As we walk our own hero’s journey, we need someone who will hold us accountable and provide valuable insight. A guide. A mentor.
This could be a life coach or a business coach. Or, it could be both! But if you don’t have that mentor, you could find yourself within the bounds of insanity: trying the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.
So how do you find the right mentor or coach? There are 5 key points to be absolutely clear on BEFORE you choose your mentor. This will help find the perfect mentor for you, help clarify your goals, and define success down to the details.
3 Key Takeaways
- Don’t look for coaches who want to solve all of your problems for you. They’re trying to sell you a service, not be a mentor.
- Find the right coach for the goals you have right NOW. With new goals often comes new mentorship.
- If you are only looking for a coach with similar views as yours, you might be missing out on true growth.
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Full Episode Transcript:
You’re listening to the Storied Life Coaching podcast with Aaron J. Jacobs, episode number 6. In this episode, we’re diving into meeting the mentor on our series on the Hero’s Journey, and how to find the perfect right fit coach for you forward.
What if you could write your own life story? How would you spend your time? What would your career or business look like? What kind of parent or partner would you be? Welcome to Storied Life Coaching, the only podcast that will show you how to stop living life by default, and teach you how to build a thriving business that fuels an amazing life on your terms. I’m Aaron J. Jacobs and as a master coach and the CEO of OMH creative and storied coaching, I’ve had the privilege and opportunity to learn what it takes firsthand to rewrite your own life story. It’s never too late for a rewrite.
Hello, my friends. I hope you enjoyed last week’s episode. We are moving on to the next part that is crucial for you to be able to go on your hero’s adventure to be able to rewrite your story. And that is a very important relationship. I happen to think it’s very important for very obvious reasons, but that’s meeting your mentor. How do you go about finding your mentor? Finding your coach?
It’s such an important part of any Hero’s Journey. Luke Skywalker had Obi-Wan, the hobbits had Gandalf, like they’re–how do you find that person who’s been through a version of what you’ve had to do and can help you on your journey? Because they know some of the shortcuts, they know how to go around the mountain and maybe through some places you wouldn’t have thought of in order to get to your goals in a more efficient manner. Hopefully, that’s what you’re looking for, then caught doing the hard climb, that seems like the only way that you can do it at first, whether that’s personal or whether that’s professional for your business.
And so what I’m going to help you with today is the five things to be clear on before you choose your mentor coach. This will help you to increase your chances of finding the perfect fit for you, specifically, because that’s the important part, right? There are a lot of great mentors out there, a lot of great coaches, and finding the right fit for the specific goals that you want to achieve is so, so important and it can make a lot of people freeze up because there are so many options out there. How do you know how to choose the right one and not screw up, and waste money or time or both? And I’ve definitely been there as well. And so these five things have really helped me to be clear, when I have been looking for coaching mentorship, in order to get the results that I really want and to find a good fit.
So if you follow these five things, it will make your life so much easier. I still use this, myself, when I’m looking for my coaching and I have lots of coaches. That’s maybe, maybe I should add a sixth thing, actually, the sixth thing would probably be: don’t get coached by a coach who doesn’t get coached themselves. That should be a red flag, right off the bat. So this stage is really, really important: meeting the mentor. That way you can get to where you want to go so the first thing that I would say is: I had a statistic that came up that was very eye-opening for me, and that is that 76% of people that say coaching is important, 76% of the people surveyed said, “Yeah, coaching is really important for me to be able to get business objectives done, personal objectives, things like that,” but of that 76%, only 37% actually have one.
So it’s not just you, if you are sitting there going “I know this is really important. I’m supposed to make time to do it, but I’m so busy and there’s all these other things,” you’re not alone. Lots of people feel this way as well but that’s the thing that is key here is not worrying about finding the perfect coach that does all the things for you because that’s kind of silly, right? Where else would we do that in our lives? You even find mechanics for the specific kind of car that you have. They specialize in a certain kind of automobile or a certain type of car and they can be specialists in that area. When you’re looking for a doctor or you’re looking for a surgeon for a very specific thing that you’re looking to have done and operation or procedure, do you just go to someone who’s like, does kind of everything? Or are you looking for someone who’s an expert in that specific area?
