The power of transformative information for a mentee
The feeling you get when delivering an AHA moment to someone is memorable and shareable.
There is nothing in this world that excited and energizes me more than conveying practical information to someone who gets it, who deploys it, and who shows it in their success in making it work.
When you give someone practical knowledge which they didn’t see before, or maybe you show them a different perspective of the outcome, their expression is telling. Their mouth drops, pupils dilate and begin to look at you like you are the messiah.
That’s how I feel when I am around my mentors and even people who I don’t know, who deliver great content and shed new light and opportunity onto new theory’s and observations.
It’s those moments, will call them transformative moments, it’s not just about information being passed, but it is information that will be applied by the recipient.
I want to give you a little bit of a background to build the context on which my thesis is based on.
I volunteer for a program with an organization who lends money to young start-ups and entrepreneurs. There I have a role as a mentor to an individual who was granted a loan for his retail start-up business.
We come from two different backgrounds, not just in our ethnicity and experience but also in our business practices. I come from the service based industry and he is at the retail end.
On a side note, I have been thinking a lot about the retail business and I am thinking about penetrating it through the custom design furniture industry, more on that later.
Having no prior experience on the retail end I understand business and so does my mentee. Our relationship is formal and structured. But our conversations are seamless and fluid.
When I give him practical wisdom that I apply in my business and that he never thought off applying in his, his response is what keeps me wanting to deliver more.
Just a quick disclaimer, I am not getting paid to provide mentorship for him, I do it out of my own time, why? Because of what I get out of it.
When I see that I have genuinely helped someone, that feeling is overwhelming. It makes me feel good, it raises my self-esteem, it makes me understand that what I know and share is something of value to both him and me.
And it makes me rethink what I know by placing more value on it.
There are no secrets in business.
It’s quite practical, figure out your strategy go and implement it.
Fail, learn, adapt and try again until you have a successful model. Or take the easier route and learn from other people’s mistakes.
Although more importantly, when you succeed, you must know why and how you succeeded, and repeat.
I know it may seem counter-productivity to sit and talk for an hour, however, the feedback that is generated in our talks is something of value and increases productivity even though neither of us is actually doing business, generating sales or leads.
Whatever it is you do for your business, whether it’s strategizing (considering that you will actually go out and do what you are planning), stocking, accounting, bookkeeping, sales, marketing, or research and development, it all matters.
Everything you do for your business or anything that you work on your business is time well spent.
Of course, there are tasks you will be better at, and this is where outsourcing becomes an integral part of your business.
“Counsel is when someone is trying to help you figure out what you think. Advice is someone who’s telling you what to think.” Designing Your Life by Bill Burnette and Dave Evans
What I write in my posts, and the counsel I give to my mentor, I only speak of my experience and my network.
I wouldn’t dare to give someone advice of which I haven’t implemented myself, I don’t consider myself a guru, self-help coach or anything in between. I consider myself someone who is learning and evolving and sharing that experience to enhance and promote other people’s success in life.
You should think about this as well. Is it advice that you are giving or counsel? How is it being received?
Thank you for reading this post. I am thankful that I enrolled in a program where I can help others simply with the experience that I have gained myself, and thus increasing its potency by repeating it and seeing the value others get from it.
Originally published at karasingroup.com on February 13, 2017.
