further down the road, and you want to find somebody who actually will spend time with you and teach you. And here’s the other thing, great mentors don’t tell you how to do things. They tell you where to look. And I’m saying that because it’s the parable of give a man a fish feeding for a day. So that cool. They can tell you how to do stuff. That’s here’s how you do it. But if they don’t tell you how to learn and improve and grow and how to see and where to look and what to look at, and then how to build solutions around those on your own, then you’re going to be like the man who’s only been given a fish, right? You just one day. That’s it. Here’s how you do this one thing, okay? ABC, that’s it.

But if you find a mentor who will teach you how to fish, that’s the mentor to teach you how to look He’ll teach you how to fish. You’ll be fed for a lifetime, and that’s what you want. You want somebody who’ll teach you how to fish, the art of fishing, the art of entrepreneurship, or the art of your professional career, the art of whatever it is you’re trying to pursue, right? They’re teaching you the art. They’re teaching you how to think like that, how to act like that, what type of mentality you need to have.Hey, here’s our practices and characteristics that somebody has an individual who’s really successful, they normally have these characteristics in their life. They’re doing this, they’re kind, they’re caring, compassionate, they’re disciplined, right? They’re fighters. They’ll show up, they’ll have grit, they’ll do these things, and then they’ll walk you through that, and you will be able to look and measure your life against those things, and then see the areas where you need to improve. But that’s all predicated on teaching a man how to fish versus Hey, let me just tell you how to do it.

Here’s the framework. Here’s how I did it. Great. They they’re not teaching you how to think and and how to actually process and how to make decisions, and then how to grow and improve and then learn along the journey. If you get mentored by somebody who didn’t learn along the way, they won’t teach you how to learn either, and that’s a big deal, because you don’t just want to be a one hit wonder. And think about the music industry. There are a lot of bands that are one hit wonder and they didn’t learn along the way. Saying it’s like what happened to them and so anyways, just saying that.

Anyways, guys, I’ll catch you later. Peace.