Finding the Right Mentor For You and Your Company

Welcome to Pelby biz podcast. I'm Dr. Kelly Alhui. I have grown and established brick and mortar practice in Northern Virginia called Ortho Pelvic Physical Therapy and also founded Pelvibiz, which is an online business consulting company that helps healthcare providers make more money and be healthy while doing it, especially in the pelvic health realm. And let's get into today's episode.

Today I'm going to talk about the difference of having a mentor and not having a mentor. I can tell you when I first started this journey of entrepreneurship. I had no clue for the first eight years when I worked for someone else what even a mentor was, because it wasn't even mentioned one time in school what a mentor was. It wasn't until I started thinking, there has to be a different way to do this. And then I started searching the Internet and all of a sudden these physical therapy mentors came up and I'm like, who are these people? It was about three guys that were really kind of leading the path then. And I took one person's course and I was like, nope, not really my vibe. This guy's like really salesy. So I was like, alright, let me see this other guy. He has pretty high energy, let me go take him. I thought at first, wow, he's like too hype for me. And I have a lot of energy. And I was like, yeah, let me see what he has. And he had a course for $99. And I was like, you know what, it doesn't cost much. I only had $800, my bank account at that point. Let me just invest $100 just to see what I can do. So I invested $100 and I can tell you it was a month and a half course. And that just that course alone changed my life completely. It completely changed my life. It completely changed my thought process. It completely gave me a different perspective on what could be done. I didn't even know a therapist could make six figures. I didn't even know that was a thing. I didn't even know a therapist could like not treat patients. I was like, there's no way. That's not a thing. I just didn't know what I didn't know. And that's what a mentor does. It allows you to not only have a path to see what the future could look like, but it also allows you to understand that there's a different way of doing things that maybe you haven't thought of. And they're called a mentor for a reason. Because. Because those people that are mentors have gone down the path that you want to take, but you are really unsure about that path. And so when you have a mentor, that mentor should do two things. It should speed up the time it takes for you to get down the path and it should save you a lot of money and make you a lot of money. Okay? So that's what a mentor should do. And a mentor. Some mentors can really inspire the crap out of you. Sometimes a mentor is just someone that you're like, man, I just want to do what they did sometimes. You could really admire these mentors. It just depends. I have many different mentors in my life and I use them all for different things. For some mentors, I just use for the community. For some other mentors, I just use for straight up knowledge and just like, give me the. Give me the quick and dirty of it and I'm on my way and that's all I need from that mentor. For some other mentors, I just used to be part of the group for some other stuff. I just used to have an experience of what they're going to bring at an event. So there's. Every mentor is going to provide a different perspective on whatever situation. Now, I personally picked my mentor based on where I saw him start and where he was now. And I said, I want that because that's what I've been looking for, is more money, more time to myself and not these clinics telling me that notes are more important than patients. I was just like, that's not true. It did not feel authentic to me. I really wanted to do my best and treat my best and what I was doing was not bringing me joy because it was all to please the insurance company. And I just got tired of it. And I said there had to be a different way. And that's when I went on. I actually found my mentor on Facebook and he had this event and everyone was in a red carpet event. And I was like, oh, these are my people. They dress up like.

I love that.

