Evaluating good mentors

Plenty of people have achieved success in a few areas of life at the expense of other aspects of their lives. You are looking for a mentor who seems to have achieved a healthy balance. As you are evaluating and looking for role models and mentors, ask the following questions:

• Do they have the relationships that I would desire?
• How is their closeness with their kids?
• How is their marriage?
• Do they speak with honor and respect toward their spouse?
• Do they have friends — true friends?
• Are they happy in life?
• Are the people around them happy?
• How is their health?
• Is their weight in control?
• If they have health issues, were they caused by unavoidable circumstances or neglect?
• Do they have a regular exercise routine?
• How is their mental and emotional health?
• How is their spiritual wellbeing?
• Are they clear in their beliefs?
• Does their spirituality bring them joy?
• Do they equate success to their spiritual pursuits?
• How are their finances?
• Do they have the lifestyle you aspire to?
• Are they stressed out by money and bills?
• Are they saving for retirement and their kids’ college education?

Believe it or not, there are people who have it all together in just about every aspect of life. These are the people you need to be watching and learning from. They have balanced all the distractions and temptations to achieve success, and they aren't robbing Peter to pay Paul. They aren't, for example, sacrificing the health of their personal relationships in the pursuit of wealth.

No one is perfect

Early in my business career, I found a mentor to model my life after. I was in my mid-twenties, so I was not well rounded as a person. My goal was to achieve wealth because I didn’t have it. I figured if I learned how to become wealthy, my other challenges in life would be solved as well. Don’t get me wrong, wealth is important. You are more likely to feel satisfied with life and feel lower levels of stress when you have enough money.

This mentor I chose to model had money. He had a high income and a grand lifestyle that included beautiful homes, luxury cars, fine dining, and resort vacations. He had achieved stature in his field and was considered an expert. So I was captivated and drawn in. I decided to follow his example because I wanted what he had in life: wealth and status.

So he took me under his wing, and I started implementing in my life what he told me. But I started to notice a few areas of his life that I didn’t want to model. He went through a divorce. Now I realize that divorce is part of life and society, so I'm not making any judgments. But this divorce happened to be his fourth, and he has since had number five. I began to realize that while my mentor knew how to generate income, he certainly didn’t have marriage figured out.

He later became estranged from most of his kids, which also caused me to raise an eyebrow. In terms of wealth, on a scale of 1 to 10, he was an obvious 10. But in the father and husband department, his score was much lower. I share this with you because, especially if you are young in your 20s or 30s like I was, you mostly define success in financial terms.

You may need multiple mentors and models

In determining a model or mentor for your life, a category or compartmentalization approach might work better. So if you accept that everyone has flaws, rather than looking for just one model or mentor, look for several:

• Someone to mentor you on wealth
• Someone else who has outstanding relationships
• Someone who has vibrant health and vitality

So the best course could be to accurately observe the pluses and the minuses of multiple mentors.

Every person in your life can teach you something on your journey to greater success. In fact, I would contend that everyone occupies a place in one of two categories:

• Examples: These people are clearly successful, so do what they do. If you follow their formula or recipe, you will likely achieve the level of success they have achieved.
• Warnings: These people have made obvious mistakes. Don’t do what they've done. If you take the actions they've taken, you will encounter the same problems and challenges that they have to deal with.

The categories are clear. So ask yourself this: In which category will my life be placed when others evaluate me? I personally want to avoid the warning column in my life. You create a legacy created in either column you occupy. Your children, friends, and acquaintances are watching to see where you end up.

If you follow, you get it all

Success leaves clues. Success follows the law of cause and effect. The law of cause and effect states that certain causes create certain effects. If I make time for my kids, Annabelle and Wesley, focus on being interested and engaged in what’s important to them, if I spend time with them and am 100-percent present in that time, the effect will be a successful relationship and being a successful parent. It doesn’t guarantee that we won’t encounter challenges or rough patches or even that I will be able to navigate them away from trouble, difficulty, and hurt. My efforts won’t erase all errors they might make. The best parents still have kids who make poor choices. What it will mean to Wesley and Annabelle is that our relationship is healthy, and they will know confidently that they are valuable and loved.

Being able to objectively review success is a benefit. Evaluate a mentor’s whole life, not just the one that attracted you in the first place. Realize if you follow the pattern, pathway, or model, you most likely reap all of what they have sown.

Finding the right recipe for you

What is it that you want? What skills do you need to acquire to achieve your goals? What changes in your attitude must you take on? What new habits and disciplines must you add? What type of income and lifestyle do you desire? Can you accomplish your goals in your present field? Can you achieve success with your present grades? Are you playing at your all-out effort level?

These are some of the questions you need to ask yourself to arrive at your recipe. In addition to my book, I would point you to other resources that will help you find your recipe:

• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. This book is the foundation, besides the Bible, of the motivational success industry. It’s rare for a highly accomplished, successful person to have not read this book.
• The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason. This small but powerful book packs a large amount of financial wisdom in an evening of reading. If your desire is financial independence some time in life, you can’t miss this book in refining your financial success recipe.

Success is attracted by the person you become. It’s not the million dollars that makes the millionaire. The money is actually the least valuable part of the equation. That might seem crazy to some, but hear me out. The million dollars in merely the result of newly acquired, habits, skills, abilities, or strategies. The real value, or success, is what you had to become to attract the million dollars. If you lost the money, you can remain confident that you can create it again. You did it the first time, right? You will be a changed person from the work and experience you gained when earning your first million.

