5 Bad Questions You Should NEVER Ask a Mentor In Business | Blair Singer

Don't ever do this. Don't ever do this. In these crazy times, as you're looking to scale your business, you're going to be reaching out for mentors and support. And I'm going to give you five things to never say that will totally piss them off and drive them away forever, okay? So don't do these things. If you're an aspiring teacher, leader, facilitator, leader of a business, this is critical. And before, before I get to that, before I get to that, if you want the first step of going from where you are today out of the rat race of a solo business and to become a fully scalable business, then click on the link in the comment section below, okay? And. Or if you want to do this really quickly, go to blairsinger.com plan okay? Now how are you going to piss them off? Here are some things I'm going to give you. Actually, I'm going to give you a bonus, a couple of bonuses here. Number one, number one, don't waste their time. Don't waste their time. The worst thing you could do is say, look, I'd just like to chat with you for a little while. Don't do that. Be prepared when you come. Don't beat around the bush. Don't just drop in. Here's the other way you waste time. It's pre ramble. So I'd like to ask you a question about hiring people because, you know, over the last four years I've done this, that, and the other thing and I've done this over here and I've done been over here without that. And you're beating around the bush. Just ask the fricking question. Don't waste people's time, okay? Mentor values their time and you should value theirs, okay? Number two, don't look for acknowledgement. Don't look for acknowledgment that's like to let them know how smart you are or how hard you work or you know, how you've been victimized by. And you don't say poor me, but there are some people that I've had come to me that they just, they, they want to, they want me to agree with their position. I don't want any of that. I want to help you. I want to help you grow. And the mentors I've worked with, they want to help me grow and they're not easy on me, okay? So don't be looking for acknowledgement. Number three, this is a big one. Don't refute that. What they tell you. Don't say these words. Don't say, I. I know that I've done that. Yeah. But so and so told me to do something different. Oh, I tried that before and that didn't work. Don't do that. Okay? Don't do that because they're giving their time to you and your job is to do. And I'm going to give you a list of five things that you should do. One of them is to listen. To shut up and listen. Okay, here's another one. Don't ever ask for money. Don't ask your mentor for money. You cross a line in your relationship and it makes everything weird. Don't ask for money. You know, if you want to ask for how do I raise capital or something like that, that's maybe a little bit better, but don't ask for money. Okay? Now here's another thing that pisses them off, by the way. So I've covered a few things of what not to do. I got a couple more, and then I'm going to tell you what to do, okay? To when you get a mentor, because you're going to need a mentor in these times. I've had many. I still have them. You know, the rich dad advisors are great mentors to me. Robert Kiyosaki, I got a great story about him too, which I'll share with you about what to do and what not to do. Okay? But to be able to get assistance is priceless. Okay. All right. What else should you not do? Okay. Don't try what they tell you. Okay? So they give you advice. Go do it. Don't repeat the same behavior. Worst thing that happened, people say, well, give me some feedback on my presentation. I give them some feedback and they do the exact same thing again. How stupid is that? That. Don't do that. Just learn. I'm going to summarize this really well in a few minutes, in about a minute or two. So you know exactly what to do. Okay? What to do. Okay, here's another. Oh, yeah, don't come to a meeting with your mentor unprepared. What I mean by that? Prepare what you're going to prepare what you're going to talk about. I'll tell you how to handle how to do that in a second. And don't ask them questions about minutia, stupid little things. I have Kathy, and Kathy is my bookkeeper, and I just have a little problem with her. Don't ask those questions because a mentor will help you with big picture, will help you with big picture, and you bog them down in Little minutia. They're going to think you're little and they're not going to want to work with you, okay? So don't ever do these things. Now, here's what you do do. We covered all the things that you don't do. There's probably a lot more. By the way, you make a list and send me your list, okay? Because some of you are mentors for other people. Here's what you do do. Number one, first and foremost, be humble. Be humble. Always be humble. Never try to build yourself up. Don't try to let them show. Don't. Don't try to show them how great you are. Be humble in their presence. Number two, most important, just listen without challenging. Listen without challenging. See, you're getting all fired up here. Drooling on myself. Okay, don't challenge them. Just listen. Even if you're a little voice. I've tried that. I've done that. Listen anyway, because I'll tell you, there's a reason they're successful and the reason you're not and the reason they're doing something and you said you did it and it worked for them, but it didn't work for you. There's a reason. So listen. Listen and heed their advice. Number three, get to the point. Talked about that before. No, pre ramble. Get to the point now. I talked about not being prepared. Be prepared. When you go to meet with a manager, be prepared. In other words, if you've got a list of things, limit it to one to three things. That's it. Don't come with a laundry list of all these things you want to cover. Distill it down to the three biggest things, two or three biggest things. And be prepared. Have case studies, have examples of what you tried, what worked and what didn't work. Don't be just talking off