All that glitters is not gold!

John is a salesman for Gold Star Widgets. He attends every training session, reads every book, and listens to every speaker. He always implements what he learns immediately and works as hard, if not harder, than anyone else in the company. Over many years, John has spent a small fortune on training, tools, and an enormous amount of time, and he hasn’t really gotten anywhere close to achieving his goals.

Now, when John shares his concerns with his supervisor or his support team, they always tell them to just keep going, you know, you’re you’re, you’re right around the corner, everything’s in place in the company for you to succeed, you just got to work harder and smarter. Right? So John believes them, but he finds himself getting more and more depressed with every passing day, every passing year. And one day, a different kind of mentor comes into his life.

He says, John, did you ever think that perhaps you’re doing everything right? You have the right skills, the problem isn’t you. That’s when the light bulb goes on in John’s head. See, company mentors are an issue with them. I’m sure you’ve experienced this at least once in your working life. Your company brings in a speaker, an onsite mentor, someone who’s there to motivate, educate, inspire you and your colleagues to be better health, healthier, happier, whatever employees are salespeople, for your company. 

These people are usually dressed for success, sharp haircuts, shiny shoes, right, they come armed with all sorts of facts and figures and motivational quotes.

And when they ask you about your goals and your dreams, they may give you such a sense of comfort that you open right up to them, and you give them your heart’s fondest desires. And at the end of the time together, however, you sort of feel happier to stay right where you are

There is real short term value and temporary motivation.

But there is also a kind of speaker or mentor who can create a long term impact. Some of them walked in your shoes, they can give you real advice. But most mentors and speakers, no matter how impressive, they may seem, usually have two flaws. First, they’re being paid to teach you on behalf of whoever’s paying them. Usually, your bosses, say, you know, say your goal is open to your business, your workplace speaker, a mentor will never tell you to quit your job. You know, take out a business loan, hire someone to make a business plan, right.

Instead, they’re just going to teach you enough to keep you where you are. And make sure you work harder to accomplish to accomplish the goals of the company not go out on your own, the speaker won’t give you advice that will persuade or even hint for you to work somewhere else, or do something your bosses don’t want you to do, even if that’s exactly what you do need to do in order to reach your goal.

If they did, no company would ever hire them to speak again. The second issue with it is many speakers haven’t actually done what they’re teaching you to do. They’re making money selling expensive books and training courses that don’t actually work. You see, I see this a lot with affiliate and multilevel marketing. You know, one company, which recently went out of business, used to do automatic phone calls on behalf of multilevel marketing reps to recruit new people for their downlines. It never worked, of course, but it sounded like it would. So people who are in an MLM, or any type of sales, where you have to recruit people, they buy it and use it to build their business. I don’t know of a case of a single person who actually was able to recruit anybody for their business over the 100 people I talked to. But I do know of people who created such systems to make money as their business, and many more who gave up on their original business to promote this tool that did not work for them.

They even made guarantees that would work. But in reality, they were just getting you to sell their thing and give up on giving up on yours. In the end. You need to look for wins. That’s the difference between glitters and gold. If the person you’re going to ask for advice has an ulterior motive, whatever they tell you is bound to fail. If you don’t look past the shiny experience, I’m shining the shiny exterior, you’re never going to know it. Real mentors care about what’s best for you. And they know that good advice without strings attached leads to real long term Win Win relationships. When it comes to teaching, My approach is always focusing on creating a win-win. One of the ways I do this is that I don’t charge individual patient people for teaching them. If I get invited to speak at a company or an organization’s organization somewhere. I want to feel completely free to coach the employees I talk to in the way that I truly feel. Do they need to be coached? If that includes telling them to find new work, go back to school and start a business, then that’s what I’ll tell them. If that’s not okay with the organization, I won’t speak for them. The win for me comes in new business relationships.

If my free guidance leads you to want to partner with me on an exciting new venture that offers great value to many people, then we all benefit. Even without such an outcome. The teaching is there for free. So to me true mentorship is always focused on the other person. If you help people with their needs, it’ll come back to help you. I offer to coach and mentor others from real life hands-on experience. I’ve tried it all. And I only teach what works and what I personally continue to do for myself.

Join me every week as I share how the Rabbi Got Rich On Sunday and also watch videos. In the meantime, feel free to check out my website for more information and to schedule a free consult at the rabbiwhogorichonsunday.com