How Many "mentors" Is Enough?

One of my favorite things to do on a stormy afternoon is read

. I actually can get lost in a marketing book! I know weird, right? Well it's because I like to maintain that "learner's mind" where I can always discover something to use or share with my students and clients. By the way, I do this with my favorite fiction books as well! If it's good, I want to share that pleasure as well.

It all stems from my childhood and watching my Dad come home from a Saturday morning venture to the Market Street Terminal in Philadelphia, similar to an outdoor market, where he would pick up paperbacks for 10-25 cents because they were missing a cover. He would just love getting a hot cup of tea and relaxing with a fresh book. He was an avid reader and enjoyed a variety of books, fiction and non-fiction. And I watched the joy of learning in his face as a child. So it's no wonder that I love to read, so much so that I should have been able to keep Borders Bookstores open with my own purchases! Smile

With that as a backdrop, my desire to read and learn from variety of sources could have caused information overload, except that there is another piece to the puzzle that helps. I love to connect the dots! If you're a lover of mysteries, like me, you probably do the same. You'll watch or read something and you're trying to figure out "who dunnit" from the very beginning. And that's a talent you want to leverage as an entrepreneur. Meaning, that you want to know who has "done it" and been successful at it so that you can learn "the how" from them.

One way to do that is by aligning with a mentor. I believe it's critical to have more than one mentor in your life and business. Each can and will give you a perspective that would take longer to gain on your own. Let's face it, you can't possibly have every experience they have and they've learned more between them than you could in your lifetime.

Mentors shorten your learning curve and help you avoid the traps and pitfalls that can befall every business owner. And a "good" mentor is one who WANTS to share what they've learned so that you can avoid their mistakes. They also know the power of learning from other mentors. It's as if they broke the code and then "model" it for you.

While I've been classically trained as a coach, I learn from Internet marketers, corporate consultants, psychologists, metaphysicians, business leaders, mystery writers, teachers and more. I don't limit my circles to just those who "think like me." The advantage to this is when you can leverage success in another industry in your own; it serves to distinguish you from your peers and colleagues. And that is what high-level clients are looking for in a mentor today.

You might ask, "How many mentors is enough?" That depends. It depends on how committed you are to your continual growth, first as a human being and then as a business owner. It depends on how much of an impact you want to make on your clients, market, and industry and of course the world. It depends on whether you want to growor die.

I know. I'm being dramatic for effect.

Suffice it to say, you want to surround yourself with many mentors - live, through books and other sources of learning. Clients, who appreciate working with a mentor who possesses a "broader" set of experiences and knowledge that they can leverage, will quickly seek you out.

by: Chris Makell

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