How Did I Find My Mentors and Coaches?

(Mentors and Coaches are Essential to any Success)

Ever felt stuck in a job, knowing you were meant for more but unsure how to break free? I’ve been there. I’m just a regular guy trying to find purpose and fulfillment in this world and finding the right mentors and coaches was key to transforming my life. These incredible individuals guided me through my toughest moments and helped me unlock my true potential. Here’s how I found them and how you can too.

I’m not an expert, but I want to share my journey in hopes it helps you find mentors and coaches who resonate with you. These connections can make an immeasurable difference in the pursuit of a more purposeful and fulfilling life.

It all started many years ago when I was a server at a restaurant. I eventually hit a wall, feeling that what I was doing wasn’t enough and that I could achieve something greater. Being a server was fun and fulfilling for years, especially as I worked my way up from night shifts to the coveted morning shifts where the real money was. I enjoyed honing my skills and getting better every day, maintaining a cheerful attitude and earning great reviews, even appearing in the local newspaper for community recognition. However, once I reached the morning shift and became a veteran of the restaurant, I hit the limit of my potential in that business, and it sucked. This led to a great deal of frustration that I handled poorly. I got angry when my coworkers didn’t do their best and often fought with them. Looking back, I realize I was being a jerk. It wasn’t until much later, through some brilliant mentors, that I understood why I was acting that way and how terrible my response was. Being in a job with an upper limit on growth was both a blessing and a curse.

Let’s start with how it became a ‘curse’. I became frustrated and angry at life, without understanding why. I later learned that anger is an umbrella emotion, often masking deeper issues. This realization has helped me understand much of my past behavior and make better choices through introspection. This is an important lesson that I plan to write more about in the future. At the time, all I knew was that I was no longer happy at work and had an underlying feeling that I could do more. The problem was, I had no idea what ‘more’ meant or looked like. This marked the beginning of a chapter of both immense pain and growth for me.

This is where the ‘blessing’ part of being in a job with a firm upper limit comes into play. I knew I was capable of more and that I had to do something about it. But what? It turns out, life has a funny way of answering your questions. My journey towards mentorship and coaching began when one of my guests at the restaurant suggested I would be amazing in Real Estate. By this point, I was willing to try anything, so I jumped right in!

Here, I learned some hard lessons about picking mentors and who you should listen to. The world of Real Estate is filled with interesting people. There are many great folks who can be an inspiration, a few who would sell a house with a cracked foundation to unsuspecting buyers just to make a quick buck, and the majority who simply follow the status quo because ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it.’

I’m going to fast forward through the boring parts: I got my license, picked a brokerage, and got started. The important part of this story begins when I actually started working as an agent. Being a ‘Realtor’ is like joining a strangely inclusive yet exclusive club. They let almost anyone in, but if you don’t follow the rules, both spoken and unspoken, you’ll likely struggle to do business. There was also this odd sense of ‘superiority’ that many in Real Estate seem to develop. For example, agents often talk about those who sell their houses themselves (For Sale By Owner) as if they are outrageous morons, even though these people have perfectly valid and rational reasons for doing so. From this ‘club’ is where my first major ‘mentors’ enter the picture.

When you start in Real Estate as an agent, you have to pick a brokerage to work under because of licensing requirements and their ultimate liability for your actions. This is a crucial decision that was pivotal to both my success and failure. I chose an office based on a gut feeling (I need to write a whole article on why that is a terrible idea for me) and their better commission split. Let me preface this by saying, this office was filled with amazing people who genuinely wanted to see me succeed. They even had a mandatory mentorship program that paired every new agent with a veteran agent, giving me a fallback and someone to help with the entire process, especially the rules and regulations. However, I started to get into trouble with too many people talking in my ear. I was trying to learn from everyone: the agents who shared the office space I rented, my brokerage mentor, a major real estate expert who did podcasts and events, the Realtors Association, one guy with a brilliant system for getting listings, and too many others.

