How Mentors and Values Can Change Your Life

How Mentors and Values Can Change Your Life

Sean: We have a question for Mitch. What type of coach should people in transition seek – career shifters, aspiring freelancers, or entrepreneurs? How does one decide if they need a coach or a mentor or expert in the field they want to pursue?

For me, I’m more of a mentor than a coach. Although I am a certified John Maxwell coach as well as speaker, but my style is more of mentorship because I do share my experience. Of course, if you want a field in ballet, you should never get me as your mentor because I have no experience in ballet. But if you want to do it, if you want to go start a business, I could help you there. So I think you have to seek people who have gone the way, made mistakes and stood up, and became successful. I think those are one of the best mentors to get.

Coach? I would say, a lot of mentors have helped me, definitely. I do have a coach right now. I am being coached to help to balance my life. That is one goal I want to have this year because I’m just choked with a lot of work. So I did hire a coach and yeah, so far so good. So far so good. What’s your take on this, Toni?

Toni: Well, I would say to help out Mitch, maybe, the first thing that you need to identify is, what is it that you want mentorship around? So you need to identify what your mentorship objective is. Because if there’s one thing that I learned by meeting different mentor circles is that there’s no such thing as one mentor for everything. 

So you look for people whom you want to model. So even in my case, I have a mentor in the insurance industry. I also have another mentor for social media branding or social media growth. And then I have Sean Si whom I consider as my mentor when it comes to leadership. Right? Leadership. I even have another one just simply for, like what said more of like a life coach. Right? Because, you know, that’s why I’m very grateful that I have a trusted female mentor that I can turn to for advice and inspiration even as someone who is still quite new in the finance industry.

Her name’s Joan. I’m not sure if she’s tuned in, but you know, she taught me how to become a tough performer. She taught me how to build relationships with clients. So in a sense, when you do have a mentor/coach, you can model them so that you can accelerate your own success. So it really helps when you have guidance who can help, especially when you’re starting out new in the industry that you want to be in.

Sean: Yeah. Very good answer. So with mentors, if you do get a mentor, there are things that are important for a mentor. Number one thing that’s important is you remember what the mentor gave you. The advice. Number two, you actually do some of it. Whether you do it exactly as the mentors said it, or maybe how you think is best, doesn’t matter as long as you do something about it. And you have to be the one to schedule routinely with your mentor. So I do have a mentor right now. I am learning. A lot actually. Super. I am learning so much. And I scheduled with him and I wrote my questions before I met him.

That’s so important because there are some people who come to me for mentorship, sit down and then, you know, like nothing, we just talk. But, you know, a mentor-mentee relationship is all about asking questions. So before I ask this person for one hour of his time, I make sure that I have a lot of questions already. Questions that I really want to know the answer to and how he’s doing it. And then when I sit down that one or I ask it. And after the one hour is done, I make sure to cut it there. I don’t take up more of his time. That’s how I do it.

And that’s also how I run my mentorship meetings. So people I mentor from my team, I tell them I only require three things every mentorship session. Number one would be, what did we talk about last week? Number two, what did you do about it? And lastly, ask me your questions for this round. So three things, that’s it. Keep it simple. Yeah. People who want me to mentor them. That’s also what we do, usually.

I have one from Chan. Easy. How do you find a mentor?

The easy way. Do what Toni did. She reached out to me via LinkedIn. Just left me a message and we got in touch. I connected with her and right now she’s here. We learn from each other. I haven’t touched my TikTok yet, definitely. But I can learn from her how to make it fly.

Usually it’s just dropping them a message, you know. That’s how you find mentors. You just look at their story, see if they’re ahead of you and they’ve made mistakes and learn from it. And when you see a certain mentor that you want to learn from, just hit them up. Just leave a chat message. Cause the worst thing that can happen is they will ignore you or they miss your chat. That’s the worst thing. They will not embarrass you. That’s how you find mentors. Just hit them up. Don’t be shy. So, easy.

That’s how I find my mentors. And usually I add a little bit to it like when I leave them a message, usually I say, “Hey, can I get an hour of your time? Maybe we can have lunch or dinner and I’ll pay. I’ll pay, you pray and I’ll ask you questions.” That’s how I do it. That’s how you can do it as well.

