SO YOU WANNA BE A MENTOR – PART 2

You might be listening to this episode 5 years after I’ve recorded it and the weather is completely different. I’m not talking about the weather when I say it’s a beautiful day, I’m talking about a mindset. We don’t let things like the weather determine whether or not our days will be productive, happy, enjoyable, prosperous, healthy, and beautiful. No, my friends, not the 1%ers, we make each day what we want it to be based on our mindset. We decided what it will be long before we even wake up into that day. YOU determine whether the day will be a good one or not, the weather doesn’t. YOU determine what your day will be like, your clients, the underwriters, the reviewers, and the agents don’t. YOU determine what your business accomplishes day to day, the economy and market doesn’t.

It’s a mindset my friends and we cant place too much emphasis on this particular topic. Its not a one and done idea or practice, it is an every single day lifestyle whereby you are constantly filling your cranial cavity with positive uplifting information, and imprinting your heart and soul with a message that there is enough for everybody. And since this is part 2 of the episode on becoming a mentor, I strongly encourage you to be constantly sending that message to whomever you might be mentoring. One of the true mentor’s roles, in my opinion, is to help shape and guide the apprentice, if needed, in shaping their mindset for success and prosperity. Understanding, of course, not everybody needs this kind of mentorship. In fact, sometimes the apprentice is worlds ahead of the mentor in this regard. I have seen and advised many situations where the apprentice was a considerably more positive and forward thinker than the mentor. The mentor, in many cases, at least in the appraisal industry, tend to pass on ideas and mindsets that tend toward the negative and an idea of lack. ‘There’s not enough to go around, you gotta make hay when the sun is shining, don’t let your competition win, gotta make it when you can because it might not be here tomorrow.’ These are all ideas that hint at ‘not enough’ and a lack mentality. Don’t screw up your people my friends! Make them better for having crossed your path and chosen you as their mentor. 

In episode one we talked about 4 things that I feel should be fairly standard requirements if you are considering becoming a mentor or are already mentoring somebody. They were, in order, having a strong technical understanding of the appraisal process so as to have a solid foundation for transmitting information. Having strong technical understanding does not, of course, guarantee that you know how to, or the best way, to transmit that information, however, and so I suggested that you have some basic teaching skills or at least study up on the best methods for transmitting information so that the information makes it into the apprentice in the best way possible. I also recommended that you document all of your training so that you essentially only have to do it once and then you’ve memorialized it. In reality, its never one and done because by documenting the training you’ll find yourself becoming aware of things you’d do differently next time. That’s not a reason not to take the time to document the training, in fact, its the very reason to do it! You wont have near the insight into what you’d like to change until you start documenting the process. The connections in your brain and body change when you are memorializing and documenting everything as you go. You look at things differently when you’re tracking, measuring, and documenting. We then talked about leadership and boy is this a big one!! Go back and listen to the episode so that I don’t have to recap it here because it’s a huge topic. We wrapped that first episode up with teaching your trainee or apprentice about financial literacy. Teach them how to understand the fundamentals of money, how to save it, how to wisely spend it, what expenses are, what revenue and profit look and taste like, what a profit and loss statement consists of, how to invest properly, and what running a business really looks like. They’re going to find out one way or another. Either by going out on their own or by having been taught by a mentor who cared about transmitting as much information as possible. Now, if you heard that last one and said, “I’m not teaching my trainee how to understand finances! They’ll use that against me when they leave!”, you shouldn’t be training people. Simple as that. If your mindset is that you’re only going to give a trainee enough to be an asset to your company, but not enough to be wholly self sufficient and self sustaining on their own, you’re simply operating from a lack mentality and it has no place in an appraisal business and we certainly don’t need even more appraisers in the world bitching and complaining about there not being enough. Many a trainee has been screwed up by their mentor and we’re trying to end that cycle with these podcasts so, please, take the points in episode one into deep consideration before bringing somebody under your wing. And remember, you don’t have to have mastered all of these things before bringing somebody on, but they should be on your list of things you’re going to focus on and eventually share with a trainee at some point. You really only have to be a little further along on the path to be able to guide another down that path.

