What’s up gang? If you watch the GRIND messages, you know that I’m passionate about finding a mentor. It’s one of the key ingredients to being successful & one of the easiest ways to learn. When you’ve got a mentor, you can learn from their experience. It’s a way to “cheat” your growth process, because you’re learning from the failures & successes that they’ve had, as opposed to living through them yourself. Today, I wanted to talk about three of the biggest mentors I’ve had in my adult life.
If you know my background, you’d know that my plans after college were to move to Florida & get my real estate license. It was one phone call that changed that plan, and ultimately changed my life. The man on the phone was Marcus Smith, partner at Surace-Smith Agencies with American Income Life. Marcus called my resume & I decided to come to AIL for an interview.
After meeting Marcus, I admired so much about him. His confidence, his mental toughness, his ability to think big, and ultimately his level of success at a young age. I knew I had to learn from him. While your specific journey in life may be different, my advice on learning from a mentor applies to all walks of life. I followed Marcus’s coaching 100%. Let me stress 100%, not 99%. If Marcus had told me to run head-first into a wall, I would’ve done it. No questions asked. I may not have understood the reasoning behind every little detail, but I knew that if I implemented, it would get me closer to my goals.
My biggest takeaway from Marcus was the ability to think big. When I started having success and making big plays in business, Marcus never hesitated to show me the next level. That’s a rare quality in a leader. Many people would sit back and enjoy the success of having a new player on the team who was helping grow the business. Instead, Marcus saw my potential and coached me to always be thinking bigger and looking at what else was possible.
It was also while starting my career at American Income that I meant another one of my biggest mentors, Jim Surace. You’d recognize Jim from his Spiritual Sunday messages on the GRIND. Jim taught me how to grow my spiritual faith and develop myself inwardly. He helped me strengthen my relationship with God & showed me how to help others grow spiritually. You know I constantly preach daily development mentally, physically, & spiritually, and I’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who helped my spiritual growth as much as Jim has.
Lastly, and most recently, I’ve been mentored by Jim Tressel from Youngstown State University. I approached Jim, asking him to spend some time mentoring me & he did it without hesitation. Coach Tressel has taught me humility & how to treat others after a win or a loss. He’s taught me how to better coach my team in business, and how to set goals not only in business, but in my personal life as well. I’ve learned the way to balance how to be caring and serving, but to still hold people accountable.
I want to take a minute to thank each of the three men I’ve mentioned here. I could easily go into even greater detail on all that they’ve taught me, and I’m extremely grateful.
To wrap it up, make sure you seek out mentors in all areas of your life. You’d be surprised how many great people on this earth are willing to pour into others.