I’m going to answer more questions from Guiller Naval Villaflor. What do you think is more important, passion or practicality?

Both have to come into play, but if you’re going to choose one, definitely practicality. Definitely practicality. Why is it practicality is because if you’re so passionate about something trivial, for example, the harmonica. I am trying to actually learn harmonica right now. And I think if I’m so passionate about this, but I’m not that good, you know, I’m not the best harmonica player in the world, I’m not going to make money from it and I’m not going to be able to eat or feed my family.

So I think no matter how passionate you are about something, if there’s no demand for it, or if you’re not number one, it’s not going to work out for you. So practicality, I think, is more important in this case, because if you’re practical, you know what’s going to feed yourself, you know, you know what’s going to feed your family. Even if you’re not passionate about the work, but it’s what works for you, then definitely go for that. I hope that makes sense. And I hope that added value to you today.

Toni: Can you love a man that only earns minimum wage?

Sean: Doesn’t matter. If you’re the guy, it’s easy to answer. Like the minimum wage doesn’t matter because like the guys were the ones who should provide. Right? We’re the ones who should provide. So we’re the ones who should be earning more than minimum wage. That is our biblical duty as husbands to provide, to protect, to lead, and to love. So it’s easy for me to answer that. But I think for you, it’s interesting to know the answer.

Toni: In my case. Yeah. Why not? Why not? If it makes any, I mean, that’s why they say when you pursue money or you want to build wealth, you need to go your biggest why. And if your biggest why is to, you know, feel happy or have a partner that would go through all the highs and lows then why not. I can always make money for myself. Right?

Sean: My advice for the guys out there that you don’t think you’re earning as much, this is my advice for you. If the girl loves you and you don’t think you’re earning as much, that’s true love, my friend.

Toni:  Wow.

Sean: When I met my wife now, she’s not here, but when I met her, I was homeless. I wasn’t making a lot of money and it’s embarrassing. Right? And I haven’t shared this ever in the live, but there was a time when we were chatting on Yahoo messenger. We were chatting and during that time I was so hungry, my salary came in late with my OJT. I was kicked out of the house. I had nothing.

And she offered to help out, like she said, would you like me to deposit a certain amount so that you can eat? Because we were chatting and I asked her if she had lunch. I don’t know why I asked that and she asked it back, and I said, no. It was like 4:00 PM. I was really hungry. And I said, because I don’t have money. As sad as it sounds, she offered to help.

That’s how poor I was. I was commuting from BF Parañaque to Cuba to meet her. And one commute to get there, I have to ride the tricycle, jeep, bus, MRT, jeep, and then walk. One way. That’s how many vehicles I would ride going to her one way. So I was really that poor. S yeah, I know it’s true love. So to the guys out there, if she loves you, that’s true love right there.

Toni: I hope it’s the same for me in the near future.

Sean: Pray about it. You know, I always teach even my kids because they asked me. I have two boys and they asked me, “Papa, how do we have a good wife someday?” So I tell them only God can give you a good wife. You pray about it. You pray about it.

Toni: This is from Chan. He’s a streamer that I know and he asks, what is one reason that can make you get out of bed in the morning?

One reason, I slept too long. That’s the first thing that came to mind. I should get out.

Toni: Okay. I was looking for inspiration. All right. That’s well-said.

Sean: Practical. Right?

Toni: What’s the real answer? That’s it.

Sean: If in terms of something that inspires me or I want to tackle the day, I guess it’s, oh man. I guess it’s my people, you know. Like, knowing that I have people waiting for me, waiting for me to go online, waiting for me to say something, waiting for me to move, yeah, that gets me out of bed. My people. How about you, Toni?

Toni: Okay, my answer? I learned this recently and they say, respect your dreams. So you know, when you respect something or when you respect someone, you don’t take it for granted. Right? You value it. So whenever I feel as if, okay, I think I’ve been in bed too long, or I feel like I’m in a slump or I don’t feel motivated to do anything, any task for today, I just think, is this how I’m going to treat someone I respect or I value? So it’s the same.

So that helps me, you know, get up in the morning. But I guess the majority of it is really just discipline. Like I learned not to rely more on your motivation and really develop the habit of just waking up at a certain hour of the day and just getting things done.