Throughout my journey as an entrepreneur, I have done what I call selective mentoring. It basically involves finding someone who is doing what you want to do and copying them. In some cases, it simply involves watching and learning from someone without them knowing they are mentoring you.
In other cases, it's where you ask them to be a business mentor. You would be surprised how many people you want to emulate are willing to help you. The only proviso is that the people you ask to mentor you are not going to stay with you if you are all talk.
The key to getting the most out of mentoring relationships is to get out of your own head. Your mentors will know more than you, so it can cause you to feel overwhelmed and insecure. If you don't have a reaction like, "I am in over my head," they would not be a mentor. Often times, when your mentor teaches you a hard lesson, you will feel like a complete idiot. These are not times to start trying to justify your existence. These are times to keep your mouth shut and listen.
Let me introduce you to Scott one of my most important mentors. Scott is one of the people I have had the pleasure of getting to know and one of the people I admire the most. He is a remarkable man and a great entrepreneur. I am forever grateful for the lesson I learned from him. Most of which I am sure he did not realize he taught me because I did not ask him to be a mentor.
I would like to share some of the lessons I learned from Scott so you might be inspired and your entrepreneurial journey will be faster and more successful.
When I met Scott, I had sold American Way Car Wash and my law practice to start Natural Gas Turbine Technologies. My family and I had just moved from Mankato, Minnesota, to Prior Lake, Minnesota.
I had secured a grant from the local gas company to build a generator that used only the flow of natural gas to generate electricity. The gas company had a city gate station, which was landlocked by highways and had no electric power running to it. A city gate station is a facility where gas pressure from a gas pipeline is dropped, and the gas is distributed to the city. Getting power from a power line was going to be very expensive. They saw my turbine generator as the solution.
I was looking for a machine shop to machine a prototype. Scott owned a one-man machine shop near our house in Prior Lake, so I stopped by. At first, he turned me down flat. I was kind of surprised. Here was this guy in this little machine shop turning down work. What I did not know at the time was his business model was to find and do work that would lead to more work. Prototypes did not fit his model.
I was getting turned down by every machine shop I approached. So, I started hounding the piss out of Scott. I would drop in unannounced and keep asking him to do it. Finally, I literally begged him to do it, and thankfully, he took it on. Because I was making a nuisance of myself by stopping into his shop, I got to spend some time with Scott. He had a lot of great stories to tell, and he was sarcastically funny. No irony got past him. He struck me as someone who was going to get to where he was going no matter what, and I was not wrong.
At the time, he was starting a new business, which he later sold for north of 20 million dollars - not bad for a guy beginning as a one-person machine shop. I saw a good opportunity to earn some money while I was going through the development process of my generator. We made a deal. I would be paid a commission on sales of his new products, and I could work in his machine shop to earn ready cash. The way it went, I worked pounding the phones in the morning, and in the afternoon and early evening, I would work in the shop. It was long hours, but nothing compared to the hours Scott was putting in. I really enjoyed it, and Scott and I became good friends.
Scott was a machine. He started every day at 9:00 AM and went to 11:00 PM every day, seven days a week. I had never met anyone who worked as hard as Scott did. He worked filling orders for the customers of the machine shop and building the new business. The only time he took off was to go drag racing, an activity he did with the same intensity as he did his business.
Scott was not one to chase shiny objects. He did not have time for most people. And social events were not his thing. He knew exactly what he intended to accomplish, and that was it. Even small things were out of his focus. He never seemed to spend time on things that did not, in the end, contribute to achieving his goals. His ability to concentrate his energy and focus was amazing.
It was the darnedest thing. I would be working either selling or in the shop, and he would say, "Hay Neil, come and take a look at this." And as if it came out of the blue, he would show me a machine he had designed and built for his new business. He never talked to me, or anyone else as far as I know, about what he was going to do. Or what he was doing. He just seemed to be moving around the shop and office doing something. And seemingly out of nowhere, there it was, something new or innovative.
This applied to almost everything. Scott was always doing stuff, buying equipment, building a building. It did not matter. He kept it to himself. The only time you found out what he was up to was when he revealed what had already accomplished. I don't know if he consciously knew what he was doing. I did not really appreciate it until I saw others dissipating their creative energy by talking about what they were going to do or what they were doing. But I did realize its importance and how powerful it is to only let your ideas be express through taking action.
Ideas are always seeking expression. If the only way you allow yourself to express them is by taking action, you are far more likely to take the action required to accomplish your goal. I have met so many people who just talk. All they are doing is dissipating their creative energy. As far as I can tell, the only way ideas ever got out of Scott's mind was through action.
There was never an occasion where I witnessed Scott second-guess himself or doubt himself. I cannot tell you about his decision-making process. I know he sought counsel when it was essential and outside his area of expertise.
But his decisions were his own. This goes along with Lesson 3—don't dissipate your energy. He would make a decision, and that was that. I have no doubt he has made a few mistakes along the way, but he never talked about them either. Scott trusted his own judgment—in spades.
Obviously, out of necessity, when Scott was a one-man machine shop, he wore many hats. Scott is a brilliant, self-taught manufacturing engineer. He would tell you this is his greatest strength.
As his company grew, he stuck primarily to designing and building machines. What he did was hire people to fill the roles he did not believe were where he could have the greatest impact. However, Scott knew his business. You could ask him about marketing or sales or almost anything happening in his company, and he could tell you in some detail what was going on.
Biting and chewing is how Scott described his strategy to manage risk. Behind this philosophy is the understanding that being and staying in the game is key to ultimate success in business.
If you risk it all and end up broke and looking for a job, you risk not being able to take advantage of another opportunity when it comes along.
"Biting" represents putting money at risk to take advantage of an opportunity but not so much that, if the opportunity does not pan out, you are out of business.
You never want to risk so much that you cannot fall back to where you were and keep going.
"Chewing" represents working your business where it is to fill the coffers. Chewing might be when the opportunity you went after starts to pay, and you work it, or it might be when you have to fall back. Either way, it is where you capitalize on what is available to generate a profit.
It is a strategy that will keep you in the game.
I have had a lot of great mentors. I could not have accomplished what I have without my mentors.
Sometimes your mentor will teach you hard lessons. But hard lessons can help you avoid making costly mistakes.
If there are things you need to learn to move forward in your entrepreneurial journey, find a mentor who has done what you want to do and copy them. If you are just starting out, check out my Guide, How To Start And Finance A Business, Even If You Don't Have Any Money. It will put you miles ahead when you start your own business.
How to Become an Entrepreneur
https://bizstartupmentor.com/how-to-become-an-entrepreneur/
Find a Mentor for Your Business" (SCORE)
Link: https://www.score.org/find-mentor
The Importance of Mentorship for Entrepreneurs" (Forbes)
Link: https://www.forbes.com
© 2024 Biz Startup Mentor
You information is safe with me. I will not share it with anyone.