01 Apr How Mentors and Coaches Can ‘Collapse Time’ for You
By Andrew Campbell, Specialist Business Advisor
The number one benefit of engaging a coach or a mentor is that they fast track you. They take you from where you are now, to where you want to be – much faster than you can do on your own.
We all have a personal and business vision of who we are and where we want to be, but getting there on our own, with all life’s distractions, commitments, psychological baggage, perceived limitations and roadblocks, can drop our momentum from 110 to 40 – or in some cases – to a complete stop. That’s why we need a good coach.
But not just any coach or mentor, but one who has been in your shoes before, and then upsized. For a good coach to be a good fit for you, they must have had actual experience in what you want to achieve, and they must have done what you want before, in their own lives. This doesn’t mean they have run exactly the same business, but they need to have faced the same challenges, grown, achieved and come through the other side. Basically, they know how to ask the right questions of you, and the right solutions and ideas to share, and by doing so, they collapse the time it takes you to achieve the same goals.
Imagine you’ve just heard a family member is bringing over their new vegan, gluten-free partner for dinner in 50 minutes. You dash to the shops because all you have at your place is meat and wheat. You start trolling the aisles but not really knowing what to look for or where it is, time starts ticking. Twenty minutes tick by, and finally you twig, ‘just ask someone’. You see a tall guy down the aisle, who obviously works for the supermarket, because he has a name badge and a uniform. You ask him where the GF and vegan foods are and he looks at your kindly, “hmmm…are they egg intolerant too? Because there’s this great product over in fridge three”. This supermarket mentor just gave you the info you needed to collapse the time to reach your goals.
The average millionaire or successful person has had on average at least 7 coaches or mentors in their lives. These coaches or mentors may have been friends, relatives and work colleagues offering free support friendship or advice, or they might have been paid coaching and mentoring professionals. In the end, your
NETWORK = Your NET WORTH.
All good mentors and coaches realise the value of time to a business, because we can’t make more of it and therefore can’t afford to waste it. This is the value a mentor and/or coach can deliver and by collapsing time and allowing you to reach your goals much faster, the mentor is worth their weight in gold.
If you are looking to engage a mentor or coach, friends and colleagues will have incredible value to you, even though they have no cost. Why? Because there is nothing more satisfying for another human being than to see how they have made an impact on someone else’s life.
Additionally, paying for a good mentor is a next-level strategy as:
- They’ll tell it to you straight, they don’t need to protect your feelings or relationship.
- It commits you and the mentor to take the coaching seriously, and bring your best game to the table, every time that you meet.
- It means someone is in your corner and will keep you accountable. By being accountable, it creates discipline and routines that help you fast track your goals.
To sum up, I’ve benefited from both personal and paid mentors in my life for vastly different reasons, from learning from their mistakes so I could avoid them to being motivated to achieve more than I ever thought possible. I’m proud to be a mentor now, to offer others the same opportunities.
A mentor is the time machine we all need, the fast forward button we press for success!
Andrew Campbell
Specialist Business Advisor – Northern NSW
M 0409 610 637
T 02 6297 3121
A Port Macquarie NSW 2444
This article was inspired by Rob Dial, the Mindset Mentor.