the top of your head and what ifs. Okay, all right, next one. Ask bigger questions. I talked about that before. Don't talk about minutia. Talk about big questions. Talk about questions that have to do with serving a lot of people, scaling the business. Don't talk to them about. Well, I had. I had to discipline somebody in the office the other day. I'm not quite sure I did it the right way. Don't bog them down with that kind of stuff. And finally, test everything. Test everything. But here's the most important part of a mentor. I told you, I promise you a story here. Most important thing of a mentor is to. Is their value is not the advice they're going to give you, it's going to be to shut up your little voice. Because that's. If you look at all the things I told you not to do, all that is little voice issues, your little voice. Have to talk, have to talk, have to do this, have to look good, have to do all these things by working with a good mentor and disciplining yourself to do what I'm telling you to do and not do the things I'm telling you not to do, it's going to learn to discipline your little voice. It's the biggest value of all. Give you an example. Robert and I've been friends for many years and he's also been a great mentor. We did a presentation in front of like 5,000 people years ago and we took a break. It was part of a multi speaker. He came off stage, he goes, your presentation sucked. That, that was, that was terrible. You're much better than it just ripped me. So here's the deal. One thing you must do is on my list, be willing to take feedback, ask for it and be willing to take it. If you take it personally, that's good because you'll have to deal with your little voice on it because that sucked. He says, we got another presentation to do in another hour to you go in the room and drill, practice it, do it again, do it again, do it again and don't come out. And so I. All I want to do is kill him. All I wanted to do was yell at him. You don't understand. But what I learned from one of my other mentors is to shut up. And if you respect them, which I respect him with my life, do it. Just do it. And I came out and gave one of the presentations of my life. We high fived on stage. It was amazing, but it was a little painful in the process. Do what your mentor tells you to do. I had another mentor. His name was Bob Elson. He's passed away. Was in the air freight trucking business. And I wanted to learn about buying businesses and how to scale businesses back then. He goes, okay, here's what I want you to do. You're going to go to Austin, Texas. You're going to hear the five things. You're going to find a trucking company, you're going to buy it, here's how you buy it. And what you're going to do is you can set up operations and get it going. Well, what else do I do? He goes, just go do it and call me, but don't call me for 30 days. Don't call you for 30 days. And he laughed at me and walked away. And so I went and did it. And it was one of the most powerful learning experiences of my life. I said, so I called him in 30 days. He goes, how's it going? I go, not too bad. I'm one armed paper, paper hanger here. He goes, good, what'd you learn? And all he did was ask me questions and I learned so much. He goes, blair, here's the deal. Just do it and then we'll talk about it. I don't want to talk about what ifs and all that other stuff. I don't got my time. By the way, he's a lot more swear words than that. Than that. He goes, but I don't have the time to deal with it. Okay, just do it first and then we'll talk about it. So be prepared. Okay? Finally, show gratitude. Show gratitude. Probably the most important thing of all is to show gratitude and that banks ask if there's a way you can stay. In exchange, they'll typically say, no, do something nice. Anyway, don't be afraid to take mistakes to your mentors. Why? Because good entrepreneurs thrive on mistakes. They, they feed on them. They love to solve problems. So if you, if you, if you don't do what they tell you to do because you're afraid of making a mistake and you don't want to look bad, then. Ken McElroy. I bought my first multimillion dollar property on my own. And I came walking into his office one day and I had mud on my feet. I had black on my face. Why? Because the building I had just bought caught fire. And the fire department came and flooded the place to douse it out and just completely wrecked the whole, the whole 25, 28,000 foot square foot facility. And there was smoke and it's kind of in Ken's neighborhood. He's one of the rich dad Advis. I walk in and I'm just devastated. I mean, the insurance and the money and the tenants and all this stuff. And I walk in and he just laughed. He goes, welcome to the property business. Great mentor. He could have told me how to prevent it, but I had to go through it. And then it became a great lesson later. Okay, so show gratitude to those people. Show gratitude to the people that are willing to help you. So I want to know before I end, I just want to know what your biggest takeaway from all this is. What's your biggest takeaway? I hope it has to do with Little Voice. And I'll bet you that you've had mentors that have given you golden nuggets and I want you to share those too. In the comment section. Share me the golden nuggets, the one thing a mentor did for you that changed your life or told you what to do. And if you found this video valuable, please share it. Please share it with other people. Subscribe, click the like button and if you're really if you're ready to make the transition from self employed, I'm serious about this. If you're serious about making this transition, if you're a teacher, leader, facilitator, if you understand that education is the key to your growth, go to blairsinger.com plan and sit down with us. Let's have a discussion. Find out what we can do to help you to help you get there, okay? Because you deserve to have a fully scalable business and in these crazy times, the people that have them will do well. The people that don't will disappear. So be amazing, be awesome and honor your mentors. Be great, okay.