This is where the value of carefully choosing the information and influences you accept becomes clear. Back then, I was stuck in the ‘How can I make the most money with the least effort?’ mindset. It took many years before I realized the better mindset is ‘How can I provide the most value? (because the money will come),’ but that’s a story for another time. While trying to make the most money with the least effort, I came across a guy with a brilliant system for getting listings, and he convinced me that this was THE WAY. Here is where everything started to fall apart. I was a brand new agent who had never sold a house, and I was trying to do what everyone else was doing: get people to buy or sell a house no matter what. Combine that with the ‘technically not a rule’ convention of ALWAYS charging a 6% commission — 3% to the buyer’s agent and 3% to the seller’s agent (even if it’s the same person, a whole conflict of interest I won’t go into here) — and I started to run into conflicts with imposter syndrome and my own morals.

In my mind, I knew that as a new agent with no actual experience, I couldn’t provide the same value as an experienced agent who had sold hundreds of houses. So why should I get paid the same? The issue was that it was heavily frowned upon, behind the scenes, to charge less than the ‘standard’ 6%, except in the case of extremely expensive luxury properties. Despite the ‘code of morals and ethics’ stating otherwise, agents would try to avoid showing any house that paid less than the 3% buyer’s commission. I felt that to compete fairly and charge appropriately for my experience, I should charge a 1% listing agent commission instead of the typical 3%, making it 4% overall since we would still be offering 3% to the buyer’s agent. This would have allowed me to stick to my values, provide appropriate value for my experience, and not hamper the sale by offering less than 3% to the buyer’s agents. That didn’t go so well.

My ‘mentor’ from the brokerage, a genuinely good guy, and the broker, an equally great lady, made it clear that while they couldn’t ban me from charging less than the standard, it was not recommended or well accepted in the Real Estate community. This is where I started to experience serious internal strife. Coupled with the implosion of my long-term relationship, it was a recipe for disaster. Long story slightly shorter, I tried to ‘sell’ my listing agent services to several different owners and kept failing miserably due to a clear and obvious lack of confidence. I knew I was selling something I didn’t believe in and had serious doubt about its value compared to what I was charging. This led to a complete breakdown of my entire life.

The breakdown truly began when a guest from my old restaurant reached out, finding out I was no longer there and was now ‘doing real estate.’ He was looking to buy a house in Havasu and wanted me as his agent. I leapt at the chance because it felt like a lifeline in my ocean of turmoil. He was a wealthy businessman with a lot of confidence and charisma, so I was instantly hanging on his every word. We found him a $1.3 million house and started the buying process. I immediately saw an opportunity to work for him outside of real estate and to escape the mental hell I was in, so I jumped on it. This marked the beginning of one of my lowest moments in life, when I violated nearly every value and moral I believed in, but we’ll save that story for another time.

My whole debacle in real estate and afterward demonstrates how detrimental choosing the wrong mentors and influences can be on your life. On the bright side, with every huge adversity we overcome and every failure we survive and learn from, we create opportunities for growth. These experiences can turn into our own form of personal wisdom. I wouldn’t be the person I am today, nor would I have known how to take action on opportunities presented to me later, without this struggle.

It was a few years later when I decided to make a major change in my life and environment. I sold everything, moved 1,200 miles, cut out all distractions, and ended up coming across Craig Ballantyne¹. His incredible positivity and action oriented teaching completely changed how I operated in the world. I remember getting up every morning, taking his Effortless Discipline course, doing the Action Steps, and changing my life and mindset. Shortly afterwards I joined his Effortless Discipline Bootcamp and was coached by two of his amazing coaches, Rusty and Gavin! If I hadn’t been keeping my eyes and ears open to new ideas and opportunities, I wouldn’t have had that amazing experience, nor likely be here writing this today.

Today, after many tough and valuable experiences, I can say that I love my life. I feel fulfilled every day and can’t wait to get to work fulfilling my purpose. I would not be here without my mentors and coaches, and the journey it took to find them. Go out, seek new experiences and conversations, and you’ll eventually find what resonates with you!

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! Now, let’s go over the lessons I learned and how you can apply them.

