- [Dan] For all you guys keep asking me is
this a green screen, this is the real wall.
(upbeat music)
How to talk with an advisor or mentor.
You know in your life you may feel like you're running blind.
You don't have anybody to talk to in your business and you're
struggling to really find the right way to do things or you've
got a ton of priorities and lists of to-dos going on and on
and on you're trying to figure out like what do I start with
today, right?
Or you feel like for the last five years you've been working
on your business and especially at this time of year,
you're looking at your numbers and you're saying
where's the progress?
You know, I've been working I'm trying to get free for my
business and I just don't feel like I'm making the right moves.
The number one thing you could do is reach out to a mentor.
Having somebody, people say that entrepreneurs don't have a boss
and then somebody'll joke and they'll say yeah,
they have a boss, it's their customer.
The truth is your customers like to call you on Sunday morning
tell you get out of freakin' bed and run to the office,
alright.
Having an advisor or mentor provides accountability.
It provides insights, being able to call somebody who's been
there before to give them some your biggest challenges,
to provide actionable insights.
I mean that is just an incredible opportunity that
everybody watching this video has or being exposed to their
network if they were ready been through this process before,
they have a company or understand the industry very
well then they'll be able to introduce you to people like
lawyers, accountants, marketers that can help unstuck you.
Get you unstuck in whatever challenges you are having in
your business.
I know this personally but this morning is talking to an
entrepreneur walking her through how to get prepped for a call
she had with an advisor and after the call I realized there
was an opportunity for me to share this with you guys to make
sure that you understand the exact same process that I go
through when I do coaching with my clients.
This is something, you know finding an advisor I've known
for almost going on 10 years when I was build my company
Spheric Technologies.
Two years in doing about a million and a half in revenue
and at the end of the year I'm looking at my utilization
numbers 'cause we were consulting business and
realizing I just hired too many people and I didn't have enough
projects and it kinda sent me into a tailspin,
almost a depression and I reached out to the former
premier of the province I lived in Canada,
New Brunswick.
Guy named Frank McKenna, cold email and he replied at like one
in the morning right around Christmas with a few names.
There was Ken Nickerson, Jerry Pond and Steve Palmer and
those guys have since become people that I turn to for advice.
Some of them become really good friends but at the end of the
day if I didn't have that level of advice and knowledge
I wouldn't be able to get unstuck or get through that
challenge but even more important I really learned
through that process of
having advisors or mentors how to communicate with them and
that's what I want to share with you guys in this video.
So number one when you have a meeting or first call with an
advisor or mentor you want to be prepared.
You want to make sure that you sit down,
you think what what do I want to talk to them about?
What are the talking points.
I share this a lot with entrepreneurs that I train that
they need to never go into an important sales meeting,
partnership meeting or meeting with a mentor/advisor without
being prepared with talking points.
3 to 5 talking points that as the conversations flowing that
you can reference back.
You can write in your journal, on a flip card,
whatever it is but that is your guide for the conversation.
Being prepared is number one to make sure that you don't allow
the anxiety or the nervousness or the overwhelm of where your
business is at to take best and kind of veer you off and at the
end of the call you go, "Hmm, shit.
"I should've said this or I should have said that."
Or "Why did I asked that question that way?"
Being prepared is number one.
Second thing is you want to make sure that you share if you've
never talked with them before your origin story,
right?
If you search origins story on my channel there's many other
videos that kinda goes through how to position that but I think
it's really important that if I'm talking to advisor/mentor
for my first time that I share with them why I started the
business, how I got there and why it's important to me to
kinda move it forward.
Now, if I've already talked with them,
then I want to share an update.
Alright?
Last time we talked, we talked about this,
here's what I've done since then.
Here's where I'm at now.
The context you need to provide one of those two things.
First call origin story if you already talked to them,
context and an update.
Then to me it's going through the list of questions, right?
You want to have at least 3 to 5 questions that you've prepped
and you prepared for before the call that you start going
through but there's a format that I want to share with you on
how to ask the questions, that's number three.
