Why I ACTIVELY Seek Mentors For ALL Areas of My Life

Boom, people. Welcome back to the show. Today, we're going to talk about why I actively seek mentors and coaches. So I want to tell you a quick story. So recently, me and my wife went to a church barbecue cook-off. And this cook-off was probably like most barbecue cook-offs. You walk in, you know, everyone's got their dish, their homemade thing. This was pre-coronavirus, by the way. We wouldn't have done this now. But pre-COVID, people had all these dishes lined up. And there's going to be a few that are just Absolute garbage and you say just go hang up the old cape and just put away your chef stuff and just eat out the rest of your life to some of those people but there's other people there who are actually very impressive and have really put together an amazing dish or amazing chili. So, we went to this cook-off, we were trying a few things, we eventually tried this absolutely incredible bowl of chili and I call it chili but it wasn't really chili, it was something a little bit more special than that and me and my wife both got a bowl. We tried it and we were both blown away. We went back to our neighbor who had made it, it was just a neighbor, and we asked, how did you do this? This is incredible. We said, we're not kidding, we're not just being nice, like this was— and it really was one of the best bowls of chili I've ever had in my life. And he said, well, thank you, and we asked him, how long did it take you to do this? And he said, well, I've spent probably the last 7 or 8 years in trial and error to develop this bowl of chili and we said wow, thank you so much, this is incredible and we were walking away and my wife said something so interesting. She said Bridger, if only I had the recipe, I could do the same thing. At that moment, I had this kind of dawned on me and like oh, that's true in most things in life especially funds. If you, you know, somebody can go and develop a business model, develop a fund or an algorithm or a model And it takes them a decade to figure it out but if they give you the recipe, you can copy that in a couple of hours, maybe 2 to 3 hours and it like hit me like, oh my gosh, people have already done all the hard stuff. Like we're not reinventing the wheel here. Like you don't need to go out for entrepreneurship or starting a fund, you don't have to go out just, okay, I'm gonna go just hit the road and whatever path, I'm just gonna go figure it out on my own. There's people who have already done this, have figured out the recipes and they can save you a lot of time. I think my dad is this kind of person in the fund world. My dad has gone the trial and error for a decade to learn and figure out how funds work, how they're— and if you guys don't remember, my dad, the co-founder of a $20 billion family of funds, if you've heard my story before, how he helped me launch and scale my funds, never has invested in any of my funds still to this date, still will not invest, but he's given me mentorship and advice and been an active coach for me. And given me the formula. And I think having the recipe that he gave me, and he'll say this in his own words, he said, Bridger, when I taught you about funds, I thought it would take you 10 to 20 years to figure out how to launch your own fund, but you were able to take the recipe and copy it in a matter of a year and get my fund off the ground. And same with a lot of the people in our groups, our community, like our coaching. We've had dozens of people take this same formula and just plug it in, the recipe. and use it for them. That's the beauty of having a recipe or having a coach in front of you, and that's the same thing with the chili, right? My wife said, if only I had the recipe. That's something my dad has given me, and I actively go out and purchase courses. I purchase mastermind programs to find more mentors, and I want to see how they mentor, how they coach, and this isn't just for business. This is for life. This is for spirituality, self-development. I actively seek coaches because— They're There are people in this world who've figured out a few more things than me and you have, and I actively go out and seek those people to gain that. I hope you guys recognize that and see that in me if you're following those podcasts or show or whatever. Just know I actively get coached. I think it's important to know that people you're learning from are actively getting coached as well, and that they are constantly sharpening the axe and getting better and better. Recently, me and my business partner, we sat down and we were talking. We do every week, by the way, we do a one-on-one type of a meeting, so me and him sit down, we talk about the fund, we talk about business, life, all this kind of stuff, and we at the end, we give invites for each other to personally improve. We do a personal reflection, whatever you want to call it, on each other. We share, hey, what are your strengths? What are you doing well? And then how can you improve? And we give each other invites every single week. We do that very openly and we say, hey, there's no hard feelings, no one's feelings get hurt, but this is a time to bring forth grievances, to bring forth stuff that's bugging you. We got it. We're a team here. If there's any— Fraction in our teamwork, it's going to hurt the business. So we need to get those all out. So this last week we were talking, my business partner, he said, Bridger, I really think we need to find another coach. And the current coach we've had in the past, and he's been great, but now our business is hitting a new, a whole new realm. And he's like, Bridger, I don't think this coach can take us to that next level, that next stage. We need to go find another coach. And that's what prompted on this episode. I was like, man, we are— and by the way, Prices for these coaches, we're like, we'll pay anywhere from 10 grand to about 50 grand a month for one of these coaches. That's the price range we're at right now for coaches. There's other coaches that charge 100 grand a month or 200 grand a month, and we're not there. We don't feel like we're there yet. We're more at the 10 grand to 50 grand a month level, and we're actively seeking coaches and mentors to help us take our businesses to the next level because we're hiring a lot of people right now. We're building out team system. We need a coach that can help build systems for us, and we actually have a few in mind right now, so don't DM me and say like, oh, I've got this idea. We have We already have a couple in mind we're talking to. We want to vet them and make sure they're going to be a good fit for us but I think that there is so much value in finding coaches and it takes humility. It takes a little bit of humility in yourself to say I don't know everything, I can't figure it all out or if I am going to figure it out, it's going to take me a decade. If I had a coach, it'll take me, you know, a year or 2. And some of you listening might say well, I would never pay 25 grand a month for a coach but me and my business partner were like well, if we can pay 25 grand a month, And that will make us, you know, another $200 grand a month