Lesson 1: Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open to new ideas and information
You have to learn every day in order to grow so don’t close your mind off to all the wonderful new ideas and information in the world! The next lesson is “Be Careful” and I know these seem to contradict, but I’ll clarify: You have to be willing to accept new information, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it blindly.

Lesson 2: Be careful who and what you let into your mind.
This is incredibly important because what influences your thoughts can either make or break you. If you constantly sit in negativity and hear about how awful the world is, you’re going to be pretty miserable. On the other hand, if you are surrounded by uplifting and positive content, it’s hard not to see the world as a wonderful place.

Lesson 3: Never violate your principles or morals, and if your ‘mentor’ pushes you in that direction, you need to politely excuse yourself and RUN away.
You will always regret bending your principles and morals. This doesn’t mean they can’t evolve over time, but if you directly violate them, you will subconsciously know and feel like garbage until you confront what you did, fix it, and resolve to be more firm in the future.

Lesson 4: Avoid mentors who are highly negative and/or regularly (or ever) demean or disparage other people or groups of people.
This ties again into Lesson 2; it is terrible to let those kinds of ideas into your mind. Disparaging and demeaning others does far more to tear ourselves down and destroy us than it does to them. It’s also worth noting that EVERYONE has a reason for doing what they do, and seeking to understand that reason without judgment can change your perspective of the world wildly toward the positive.

Lesson 4: If it’s not mostly positive and uplifting content, it’s basically a cancer on your mind.
Negativity is a mind virus and will quickly and easily eat away at you. Life is hard enough without us poisoning ourselves and raising the difficulty from 10 to 100. There’s no room in a fulfilling life for doom and gloom. Think about this: would you rather hang out with a friend who is like a crushing shadow of despair or a friend who is like sunshine on a cloudy day? I know which one I choose and aspire to be every day.

Lesson 5: Take suggestions from people you trust, but evaluate any new mentor or coach yourself; don’t blindly listen to them.
Every one of us is different; we all have a different path to walk. To quote Bruce Lee: “Research your own experience. Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own.”² Basically, listen with an open mind, learn what is useful to you, and don’t worry about discarding the rest. We can all learn SOMETHING from every other person, but that doesn’t mean we need to accept everything they say.

Here is an (incomplete) list of people I listen to and have been mentored and coached by:

Business and Marketing People:
Craig Ballantyne — He’s amazing for dialing in your routines and cutting out things that don’t help create the life you’re looking for. One of my first actual coaches that I worked directly with was from his organization.
Russell Brunson — He is an expert marketer and an all-around great and positive person. A lot of his content will be about building your business through story and also funnels. I’m in a lot of his courses, groups, and masterminds.
Ed Dale — A hilarious Australian who is one of the modern copywriting geniuses. He is doing a lot of content in the AI space now.
Yara Golden — She is an amazing speaker and specializes in story-selling.

Ways of thinking and mindset:
Trent Shelton — This man is an expert in perspective and wildly changed my own view of the meanings we give to the world!
C.S. Lewis — He may be best known for his fictional writing, but his non-fictional writing has had a profound impact on my life. I recommend “On Living in an Atomic Age” to everyone.
James Clear — Author of “Atomic Habits”, and he has a great newsletter from which I’ve gained some valuable insight.

General / Broader content:
Joe Rogan — He has a wild variety of guests from all walks of life, so you may get some inspiration for who to listen to here as well. Not all of them are good, so be wary.
Noel Deyzel — A wildly uplifting fitness influencer. He does steroids (and talks openly about it), so keep that in mind when comparing his fitness results.
Tony Robbins — A man whose content is super uplifting, positive, and focused on life-changing.

I am eternally grateful to all the amazing people in the world who choose to share their knowledge and wisdom with the rest of us. I would not be here writing this now and living the life I love without them!

So thanks to all you great people!

Leave a comment or send me a private message with your questions and perspectives. Direct messages can be sent to me at:

References:

[1]: Craig Ballantyne, https://www.craigballantyne.com/about/

[2]: Walker, L. (2023, March 21). #63 research your own experience. Bruce Lee. https://brucelee.com/podcast-blog/2017/9/12/63-research-your-own-experience