Mentoring seems to be the thing on my mind lately. So much so that I wrote an article on LinkedIn about it last week. It also follows up my 2013 post on the subject and my original post from 2006. Yup, I've been blogging a long time.

Interns and Mentors
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory - PNNL
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That's why I'm not sure whether to call this part 3 or part 4, although I'm glad I had the opportunity to look it up because I always assumed "cuatro" was spelled with a "Q"; the things I learn when I think I know it all...

In any case, I thought it was important enough to revisit because, once again, I'm looking for a partial mentor. Why you ask?

Here's the thing. All of us are good at what we know. I'm good at leadership. I'm good at health care finance. I'm good at writing, especially blogging.

What I'm not good at is marketing; horrible at it. Actually, I had a guy tell me that I'm probably not so bad at it, just that I either don't do it enough or I don't know how to close. Since I don't get as many opportunities as I want to close I don't think it's the second one.

You want to know a truth? It seems that every successful person had someone they considered a mentor. Sometimes it's many people. I know I mentioned a few people when I wrote something many years ago about big loud guys, guys who not only were fairly large but kind of loud also. I had 3 guys who fit that description who also offered a lot of wisdom when I needed it.

Back then it was mainly about business in general; I probably needed more about the marketing aspect of it. Still, it was nice to have people I could bounce things off when I needed to, who'd listen and offer their perspectives.

Actually, I do more mentoring than I get. I'm one of those folks who'll help someone out, at least initially, without reimbursement... well, if they're local I ask them to pick up lunch or buy me a cookie; I'm easy. 🙂

Why do I do that? Because when I first decided I wanted to work on my own I reached out to a lot of consultants and none of them wanted to talk to me. All said I might take business away from them, even if we weren't in the same field, and, as it turns out, only one of them was in the same field as me at the time.

I always resolved I'd offer some help to anyone who contacted me to ask for it... as long as they weren't contacting me with an ulterior motive to try to sell to me. That's about the most disingenuous thing anyone could do, and I had two people do that to me; I've never spoken to either of them again.

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What do I get out of mentoring like that? I figure if I can help get someone started that maybe they'll end up rich and famous and show up on Oprah's couch one day and mention my name. lol Truthfully, that would be a wonderful thing.

That's the free session though. If it was an ongoing thing that I was being paid for, as part of executive coaching, the satisfaction would come in helping someone attain their goals and helping them stay focused. Because the hardest thing about working for oneself is staying focused.

The second hardest thing is having someone who believes in you. Here's the thing about paying someone. If you're paying someone and they don't believe in you, more often than not they'll drop you as a client. Think about that for a minute; people who won't take your money if you don't show a commitment to grow or be better than you are.

I've done that in the past, not only with mentoring but with other clients. I'm always reminded of who I refer to as "the Beave's mother", who was in the movie Airplane and uttered these famous words: "Chump don't want no help, chump don't get da help." lol

Have you thought about what you do and wondered if there was someone out there who could offer mentoring services to you? Well, if you're in a position or leadership, or you're in health care revenue cycle, or even if you're wondering about this magical thing called business blogging... give me a call and let's talk.

I make no promises except I'll talk to you and, who knows, maybe you only need one call, in which case you got something good without having to pay for it. At least you now know someone's around offering some help.