Of course, we look for that person who’s amazing at that thing and so it’s okay for you to find a coach, to find a mentor that is not going to be forever. It’s going to be for this specific set of goals that you want to accomplish. And so here are those five things, all right?
So, number one, understand what a coach is, and almost more importantly, what a coach isn’t. So a coach is someone that’s going to help you look at your own brain. They’re gonna help you from an outside objective viewpoint, examine the thought processes and the stories that you’re telling yourself. In my case, that will help you to get to where you want to go on your, on your journey, and your Hero’s Journey. A coach isn’t someone that’s going to solve all your problems for you and do the work for you. If you’re looking at a program or a coaching solution that is promising that if you just do what they say, and they have a one size fits all thing, that’s maybe not something you want to move towards.
Other people might disagree with me. In fact, I know other people disagree with me, because they’ve created programs like this. And people are different. There are tools that you can offer people that can help them to serve themselves, but if they’re promising that if they’re going to do all this work for you and your life is just going to get that much better, they’re going to solve all your business problems for you, they’re going to do all the work, that’s usually not something that’s going to work out. That’s not a coach, really. That’s a vendor or a service you’re hiring, that is them providing a service for you.
Whether that was marketing or sales or whatever, that’s not coaching. Coaching is helping you to be able to do the work that needs to be done for you to feel better about what you want to get done and to, to move towards your goals. So that’s number one, understand, understand what a coach is, and isn’t.
Number two: be clear about your goals. This one seems super simple when I say it out loud, but I have been really bad at this in the past, myself with my own coaches. I’m like, “Oh, I–this coach does this amazing stuff in this specific area of business and I really want our business to get better at doing that.” Let’s say it’s customer service, or surprising and delighting our customers so that they have a great experience. “They’re amazing at that, so I’m just gonna go and like just have, have them do everything.” But I’m not clear about my goals. What are the specific goals in my business that I want? That from where they are now to where they want to be, am I crystal clear in my crisp about where I am now, where I want to go? And then what are those short term, medium-term, and long term goals of where I want to get to and over what period of time? The more specific and crisp you can be with yourself when approaching a coach will help you to find what you want quicker, and to be clear for yourself and for the coach what success looks like, which ties into another one here in a second. So find number three, find the right coach for the specific goals you have now, right now.
So you may have had in the past goals that you wanted to do. You may have, you will have goals in the future you want to accomplish as well, but what are the most important ones to you right now? And don’t expect them to always be the coach that you’re going to need in the future, because if a coach is doing their job, right, if I’m doing my job, right, I’m helping you move into a new future version of yourself, where there’s going to be new goals after. You, you get to that point, and maybe I’m the right coach for you to help you get those goals. I’ve heard the right mentor do that and maybe I’m not anymore and that’s okay. You don’t have to feel bad about that, they don’t have to feel bad about that, you just need to in order to progress even further to evolve even further, you might need a completely different coach that’s okay, no harm, no foul.
So number four: make sure to look for different perspectives. This is so important and man, I had to take this medicine myself, as well. Look for perspectives that are different than your own. You know why? Because of the fact that if you kept thinking along the same thought patterns that got you to this point, and that are making you feel stuck and need a coach, if you’re just going to continue with someone else that thinks about things the same way you do, how realistic is it that you’re actually going to make progress? Probably not realistic, right? What’s that thing about? If we, you know, the definition of insanity being trying the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result?
You need someone that’s going to have a different thought process than you and at first that might seem like, “Well, I don’t know if they will be a good fit because they approach things differently.” Yeah, and maybe that’s a good thing. Do you know how many times that I’ve been mad at my coach? Like, like legitimately angry, because what they told me wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I didn’t do the work in order to, to get to that micro goal that was part of the overall. Like I failed. That’s part of the process, to, knowing that sometimes you’re going to have to take medicine, that if you didn’t do the work or if you are not putting in what you need to in order to get the result that you want, that a good coach is going to call you on it.