So lets move on to the next 3 skills or areas that I strongly recommend you hone so as to truly and properly mentor somebody in the appraisal industry, or really any industry. We ended the last episode with teaching financial literacy and a closely connected topic to teaching your trainees financial literacy is the topic of goal setting. One of the greatest skills I have ever been taught by mentors in my life, not necessarily my appraiser mentor, is the skill of goal setting. I call it a skill because I believe it’s definitely something that has to be learned, practiced, and cultivated to be any good at it. I mean, anybody can write down a goal like, ‘I want to be a millionaire by age 30’ or ‘I want to visit China some day’, but without the next step in the process, those are merely wishes. The next step in any goal setting process is backing into monthly, weekly, and daily action steps that will lead you to that goal. Of course, theres the oh so important aspect of first defining why a particular goal is compelling to you, why you want to achieve it, what you hope to become by achieving it, who or what you have to become in order to achieve it, what that particular goal really means to you, and what skills and disciplines will be required by you in order to reach a goal like that. What I’m saying is that goal setting is important, but can also be a bit of a scam if its taught as a one or even two step process. What most goal setting workshops teach is an acronym called ‘SMART’, as in, your goals have to be smart goals. They have to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound, meaning they must have a deadline. The first letter of each of those creating the acronym SMART. The problem with this age old method of teaching about goals is that is completely disregards the most important questions of the goal setting process: why and how. The SMART acronym never addresses the ‘why’ of a particular goal, and it never addresses the ‘how’, as in the daily or weekly action steps that will put you on path toward reaching a particular goal. The why of a particular goal is possibly the most important question in the whole process as it forces you to really question what it is about a particular goal that fires you up to become something or someone that you haven’t been before. Take, for example, the first goal I stated, ‘I want to be a millionaire by age 30’. I hear this one all the time from teenagers and people in their 20’s. Obviously, this is great to hear from young people, but says nothing at all about the all important ‘why’. When asked why, in fact, what you tend to get are a bunch of answers that, if written down or recorded, would actually lead most of those people to form different goals and take action in a direction that they’re potentially more motivated in than if they hadn’t been asked the question at all. Being a millionaire means nothing. If you’re a millionaire on paper but hate your life, what does being a millionaire mean? If you have a million dollars in real estate holdings but you’re about to go through a nasty divorce, what does being a millionaire mean? If you have a million dollars in the bank but just got diagnosed with cancer, what does being a millionaire mean? It means nothing. What most people mean when they say they want to be a millionaire is that they want what they think a million dollars will buy them or give them. They want what the believe being a millionaire represents. What being a millionaire represents to most people is freedom. Freedom to make your own decisions, freedom to buy what you want, freedom to take time off and take vacations, freedom to travel, freedom to choose your destiny. I can tell you that it may mean some of those things, but it doesn’t guarantee one single thing.

When it comes to goal setting, it’s important to know how to do it properly yourself and how to walk a trainee through the process yourself. If you don’t know how to set some goals and develop new behaviors yourself, what message are you sending to a trainee? If you have nothing you’re striving for in the future, how can you get buy in from a trainee on your vision? There’s no vision for them to buy into. If, however, you’re a goal setter yourself, then I highly recommend that you add that to your list of things you are going to teach, and require, of your people. Teach them how to formulate goals first, then walk them through the all important questioning process:

1. why do you want that particular goal?,
2. what does that goal represent for you?,
3. what will achieving that goal do for you or others?,
4. what skills will you need to develop to reach that goal?,
5. who do you have to become to reach a goal like that?,
6. who are your cheerleaders or supportive team that will help you on this journey?,
7. what does somebody who has already reached that same goal act like?
8. What are their daily habits? How do they think and act?,
9. what are the daily or weekly action steps that people who have already reached that goal take to stay on that path?,
10. what will change for you once you reach your goal?,
11. what will have to change for you or about you to even begin heading in that direction?,
12. what are the qualities of others who have reached that goal that you will need to embody to also reach that goal?

You see, my friends, the goal itself isn’t as important as the reasons behind a particular goal. Somebody saying they want to be a millionaire because they desire some freedom may actually find through the 12 step questioning process that the million dollars isn’t all that important to them and, in fact, not that motivating. What is motivating to them, however, is being in a job or running a business where they have some freedom. For them, they thought that it wasn’t even possible until they had a million dollars or at least reached a point where they could call themselves millionaires. I’ve mentioned before on this show, and I’m sure more than a few of you know people like this too, but I know a bunch of millionaires who, with one wrong move or bad month, may no longer be millionaires. They make, or are worth, at least a million dollars but spend $2 million per year. Cash flow and credit are what get them through each month. For me, its no way to live and it makes being a millionaire mean literally nothing. Figure out the ’why’s’ of your own business and motivations first, and then teach your people how to walk through this process for themselves. What you’ll find is that you’ll help some people move onward and right out of your business and into completely different industries once they realize that your business is not for them. Wouldn’t you rather have this happen sooner than later? And by the way, the saying that its not what you know but who you know is true in almost every aspect of human existence and certainly success. When you help other people grow in these areas you are creating a network of people for whom you may need or cross paths with in an advantageous way sometime in the future. You never know what the future holds for you or any of your people so help them become the absolute best version of themselves while  you have the opportunity. Become a goal processor, not a goal setter, and then teach others the best way to do the same.

