A good mentor can be your key to success in any new venture – whether it’s launching a new business, building financial stability, or raising a family. So how can you meet your mentor, and start yourself on the path to a better result?

If you don’t have a mentor yet, we’ll help you explore why you need one, and how you can make mentoring work for you!

Admit You Need Help

Many of us are reluctant to ask for help. Whether it’s a product of your upbringing or your personality, you may think that asking for mentorship is admitting weakness.

You’ve got to get over that. Take a look around — the best athletes work with coaches. The best performers have guides. And to be the best entrepreneur you can be, you’ll really need to have at least one strong mentor.

Mentors challenge us, keep us on track, hold us accountable when we’re inclined to give up, and help us see possibilities that we’d otherwise overlook.

Mentoring doesn’t have to be complicated, expensive, or incredibly time-consuming. But it’s a huge piece of your success puzzle.

So — are you convinced? Here are a few things to keep in mind as you start down your mentoring journey.

Expand Your Definition of Mentor

You might think of a mentor as an old & grey source of wisdom, someone who will sit down and talk to you about their own experiences, back in the day. If you’ve adopted this perspective, it can be hard to see why mentoring could be valuable.

Mentors can be found in all parts of your life. Your best mentor might be someone in your business upline who has found great success, someone you want to use as a model for your own business.

But your best mentor could be someone you’ve never met. Perhaps it’s someone you follow online who offers coaching sessions or a guided program to build skills and confidence in an area you know you’ve got some weakness.

Maybe you’ll even find some mentorship in a book – or a collection of books – imparting wisdom, guidance, and taking you through exercises to get you to the next level. (Although we’re huge readers and definitely recommend reading for personal development, one thing a book won’t give you is accountability, so keep this in mind.)

You know yourself, and you know how you learn and change most effectively. Take this into consideration, and pick a mentor that’s right for you.

Do Your Part

Effective mentoring requires action — and the bulk of this action will come from you. After all, your mentor isn’t there to tell you what to do, or to do the work for you — they’re there to help guide and support you.

This means you’ll still be the one doing the work.

You’ll be making the investment — in your own time, and in your behaviors that result from and respond to your mentor’s input.

So, make your time and effort count. Show up and be prepared for any mentoring sessions. Know what you want to talk about — whether it’s a specific problem, a goal, a struggle, or something that’s been on your mind that you need to look at from another perspective. Your mentor will have something great to give — but it’s up to you to lead the discussion. And, you’ve got to listen – with the intent of taking action based on what you hear.

Know When To Stop Listening

Wait — didn’t we just tell you to listen?

Yes – and listening is very important. But it’s also absolutely critical to trust your own instincts, and not become overwhelmed by input from all corners of your life.

We have so many potential sources of suggestions, guidance, and advice in our life- from personal mentors to books and podcasts, not to mention the advice we don’t seek out from well-meaning friends, family members, and connections. All of these sources and giving you information, feedback, and input constantly, seeking to give you the answers you need and help guide you to the solution.

It can lead to analysis paralysis – when you’re so overwhelmed by the options and trying to determine the best one, that you take no action at all.

Ultimately, your mentor is there to guide and support. But you’re the one who knows you best – and you’re the one who will take the actions that lead to the results. So listen, absorb, and reflect – but when the time is right, sit down and just do the work.

Learn By Doing

We’ll leave you with one final question – what happens when someone asks you to be their mentor?

It’s tempting to second guess yourself, especially if you’re still new and building yourself. But it’s been shown time and time again that one of the best ways to improve a skill is to teach it to someone else.

So no matter where you fall on the spectrum of success, or how much trust you have (or don’t have) in your knowledge and expertise, recognize your own value, and what you can contribute. You might just surprise yourself.

Are you connecting with your team — including mentors and those you’re mentoring – with Traktivity? Why not start today?