The Surprising Truth About Mentors And Why I've Been Mentored Since 2014

So today I want to talk about mentorship and a couple interesting things about mentorship that I want to be able to share. One thing that I really want to point out is that mentorship is not about power dynamics. And that might seem obvious, but let me explain. What I mean is that sometimes when we're thinking about getting a mentor or being mentored, we're thinking, thinking we put that person up on a pedestal that they're better than us or they're more accomplished than us, or that they have things figured out that we don't have figured out. And that is true. And that they are more accomplished and that they have things figured out, but it's not true that they're better than us. Specifically, with mentorship, you're looking for somebody who's got very deep knowledge in an area where you don't and who, where they've been to a place where you haven't gone and where you want to go. And so, yeah, they are maybe better than you at a certain thing or in a certain area, and that's why you're seeking mentorship. But it doesn't mean that they're a better human being than you or a better person than you or anything like that. And I know that may sound kind of obvious, but I do see people who sometimes feel like they have to be self deprecating if they're going to get mentor or they think somebody would not want to mentor them because that person is so far ahead of them, something like that. And that's just not the case. But mentorship is extremely valuable because if you can work with somebody who has been where you want to go, they can help you avoid so many of the pitfalls that you're going to end up experiencing if you try to go it alone. And again, that may, and again, that may seem obvious, but we want to make that clear. Because if I see it all the time, honestly, I see people who are trying to do it alone and they aren't listening to advice and they aren't listening to wisdom and it's just a very stupid thing like why reinvent the wheel? And that's a philosophy that I take and apply to everything. So if I'm writing sales copy, and I know that another piece of sales copy has successfully worked in the same vertical where I'm writing this copy, I'm going to look at that successful copy and I'm not going to steal it, but I'm going to see what I like about it and what I think has made it successful. And I'M going to then take it and emulate aspects of it in what I'm writing. So same thing if I'm building a sales funnel or an e commerce website or really doing anything else, even with my content marketing, so to speak. And I have, I've hired some people to help me with that. And so I have a bit of an advantage. But I'm looking at what are people who I emulate doing, right? What is. I like Neil Patel a lot. What does Neil Patel do? And in fact, I joined Neil Patel's mastermind recently because I think he's really good at SEO and content marketing and building like a brand around himself. And then that leads to more lucrative opportunities. And so I was like, man, if I can pay money to have more access and time with Neil, then I should do that. And it's not always about money. You can get people to mentor you without paying them. If you have some money, it does help. That's one of the reasons why I am such a big advocate of masterminds. Because in a mastermind, yes, you're paying to be in it, but. But so are a bunch of other people. And a lot of those people will have done things that you want to do. And so it's not just about the person running the mastermind, but it's about the entire community and being able to leverage the information or the knowledge of the crowd and then have that benefit. So as an example, to get more specific, even with my health offer, one of the health offers that I'm running right now with my partner Cody, that is doing pretty well and we're making several hundred sales a day and I think we can scale that to an even higher number. I'm acting in some capacities as a mentor to Cody, but again, it's not a power dynamic. Cody is one of my best friends and he has all kinds of skills that I don't have. So we have a complimentary skill set and there's places where he can frankly mentor me. But I'm able to mentor him in this because I have taken health supplement offers and sales funnels and gotten them up to the nine figure level. And Cody to this point has not. He's gotten things to the eight figure level and that's awesome. But a lot changes between 10 million and 100 million. Just like a lot changes between 100 million and a billion. Right. And so because I have this experience, I'm able to help guide what we're doing right now. So whether that's the call center, because we have a Call center. But I realized we started doing a high sales volume pretty quickly, and so the call center probably isn't prepared for that, which makes sense. I own a call center, so I know this, right? So if. Imagine the call center has been basically used to the same amount of sales volume, the same amount of calls, the same amount of emails every day for the last two years. Suddenly there's a new product and a new sales funnel, and it's doing two times or three times or four times all that other volume combined. It's just logical that the call center is going to struggle. And Cody's not using my call center for basically because he had tested it two years ago before we were very dialed in, and we didn't do that much better than his call center. So he didn't make the switch. And while of course, I would have preferred to have my friend using my call center at the time, it wasn't something I wanted to fight about. And even now, the point when I bring this up to Cody about the call center, which I have done, is not to try and get him to switch to my call center, because it doesn't matter to me. The profits are gonna be had no matter what we do. But I'm bringing it up because, again, I know from having my own call center that when a client suddenly starts to increase their volume of calls and emails at a very large rate very quickly, it can cause problems. So for his call center, I can feel pretty confident in saying that probably they don't have enough agents to answer the phones, enough people