The next one on our list may seem a bit strange for the appraisal business, but ultimately a vital one for everybody involved. I highly recommend that you teach your trainees, and all of the people in your organization, about health and wellness. Of course, I make the assumption when I say ‘teach them’ that you, yourself, understand and practice good health and wellness habits. When you encourage and lift up health and wellness as a priority in your company, you are sending a message that you value healthy bodies and minds, productivity, happy people, longevity, health span, and that you recognize health and wellness as a vital component, as well as a strong reflection of the health of the company. If you aren’t all that healthy yourself, what unspoken and subconscious message do you think it sends to people who work for you? It subconsciously says that you don’t care enough about yourself or longevity to possibly care about the future of your company or people. I’m not saying that people wont work for your or stay around for a long time. Everybody operates their lives based, at some level, on selfish motives. If you give somebody enough money, time, freedom, and/or benefits, some will stay forever, even if its to their detriment. Some people, once sucked into the benefits prison, can’t leave because they need the benefits. While possibly a good thing to keep some people around, it may also keep people around who shouldn’t be. When you make your own health a priority, you send the message that this organization is about energy, about health, about prosperity and longevity, and that you care. You want your people to have the absolute best life possible and the most important in that regard is their health. You’ve probably heard the saying, purportedly from the Dalai Lama, that says, “…man sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices his money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he’s never going to die, and then dies having never lived.”  If you’re qualified enough to teach somebody the intricacies of the appraisal process, you’re qualified enough to pass on a positive message about health and wellness. We work with several companies that have monthly health and wellness contests for their employees. They have weight loss contests, stop smoking contests, weight training contests, and other health and wellness encouraging activities to help their people be better than they were yesterday. I recommend paying for gym memberships, yoga classes, meditation classes, spin classes, or whatever your employees may want to get into to better themselves in that regard. Especially if you pay insurance benefits for your employees, any effort in this regard comes back in the form of fewer sick days, fewer mental health days needed, better motivation, better corporate culture and atmosphere, a sense of being part of a team that cares, and the benefits go on and on.  Become an encourager my friends, and specifically become a health and wellness encourager.

The last one I’ll mention in this episode is marketing. Marketing, like all of the other topics, is a big umbrella term that can mean a lot of things. I also know that marketing is typically not a real strong skill of many appraisers because they’ve come up in the lending world where they didn’t really have to really market to get business. If you’ve ventured into the private side, or non lending side of the appraisal business, then you likely have a better understanding of marketing since it can be tough to grow the private side of the business without understanding how to market your services and message. The reason I include it in this list is not so much that you have to teach your trainees how to market themselves, because you may not have that skill yourself. The reason I include it in this list is that many younger people today have an innate understanding of marketing due primarily to the advent of social media. Many people in their 20’s and 30’s live and breathe social media and have an understanding of, at least the basics of marketing yourself via these means, even if they don’t fully understand what it is they’re doing. They’re seeing it being done by others on social media every day so they tend to have an innate understanding of whats going on in that arena. People in their 40’s, 50’s, and beyond, maybe not so much. You may use social media at those ages, but few are doing it well for their businesses and few understand the perils of the business personal crossover. By this I mean, few people, especially the younger generations but this bleeds over into all age categories, seem to understand that if you have a business social media presence and your name is attached to it in any way, and you also have a personal social media presence under your name, that people can see all your posts in your personal social media feeds, as well as your professional attempts to market your business. Let me expound a bit. If you have a professional social media presence and you hold yourself out to the community as one type of person and business, and then post all of your personal, political, religious, and private business on your personal page, people who know you as a particular business will eventually also see your personal stuff. So very few people seem to understand that if you run a business, even if you don’t have a social media presence for your business, but people know you as the owner of that business, and you are posting all of your drinking, smoking, vacation pics, along with all of your unwelcome views on a variety of topics on your social media feed, you are likely hurting your business efforts. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do something.