That's what I like. I like to have events where people dress up and all that kind of stuff. I was like, yeah, that's my so my vibe. This person's my vibe. And. And so that's how I connected. I didn't know a single thing about my mentor. I knew that they had a physical therapy practice that they grew, but I knew nothing else except they look cute in this event that they put on that was a red carpet event. And that's how I connected with them. No joke. That was it and that's what sold me. So. And then I took a program for 99 bucks, and I was like, this is crazy value in this program. Like, I gotta keep doing this. And then from then on out, I've had the same mentor now for four years to be able to help, you know, continuously grow my business. And also, this person is just really someone that truly has become a good friend of mine. And kind of, we really bounce ideas off of each other. Like, if shit hits the fan, I know this mentor has 100% my back and I have his. We just really support each other and we have such. What do you call it? Like, mutual respect for each other always. I've always respected this person to the M degree and held them to such high standards, and we always just help each other out. And I think that's really hard to find in business because people get success. People start to get jealous about success, and then they start to say, no, you're not on my team anymore. Goodbye. And they just kind of dump you off. But I feel like it's amazing to have someone that truly has your back and will always support you no matter what. So that's pretty cool when it comes to a mentor that you can rely on, because the entrepreneurship world, I'm telling you guys, it could be potentially easy. At first, I honestly thought, I'm not going to lie. Having a mentor made it pretty easy for me to grow my practice. If I did not have a mentor, I probably would have had 20,000 more mistakes than I already had, and it probably would have been miserable. But it also is lonely. I'm not going to lie, because many people don't understand what it takes and some of the sacrifices you have to make when growing a practice, you got to decide what? Well, I can't go to Thanksgiving dinner because, oh, yeah, all my employees went off and I gotta be here to make sure the clinic runs and see patients. Okay. There are moments like that and there are ups and downs in business. It's not always rainbows and sunshine. So I think that's pretty cool. A mentor as well is going to be able to be able to shift your mindset. Most of us need mindset shifting. Whether or not you believe that or not, we all get in our own way at some point. We really do. There's always some belief that is probably holding us back from doing whatever we said we want to do or whatever that is. So being able to shift, having someone shift your mindset and look at it from a different lens is massively important. Because it will get you unstuck if you feel stuck. But what else does a mentor do? They see what is possible when you don't see the vision because they have the bird's eye view and you have like the everyday, the narrowed view. This is what I gotta do today. But they see the potential in you and they see your strengths and they see what you are capable of. And a mentor can really have an amazing vision for you. You just gotta also believe that vision. But I think that's really cool about being a mentor because I am now a mentor to many pelvic health therapists. I can see so many different things in them that they don't even see. I tell it to them, but some of them don't believe it. And I'm not just saying it to, you know, have fluff underneath there. It's truly true. When I say something, I mean it. And it's just like, wow, if you could only see the, that this is your strength and what you can do with that strength, it can be so impactful for you and your community. You'd be unstoppable. So a mentor, mentors, by the way, for cost. They can cost anywhere between $99 all the way. I mean, I pay my mentor, just one of my mentors, over a hundred thousand dollars a year. That's just one of them. I've had many other mentors this year, year that I've paid thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to as well. So I spent a lot of money on mentorship. And the reason why is because I believe if I invest in mentorship, it truly is a massive return because it's not only impacting me, but it's impacting the people that I also mentor. And if I can bring more knowledge back to them, more skills, more mindset, shifting, more connections, all that kind of stuff. That's what I get from mentorship. And it's not only the person that's mentoring you. Let me say this too. It's also the community that that mentor kind of brings together is just as impactful as the mentor. So I think that's important to mention. And the more that you can have a better community, the more impact that it's going to have on you. Even though people think, oh, I just want one on one because my, I just want the mentor one on one. It's. If you're thinking that way, then it's a, to me, it's a small, it's small thinking because you don't yet see the potential that if you did have a group of people that are doing the same thing you're doing. They're going to bring way more ideas than just one person. And with that, it's going to be so much more impactful and empowering. So also too, just watching the mindset of, oh, I just have to have one on one, I highly recommend not doing that because you're actually limiting yourself with that and you do want to group because it's going to bring you more eyeballs, more mindset shifts. It's just so impactful and they're going to bring you all the support that you need. So, yeah, if there's a difference between having a mentor and not, this is a question I got. There's a massive, massive difference between having a mentor and not. I didn't have a mentor, I would never be where I'm at. I would continue to not be where I'm at. I would be so tired, I would have probably given up. To be honest. I just couldn't say enough about mentorship. Clearly, I'm a strong believer in it myself because I've invested so much money year after year in it. But I truly believe it is the number one thing that makes both my companies go is mentorship and having guidance and a roadmap of what needs to be done next. And it takes down the stress, takes down the overwhelm, and it just brings clarity. And that's what a mentor should do so he can bring you support. So hopefully this is helpful for those that are wondering, should I do a mentor? Should I not mentor all the way?

Are you ready to live the life of your dreams? If so, make sure you book a call with me so that we can help solve one problem. Thanks so much for listening. Please, like subscribe and comment below so that we can continue to make more content and give you the best of the best.