to answer emails. They're kind of bombarded. So what are they going to do? Well, they're going to try to hire people to pick up speed. Not pick up speed, to pick up slack. And that's great, except for it takes time to hire those people, or they may rush and hire the wrong people. And then those new people need to get trained. And if they're really rushed because they're in a panic, they're not going to train those people particularly well, which means they're not going to have great interactions with people who are calling in. And the result of all that can be people not feeling good about the brand, increasing the rate of refunds, having people calling their bank and charging back to their credit cards. If they don't think that they don't trust the company, a lot of negative things can happen. But through my experience, I was able to say, hey, that's probably what's happening right now, because it just makes sense. And sure enough, Jeff, from our team who's handling operations decided to start doing test calls to the call center. And what happens? Well, it rings for three to four minutes or he gets put on hold for three to four minutes and it goes to voicemail. So they're not answering calls. And that's a problem, but we'll get it fixed. But it may sound obvious, but if I didn't have that experience, having scaled traffic and scaled sales volume in the past or owned my own call center, I may not have thought, oh, I bet the call center could be struggling. It would have only come to my attention after a fire happened. Right? We noticed that our refund rate was really high. Our customers were emailing and complaining or whatever. And then we looked into it and found out and got pissed. And this is a huge problem. But because of my experience, I was able to have the foresight here to help guide us on that. And there's so many other examples like that, whether it's inventory management, because guess what, we were close to running out of inventory, but because of experience, it was like, hey, we're going to run out of inventory at this volume. We need to figure that out now. And we did that and we solved that problem so we don't have to stop scaling traffic and increasing sales. And if we did, that could be a big problem because it kills our momentum. And momentum is so crucial when you're getting traction for something like this. So those are a few examples. But I've had mentors really since 2014 is really when I've started having mentors and taking it seriously. And my life has fundamentally improved for the better since that happened. A lot of it was from being in Masterminds, which is one of the reasons that I love Masterminds, that I invest in Masterminds and continue, we'll continue to do that. But also it's just relationships with individuals as well. And even for me. So it doesn't stop. Even though I'm a mentor to Cody in this one specific domain. It's not like now I've figured it all out and I mentioned in an email I wrote to my list this morning that I may end up taking a small equity stake in a startup company that I think is really cool business, really cool concept, and that I think could have a billion dollar valuation in five years from now. And I'd be helping with strategy, architecting that customer journey, acquisition of the customers, all these sorts of things. And on a more macro level, not implementing all of those things, but setting the strategy and helping to guide it. And that's really exciting to me. But guess what? Why? I've taken something to 100 million, but I've never taken something to a billion. So what am I going to do? Well, I'm going to look out for mentors. I've got some friends, people I know, and I'm very through masterminds and a few personal relationships, but mostly through masterminds where I know people who have taken companies to a billion dollars or more. So if I do take this advisory role with this new company, as we start to scale, as we start to get to the 100 million valuation even right, I'm going to be reaching out to them and asking what do I need to know? What are the things I should be looking out for? What's going to break between 100 million and a billion? And that's such a vital thing for me to ask and to get their experience and their wisdom and their eyes on things. And so mentorship never ends. I mean, who knows where my entrepreneurial future will lead? But there's a possibility, there's a road where I believe I could create a $10 billion company, right, or 100 billion dollar company. But as you do that, different mentors will be appropriate for those things. Because even the guys who got from 100 million to a billion, which is amazing, aren't the same guys who get from A billion to 10 or from 10 to 20 and so forth, you know, all the way up to 100 billion and then from 100 billion to a trillion, like Apple or Microsoft or Google, it's just Amazon, it's just a different ballgame. So you need different mentors at different phases in your life and for different things. And I just want to really harp on that because I know for me it's so valuable. I'm so glad that I have things that I can offer mentorship to other people through my copywriting mastermind, through business ventures, through my email list, my communications through this podcast. These are ways I'm trying to mentor people in a way. When I talk about business or my failures or my victories or whatever it may be. And I'm really thankful that I can do that. But I need mentors too. And so it's a never ending process. It's a really important process. And going back to my original point, I just want to re emphasize that it's not about having to feel like you don't need to feel like inferior or bad about yourself or, or anything like that when you have a mentor. It's just that, you know, you're smart enough to know what you don't know, and you've helped to fill in those knowledge gaps by finding the right people. And we can do that when we build teams by hiring the right people in an organization. If we're in charge of that organization or in charge of a department, we can also do that just through relationships and mentorship and things like that. So that's it for today. Just really want to stress the value of mentorship, and thanks for your time.