Holding you accountable is something that a good coach does, if that’s something you’re looking for, for the specific goals that you want to reach. So know that you’re not always going to love your coaching sessions. Sometimes you’re going to leave your coaching session (I know this has happened to me) and I’d be like, “Ah, I’m just so mad at them, I just I don’t agree with what they said, like this is all my reasons and excuses why what I’m doing is perfectly fine” and then with a little bit of reflection, it always turns out like, “Oh, yeah, that’s exactly why I’m stuck because I’m arguing against progress, I’m arguing against taking a tough look at the work that needs to be done in order for me to evolve,” because it takes work, right? Otherwise, everybody would do it and it would be super easy. So that’s number four: make sure to look for different perspectives other than your own. Sometimes you’re not going to like what your coach says, and that’s okay. It’s okay.
And number five, number five: be clear with yourself and your coach about what success really means for you. So this is more of like, what is that short, mid, long term transformation goal? What is success to you? Not just the not just the reaching of the goal itself, but how do you want to feel about reaching that goal? What does success really look like? What does it inform in the rest of your life professionally, and personally? Really, really think about that. Be clear with yourself and your coach about what success is for you.
So that’s it, so this is—we’re mapping this again over the next several sessions, to the Hero’s Journey, the transformation journey, and this, specifically, was the meaning of the mentor, or in our case, finding the right coach the right guide for you. So, if you stick to those five things, and you’re clear on them before you choose your coach, you will have a much better chance of finding the coach that’s the right fit for you much, much faster. And sometimes you might not get it right the first time. You might find a coach, you might do coaching with them for a month, two months, three months, and they go “You know what? I don’t think this is gonna work,” and that’s okay, too. You can move on to another coach, to another mentor, and you will have taken the experience that you learn there in order to hone exactly what it is you are looking for. Maybe adjust some of those goals to make it work.
So number one: understand what a coach is and isn’t. Number two: be clear about your goals. Number three: find the right coach for the specific goals you have now, not in the past, not in the future, but now. Number four: make sure to look for different perspectives other than your own. I swear I’m talking to myself when I say number four. Sometimes you’re not going to like your coach and what they say and that’s okay. And number five: be clear with yourself and your coach about what success truly is for you. What are those goals add up to? What new version of yourself are you looking to achieve? And what’s the timeline you want to do it in short, mid, and long term goal?
So that’s all for this time I wanted to give you again: this series is meant to be crisp, clear, they’re going to be a bit shorter, so that I can outline for you the different phases that we go through on the Hero’s Journey for the transformation that you’re looking for. So I will talk to you next time, my friends. Until then, if you wrote down those five things, and if you didn’t, just rewind, super easy, write down those five things when you’re on your hunt for your mentor. If that’s something you’re looking for when you’re on the hunt for your coach, they will really help you to save time and get very clear about exactly what you’re looking for so you can get the results that you want on the new adventure you’re creating for yourself. All right, talk to you next time.
To celebrate the launch of the show, I’m going to be giving away an amazing on-camera kit, which includes a high-quality webcam, lighting, setup, and a microphone. This is the very same kit we provide to students enrolled in our story teams course that is used by our storied clients like Microsoft and SAP. I’ll be awarding three lucky listeners who follow, rate, and review the show. It doesn’t have to be a five-star review, although I sure hope you love the show. I want your honest feedback so we can create an awesome show that provides tons of value. Visit storiedcoaching.com/podcastlaunch, again that’s storiedcoaching.com/podcastlaunch, to learn more about the contest and how to enter. I’ll be announcing the winners on the show in an upcoming episode. Thanks for listening to Storied Life Coaching with Aaron J. Jacobs. If you want more information or resources from the podcast, visit us at storiedcoaching.com.
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