Step

10

Don’t have a mentor or be a mentor

Besides seeking out Mastermind Alliances, successful people also identify one or two individuals who can become their personal mentors. Someone perhaps, but not always, in the same field as them. Someone, often but not always, older and more experienced. Someone who is already achieving the results they’d like to enjoy. To identify the right person they ask themselves questions based on the goals they are trying to achieve. Questions like: “What resources will I need?” “What do I have now?” “Do I know or can I find anyone who has ever done this before?”

They then search out the best person to help. They encourage themselves with this startling fact: you are only, at the most, six people away from meeting anyone on the planet! That’s right, as amazing as it seems, you’re only six moves from being able to pick the brains of anyone you care to mention, famous and not so famous. This is based on what’s called ‘six degrees of separation’. Scientists discovered, originally by studying the action of thousands of ball bearings, that one individual ball bearing could connect with any other in six moves or less. They then wondered if the same principle could be applied to human relationships (well, that’s scientists for you). They found that it could. For example, I know someone who is friends with Barack Obama. So if you knew me, you’d only be two people away from Obama. Now, of course, you’d have to know the right six people. But if you think about the power of social media, how hard can it be to get personal advice from anyone on earth?

“If you think about the power of social media, how hard can it be to get personal advice from anyone on earth?”

Well, the answer is quite hard, if not impossible, if you approach it from just selfishly thinking about what’s in it for you. So that’s what you should do. If you just approach them with your begging bowl, whining that you would really appreciate their help, giving no thought to what’s in it for them, that should ensure they’ll never, ever speak to you again. That’s if they even answered your unsolicited direct message in the first place. These are busy people, so the more you can waste their valuable time the better. You must never ask “How can I deserve their support?”

Anyway, there are zero benefits to being a mentor, aren’t there? I’m currently mentoring a couple of people who want to be professional public speakers. I’ve lost count of the times they’ve asked me very detailed questions about my strategies for getting on in this business. It’s strange because I often tell them to do certain things, then realise I’ve stopped doing those things myself and must get back to doing them. Or they’ll discover something incredible that I don’t do, perhaps from talking to another mentor, and tell me all about it. How annoying is that?