The first thing when you share the challenge.
So for example maybe it's revenues.
You know, our goal for this year was a hit a million revenue
we're at 700K and here was the challenges around that.
Then you want to present solutions.
Here's what I'm gonna do to fix that.
So we're short, I looked at the numbers in the last 12 months of
operation and here's where we fell short and going forward Q1
I'm gonna do this, Q2 I'm gonna do this and then after you
present your solution
then that's when you ask for feedback.
So to me, you always say here are the challenges,
you share your numbers then number four you offer solutions
and number five you ask for feedback.
Most entrepreneurs make the mistake when they talk to an
advisor/mentor by saying I need to improve my marketing what do
you suggest I do?
That is the worst question you could ever ask.
Why?
'Cause it's lazy you put on the other person to try
just come up with ideas.
It's like my buddy Jason who reminded me we're at a kind of a
networking event and I was meeting with somebody I just met
and at the end I said let me know if I can ever be helpful.
And Jason pulled me aside he said hey Dan,
I just want to kinda suggest a little bit of an edit.
He said by you saying let me know if I can ever be helpful
you put it on them to come up with the ideas to be helpful
whereas if you said you know let me circle back with a few
ideas on how I can be helpful then you take the ownership to
create value for the other person to offer some solutions
to ways you can help them.
I feel like that's the same thing with an advisor or mentor
is you never want to be like my challenge is cash flow,
what do you think I should do?
You should say my challenge is this,
here are my solutions and then ask for advice.
When you ask for the feedback the number one thing you can you
screw that up you keep talking.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You need to shut up, you need to listen with ears open and
let the mentor or advisor give you that advice.
Share the stories 'cause some people are like well I'm talking
to this person, I really want to ask them what were the revenues
last year?
I'm gonna tell you the way to get that is you tell them your
revenues and you tell them your top three challenges for getting
those revenues and then you ask them for advice and if you do it
right and you're open and you're honest and you connect with them
on emotional level, on a friendship level,
they're gonna say you know what here's where we're at.
Here's what we did to get that.
Here where I think you can make some tweaks to get there and I
think that format of talking to an advisor or mentor and that
structure will really change the game for you.
Now, number one challenge it comes up when I share this
strategy with entrepreneurs it's like hey that's great Dan but
where do I find a mentor or an advisor and here's my number one
tip I'm gonna give you, want to write this down
if you don't have a pen, go get it.
In your city there are non-profit boards,
there are non-profit organizations,
fundraiser organization.
They usually help the library, the hospital,
all these different groups of people and they have boards put
together and on those boards there are entrepreneurs.
There businessmen in your community.
Those people are prequalifying themselves as good people.
They care about their community, they want to give back.
So if you live in the city and you reach out to let's say 10 of
those people and I'm talking cold emails, 'kay?
This doesn't work for everybody else you want as a mentor but
you have these people that sit on charitable boards and you
reach out to 10, you'll pretty much get a
70 to 80% response rate.
And the email format follows the same strategy that I shared with
you guys on how to actually ask for advice.
Be open in the email.
This is my business this is our revenue number.
That's what got me the response from Frank McKenna is because
I told him our revenues are this.
Here's my challenges.
Here's what I'm trying to do.
Do you know anybody in this community,
in this province or state that might be able to help me and he
replied with three names and the key after you do all of that,
you have a great call you have great connection with the mentor
is you always have to follow back.
Following up and letting the person know how their advice
impacted or changed your strategy and it had in your
business is the value and the repayment
for them investing that time.
So that is the strategy.
One, be prepared.
Two, share your origin story or give an update.
Three, make sure that you share your challenges with numbers.
Four, you want to make sure that you offer one to three solutions
that you're actually gonna execute that you think will fix
the problem and then finally ask for advice or feedback on that
strategy, shut up, listen and take that advice,
execute it and follow up.
Hope this video finds you incredibly well.
As per usual I want to challenge you to live a bigger life and a
bigger business and I'll see you next Monday.
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Have an incredible day.