With that being said, I, of course, strongly encourage business owners to study marketing within their own industries and also outside of their industry. Having a basic understanding of marketing for your particular business is important, even if you’re not necessarily doing anything about it or with it yet. One of the potential reasons you may consider taking on a trainee, and one of the ways a trainee can potentially bring additional value to your business, is if you find someone who understands it and can help you market your business better than you are at the moment. Bringing  on a trainee does not always have to be viewed as a big time, energy and money drain on your business. If the people seeking you out understand how to add value, they’ll bring some kind of additional value to your business. If business owners and potential mentors understand value and how to add it, they will demand some additional value from their potential candidates for mentorship. One of the things you may have your trainees do is manage your social media presence, manage your Google My Business page, manage your facebook and Google ads, and manage your marketing calendar. If you don’t have a marketing calendar, give this task to your trainee and have them learn everything they possibly can about marketing while under your mentorship. Of course, I encourage you to also caution them against the dreaded personal professional social media crossover effect and monitor their social media accounts. Let them know that they are now representatives of your organization and there are certain things that will simply not be allowed. One of those things not allowed will be any posting on their personal, or anybody else’s feed, of anything considered to be unbecoming of an employee of your organization. That means no drunken pics, no middle finger pics, no party pics, no posting of work related or intellectual property related posts (unless those work related posts are of a positive nature and not violating any confidentiality rules), no negative posting about the company or even having a bad day. You may find you get some push back on this since a lot of people today feel entitled by social media and feel it is their right to say and do whatever they want on there and that they are somehow immune from repercussion or consequences. Let me assure you and them, they are not immune. In fact, I would tell everybody listening, regardless of your age and position in life, if you’re a dick on social media, even if its in a private group, you are sending a message to the world about who you really are and it is likely affecting your business at some level. Your posts stay in the ether forever. What online media also encourages is something called the Gyges Effect or phenomenon. The Gyges Effect comes from Plato’s Republic and is a fictional story about the Ring of Gyges which gave the wearer of the ring the power of invisibility. In the story, a shepherd uses the ring to do some horrible stuff, including murder, and eventually take over the throne of the murdered king. The Gyges effect, as its known, is the effect or phenomenon of what people will do and say when there is a veil of anonymity. Even if people know who you are by your social media account, people often say and do things they would never do if face to face with somebody. This is ever apparent in many of the private Facebook groups of almost every industry, but ever present in many of the appraisal industry groups. People simply become savages because they don’t have to actually face the person they’re speaking. We often see many who come across as super tough, much smarter than they really are bad asses online who couldn’t fight or write their way out of a paper bag if they had to actually do something in person. This is the keyboard warrior effect.

Be very careful of the Gyges Effect in your own interactions my friends and, of course, in your marketing and on social media. One of the ways you can truly mentor someone in this regard is, first and foremost, by your own example and behavior. Secondarily, you can mentor somebody by teaching them about the Gyges effect and how what they put out there will be seen by people who have no interest in seeing or reading it. Self control are the words of the day when it comes to social media specifically, and from a training and mentoring aspect, get involved in this aspect of your apprentices’ training right away. Teach them about consequences and repercussions. Teach them about the downsides and benefits of marketing the right way. Teach them about messaging and articulating that message when it is devoid of personal contact. Marketing via the internet is whole different animal than marketing via print ads in newspapers, for example. Either learn it and teach your people how to do this stuff, or bring on somebody who can do it for you while also learning the appraisal business. Monitor it very closely and help them shape and mold the message and the offers you’re putting out. Just like your money and accounting, marketing is an area I would never leave solely to somebody else’s discretion. Its your company, your message, your people. Teach them how to do it effectively and you send the message that you embrace growth and that you understand the importance of marketing to keep the flow of business coming in. This sends a strong message to somebody thinking about their future with your organization.

Those, my friends, are the 7 areas that I encourage you to study up on and embrace if you want to be a true mentor to somebody in the appraisal business specifically, but really any business since these are all universal principles of good business and good mentorship. Remember, being a mentor means looking out for the whole person and giving them all the tools necessary to be successful in the areas you are teaching them. Almost anybody can teach somebody the basics of the appraisal process. Very few can truly mentor somebody in all 7 of these categories. Make an effort to do so and you’ll find yourself building relationships that become life long and ones that serve everybody involved.  Fail to mentor  somebody on any of these areas and that area may end up being the one that provides the very reason for their departure. Mentoring somebody in all of these areas does not guarantee success, by any means, with that individual, nothing does. But failing to mentor somebody without at least considering all of these areas and making an effort in each area will all but guarantee a temporary relationship.

I’d like to thank you my friends for investing your most valuable currency again this week with me and that is, of course, your time. Somebody invested their time into you and your training and giving somebody else an opportunity in that regard is one of the greatest gifts we have to give. Please do not take it lightly my friends and think long and hard about how you’ll go about training somebody and what the most important aspects of your training program might be. Write it all out and make it an evolving document within your organization. If you mentor one individual, you’ll likely mentor others at some point and it helps to have that growing and evolving document, and training videos you’ve made along the way, to help make it easier and easier each time. Of course, I’d love to hear your feedback on this topic so please feel free to reach out to us and share your thoughts and tips for mentoring others in your business. We’ll also be sharing some of these thoughts and ideas over at our own private Facebook group called the Real Value Coaching Academy Success Dojo. It’s a small group and a group up with some rules so, if you’re at all interested in being a part of it, just reach out and ask for inclusion into it and we’ll check out your other profiles and comments in other groups to see if there’s a good fit.

I look forward to chatting with everybody again next week and, until then my friends, I’m out…