Creating Success from the Inside Out: Develop The Focus and Strategy To Uncover the Life You Want

VI.3. Mentors

Without mentors, we have no examples to follow for our major decisions in life. In business, I consider this suicidal. It's easy to find a mentor if you're serious about getting one. I have been fortunate to have some incredible mentors in my life. But I take the approach that everyone on my team should be "mentor quality" as well.

This is one of the main reasons I have surrounded myself with quality, high-performance experts, people I can turn to who have the experience to give me the answers I need. They know when I am focused on a project, I don't listen to the "cannot be done" mantra. I want the "here's how we can do it" solutions. I make sure they also have a vested interest in the success of our development projects. In fact, my team of professionals personally invest in our projects, so they share any risk of the investments along with our clients and shareholders. I look to this team to provide me with the kind of key information I need to make quality decisions. And I listen. And then I make the final decisions based on what they've told me, and what I know—and feel—is the right way to go.

Sometimes I find them, sometimes they find me. I found Emerson Brantley online. I had several people handle marketing at different times in my companies. I wasn't real happy with the results I was getting. Some cost me plenty and still didn't bring me the results I wanted. Then, as I often do, I went online and started scoping out marketing people, specifically direct-response ...