Having a mentor in business stimulates success
In the business world, asking for help can make you feel vulnerable and even like a failure, but if you do so in the form of mentorship, it can mean certain success for your business future.
Dan Levitan, Co-Founder of Maveron notes,
“I was in my 30’s before someone asked me for the first time why I didn’t have more mentors in my business. The question stuck with me and I realized how important it is.”
1. You can learn from their experiences.
Why settle for “learning the hard way” when you can avoid some key mistakes simply by learning from one who has “been there and done that”?
2. It expands your network.
The key to most successful business ventures is networking. Having a mentor, especially one in your line of work, can help you to make connections you might not have been able to make otherwise.
3. They’ll give you honest feedback.
When looking for a mentor, find someone who isn’t afraid to be honest with you. Mentoring leads to the fact that failure is a sure thing. One of my mentors has a great quote: “Get comfortable that failure is part of the road to success.” What’s important is that entrepreneurs have a relentless tenacity to succeed no matter how many times you fail.
4. Someone’s “in your corner.”
No matter your success or failure, a mentor should be a person who is there for you professionally (and personally depending on the nature of your relationship) no matter what.
5. It’s usually free… but still pay it forward.
Of course, there are many official mentorship programs out there that you can pay for, but the best type of mentor relationships happen naturally. Once you’re at a point in your career where you feel comfortable in your career, remember to “pay it forward” by being a mentor yourself. Part of mentorship is becoming part of their vision, and you go after your goal together.
Finding a mentor
As Levitan opined, mentorship is a “pay it forward” scenario. Broker Jeff Brown writes, “Need mentoring? Find one. Are you highly experienced at what you do? Let it be known you’ll mentor the right person. I look back on my mentors, some of whom were literally icons, and wonder how I came to be blessed so many times.”
“There are very few of us who are successful without being mentored,”
Brown adds, “whether it was formal or not. We all owe them to pay it forward. Why? Simple — what we were taught was priceless. Without them. I would have been trapped doing something I hated. With them, I was given the key unlocking the door to a life I only dreamed of back then.”
To dig deeper into this topic, read the Mentorship Report which was designed for the real estate industry, but truly applies to any industry.
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