over the next year. Well, by all means, let's do it, right? That's a great return. It's an investment in our business and ourselves. If we don't invest in ourselves, we are the biggest thing holding our business back, and that's a big— and I mentioned this before on the show— is one of the biggest things holding you back in your business is you and me, right? The reason my business isn't doing $400 million a year is is me. That's the truth of it, right? Because if Elon Musk or Bill Gates stepped into my position right now and let's say they didn't use any of their money but their knowledge was here, I think the business would be growing faster than it is right now. And so if that's the case and most businesses, the true bottleneck of the business is the entrepreneur, is the owner, and if that's the case, then me and you, we are the variable. We are the ones that need to get out of our own way or excel or become something better, that's the beautiful thing about entrepreneurship is this is what I love. It's the highest, fastest way for you to become a better person in this life and if you're a God-fearing person, I believe in God, I believe God's number one mission on this earth is to help us become. He doesn't care how much money we make or do, he wants us to become better beings and when you have kids, you have a family, it makes you hopefully become better, gives you challenge, it makes you have a responsibility over things, it helps you become something better and I think entrepreneurship is one of the fastest ways to develop yourself, to build self-development because you're the one that has to wake up every morning, get things done, to build teams, to build systems, you have to do it all. If you're in a 9 to 5 or even investment banking consulting, you're working a lot of hours and yes, you're developing and growing but you're not growing as much as I think you could be. I think entrepreneurship is the fastest growth curve on the planet, that's why it's Sometimes stressful but in stressful situations, we grow the most as people. I used to work at a big firm out in Silicon Valley and I remember all the people there, they kept saying the same thing. They would say well, you know, after about 2 years of this job, I got bored and I wanted to grow and so I switched jobs so I could do this other thing and it would help me grow and learn and I was like that's cool, you know, but like what's the end goal, right? They kept saying oh, I wanted to shift roles or switch positions, I just love learning, I want to grow and learn. And that was great, and I was like, that's a great mindset to have. However, their growth and learning didn't really do much to their bank account and really didn't do much to their self-development as well. They were learning random facts and systems. They weren't building themselves as a leader. They weren't building themselves as a business owner, as an operator, as a manager, as an investor, as a great family man at home or a family, you know, a woman that can raise a family. I mean, all these things. It wasn't really happening for them and I was like if you really love that growth curve, go be an entrepreneur, right? If you really want to grow, if you really want self-development and the best part about it is your bank account grows with you. In those 9 to 5 jobs, I mean you're hoping for maybe an 8% raise on your salary at the end of the year, right? Pretty cool. Entrepreneurship, my salary since last year has 3x'd. 3x, 300% increase from This time this month last year and I'm hoping by this time next year, it's probably gonna 3x again. That's the beautiful thing about entrepreneurship is you are the captain of your own ship and you're in charge of what happens. And so for me, if I can think about speed, how can I get from A to B faster? I'm gonna put away my pride, I'm gonna put away all that. I go out and actively seek coaches and seek mentorship and advice and help and that's through books. You see my bookshelf back here keeps growing bigger and bigger, that's like just— that's a small fraction of it but keeps growing bigger and bigger from books. From books, from podcasts, you guys are watching the show right now, but also from one-on-one mentorship and coaching. And by the way, you don't have to pay for coaches too. There's people in your lives that might just sit down with you and mentor you and coach you. Like my dad was one of my greatest coaches ever, and there's things that my dad has taught me I love, and but there's things that he doesn't really know a lot about. And so I have to go seek other coaches in different realms that they can help me on different things. There's— it's very rare for one coach to tell you everything about life. So I actively seek multiple coaches for different realms. And it's been, I think, one of the biggest proponents to my growth personally, financially, spiritually, relationship, you know, emotionally with my wife, has been from mentors and coaches and other people who already have the recipe. They've already gone through the trial and error to figure out the recipe and they're giving you it all right here in a box. And we just have to value what they're giving us and just be humble enough to say, you know what, I'm going to take a chance on this. I'm going to take a chance. I'm going to follow exactly what you do, A, B, and C. For a year and if it doesn't work out a year, okay, I wasted 1 year of my life on something and usually even if it doesn't work out to like your full expectation, you still get somewhere close and then the next year you can try something else out. I think that's a way faster route to get to your goals and destination than going to college or trying to work a 9 to 5 and slowly advance through your career. I think entrepreneurship, finding coaches and mentors is one of the fastest ways to get there. So anyways, a little bit of a rant today on entrepreneurship and finding coaches but I truly believe it's one of the biggest proponents to wealth and self-development and to your business is you. You are the variable. You are the one thing that either allows your business to grow like crazy or maybe hurts your business or holds it back. And so that's something I've been ingraining and internalizing lately. Anyways, you guys are awesome. By the way, these shirts just came out, #WallStreetRebel. Kind of fun, we're sending them to our mastermind students right now. We're gonna test them out and maybe we'll see if we can get them out to you guys as well. If you're on the podcast, we got some new merch coming out, fun stuff. So also, if you have questions or comments, let me know on Instagram. @bridger_pennington is usually the easiest way to find me. Let me know if you have stuff that you want to talk about. If you like this show, give us a subscribe or give us a review or comment, stuff like that. It actually helps, I guess, quite a bit. I've hired a YouTube guy and a podcast guy and they tell me that's— I gotta say this at the end of our episodes because it'll help us out. But I'm here to just serve and bless and to give you guys as much value as possible. So thank you guys and I'll see you in the next episode. Peace. Bye.