Here is my bold guarantee: If you will change, then everything will change for you. Don’t be looking for circumstances to change, and by circumstances, I mean things like the economy, or taxes, or the government, or your relationships. Those will all likely be the same more or less your whole life. Yes, there will be times of economic growth and economic contraction, but you don’t control that. What you control is you and your growth in your skills, thinking, attitude, and value in the marketplace. You control what you learn and how fast you learn. You control the books you read, new skills you develop, and disciplines you implement.

What new skills do you need to acquire? What change in attitude must you embrace? What new actions must you implement in your daily life? Your answers to these questions will change who you become so that you better attract what you desire. It’s who you want and need to become that will be the right recipe of success.

Determining the ingredients you are missing

We all lack skills, habits, and tools that are required to increase our success. I believe that most of us, if we are willing to look honestly at ourselves in the mirror, can see our own flaws; we know what we are lacking. Most of us just choose not to go to that level of self-analysis or introspection. I realize it takes being uncomfortable.

Let’s take a dive into our health area of life. We know that we eat too much, consume the wrong combination of foods, and exercise too little. We only have to look in that full-length mirror and see the excuses placed around our midsection or hips. And if you honestly have no clue of what you are lacking in life, then ask a trusted friend. Ask, “Why do you think I am not as successful as I would like? What changes would you suggest that I make in my attitude, character, or actions and activities?” If you can find a mentor, ask him or her. For the vast majority of us, we know the ingredients we are missing from our success recipe if we simply look in the mirror of our life.

Another key factor of success is to narrow down what are most important of all the actions and activities you must do. My belief and experience is that success is not contained in doing a few things with excellence, or even at a world-class level. Early in the chapter, I introduced the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule. Allow me to use it as an illustration again:

Eighty percent of the success you achieve in a given pursuit will be due to executing well a half-dozen things.

If you want to increase your value and earnings in your chosen career, for example, there will be about a half-dozen things you must do with passion, intensity, and consistency to increase your value and earnings. You have to determine those half-dozen things yourself, but I will share what a half-dozen might look like:

1. Arrive 30 minutes early and stay an additional 15–30 minutes each day to increase output.
2. Read at least 30 minutes per day something related to your career to increase your skill.
3. Ask your boss once per week, “Is there anything that I can help with or take off your plate?” And then get it done for him or her.
4. Talk with your boss once per month about any training you could take or skills you need to help you advance or be more valuable.
5. Partake in regular physical activity (you know, exercise) for 60 minutes per day, 4 days per week.

If you did those five with consistency, passion, and energy, I guarantee that you would increase your income and value at your work.

You will notice that I stopped at five, and that's because half-dozen is a flexible term. It could be only five, a full six, or maybe seven, but it shouldn't be more than seven because then you have too many pans in the fire. What you are trying to create is a priority system so that you focus on the most important tasks to create the biggest impact. You could use this method effectively in your career, your relationships, your business, or your finances. Any improvement toward your success can be used in creating your key half dozen. You will notice that my examples are specific and measurable: Each week I ask my boss; every day I read for 30 minutes. You want to craft your recipe in a manner that allows you to say for certain you did that action today, or this week, or whenever the frequency needs to be. Don’t give yourself an out by being vague.

Use a reminders app on your smartphone to create a checklist for your regular activities. You can attach an alarm to some activities if needed, and you can set up the reminders to repeat on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. As you complete the tasks in your reminders list, check them off.

Expecting the recipe to be delicious

Most successful cooks and chefs start with a recipe. As they perfect their dish or meal, they make adjustments to enhance the flavor or make the meal healthier. Even as they experiment with the ratios of ingredients, one thing is certain: They expect what they are making to be tasty and delicious.

The same is true as you experiment with your formula or recipe for success. You have to expect, as you make changes and adjustments, that what you are striving for will be accomplished and you will become more successful in whatever your objective is at the time. Part of being successful is having a positive attitude of expecting success. Once you begin to achieve a goal, don’t let the negative creep into your mind. Focus on remaining positive through observing other challenges you have previously overcome. You might try writing or saying affirmations like, “I will shed 25 pounds of weight in less than six months from today.” Or, “I will have a net worth of a million dollars in less than ten years from today.”

People who remain positive in challenging times and circumstances weather the trials better. In fact, they seize those times to create a grand future and the achievement of their goals.

In 2008, when the economy was challenging, to say the least, when the banks were failing, and the overall economy was grinding to a halt, my businesses and income were trending much lower than normal. I was not a Pollyanna in believing that only positive thinking was going to turn around my companies’ lower sales numbers. But I was certain that we would weather the current economic malaise. I expected to be one of the many businesses that actually thrived.

In fact, as 2008 closed out and the negative trends continued into 2009, I was more confident than ever that there would be actual opportunity in this adversity. First, I stayed positive. I found a number of new opportunities created by the economic crisis, and the vast foreclosure crisis had created a rare opportunity to create wealth. So I needed to change my recipe. I cut the overhead in my companies, and that meant trimming budgets, overhead, and even staff. Anything that was not creating revenue or not increasing our customers’ experience was gone. I even cut out what we thought had been sacred cows in the business. I learned that sacred cows make the best hamburgers.

We looked for new problems that the economic change had created in our core market niches in sales, real estate sales training, and education. We embraced new delivery systems for our training and coaching, like live virtual classrooms. We brought our brand of success to the marketplace at lower costs so that we could appeal to a broader customer base.

I recognized key investment opportunities in bank-owned and short-sale real estate investments. That was the biggest game changer of all. In Chapter 14, I cover in depth how I approached that windfall. That change led to multiple millions of dollars in wealth because I was willing to stay positive, expected success, and seized new opportunities that presented themselves.