Here is a Chapter of one of the books I’m getting ready to release to the publisher…check it out.

Chapter 4: Mentors and Coaches and Gurus, Oh My!

            Get One!

            End of Chapter.

            Okay, on to Chapter 5…What?  That’s all you really need to know isn’t it? You Impatient Entrepreneurs don’t want to read another 3 - 4 pages talking about Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan having coaches do you? You don’t really want to hear some sappy story of how a mentor in my life stopped me from running down a path of self-destruction?

            Ssshhheeeessshhh! Are you serious? Listen up Impatient Entrepreneurs, I apologize but the publisher is going to force me to write more than “Get One!” in this chapter, sooooo….uhmm…where do I start?

            Oh I got it…A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…WHAT NOW!?!?

            Great, somebody named Spielberg just called and said I can’t tell you all about a favorite movie of my kids, Star Wars. Man, you got Darth Sidious and Obi-Wan mentoring the same person. Good and Dark side mentors all in one series of movies!

            Well if I can’t do that let me briefly tell you about one mentor of mine and how he is responsible in part for this book and me still being alive to write it. His name was Pastor Jeff Brahim, a business man, a tough ghetto-raised street-fighter, and a man of God.

            By the time I got to be 26 years old, I had way too many street fights with money being bet on me to afford to pay for my living expenses in college (for the women in the audience that is a testosterone-filled confidence booster, in other words I was pretty confident in myself). I had a successful personal training business, ran a martial arts school, worked with 10 different chiropractors establishing their exercise therapy programs and was doing massage therapy on the side. I’d been on ESPN with one of my businesses, was a regular guest on a large radio talk show, and was recruited by a financial consulting company to teach seminars to the public. I worked five straight 16 hour days every week and then went out to party until 2 in the morning 6 nights a week.

            I was around people all but 3-4 hours a day…but I was one of the loneliest people in the world! I was so depressed that I daily wondered if life was worth living. I found myself crying one lonely Saturday night saying to myself, “This can’t be all there is to life!” There had to be more to life. I had money, a great car, friends, health, and…. an issue with my family that was driving me deeper into depression.

            You see I went out every night to drink, and I mean drink a lot! Young, single, in shape, decent looking, and with an out-going personality you’d think a guy in his 20’s would be scoping out the smorgasbord of women at the nightclubs, right? Well, if that’s what you said you’re right, but only partially right. You see, I also lived with an incredible amount of physical pain and was the only listening ear my emotionally distraught parents would talk to (translated vent to). They started unloading 30 years of anger about each other and life on me. I worked so hard to avoid free time. Then I felt guilty so I killed myself to go spend as much time as I could with them.

            My body reeled from being in so much pain from years of fighting with no equipment, stress, and some genetic deficiency that I often could barely breathe. That discipline thing kept me going. I drank up to a fifth of whiskey every couple of nights to deaden the emotional and physical pain I felt. Yet, every morning I’d crawl out of bed to my business because that’s what I was supposed to do.

            All the time thinking, “Is this all there is to life?”

            I mentioned that financial consulting company a couple of paragraphs ago. Seemed like a weird thing to through into my life didn’t it? Well, that’s where I met Pastor Jeff. He was part motivational speaker, part business genius, and part Bible study leader. As for me I was a dyslexic agnostic…I always wondered if there was a DOG?…some of you got that joke, congratulations. Now explain it to the people around you thinking the editor let a typo get through!

            Seriously, I hated that Bible crap and those whiney Christians. But this dude was different! He had a street hardened toughness that I had only seen in my dad. Yet he had this peaceful calm about him with a business sense that almost hypnotically pulled me to his classroom in our office complex. He taught business with a little Bible mixed in so I could at least listen to that. Heck, I thought it was cool that I discovered that there was a Book in the Bible that had my name on it, James!

            Pastor Jeff looked at my hands, still scarred from an incident at a bar several nights before and just started telling me about his childhood. It was like talking to a millionaire, highly educated version of my dad (an awesome man that had to drop out of school in the 8^th grade to support his family and worked in steel mills most of his life). Jeff won me over with stories of business savvy and street smarts combined. He told me how to improve my business and helped me start to pursue my passion to teach marketing and sales beyond the walls of the financial consulting company.

            Most of all, Jeff saw in me what nobody else had a clue even existed. He saw that I was hiding a death wish behind my hard-ass exterior. He knew how not to challenge me or confront me. He knew how to get me to focus on my passions and gifts of teaching complex concepts and making them simple to understand and use.

            After 9 months of him mentoring me in a very casual manor and teaching in our marketing meetings I discovered just how powerful that “Bible Stuff “was in the world of business, dealing with family, and coping with life in general.  He never pushed anything on me. I just kept asking about it. Something inside of me was telling me that maybe there is a purpose for my life. Maybe, just maybe, I could be happy without drinking every night or trying to work myself to death.

            I started going to lunch with Jeff to talk about business and The Bible, then I visited his church. As you may have guessed, I accepted Jesus as my Lord, but that’s not why I’m writing this right now. It’s all about that mentoring relationship that Pastor Jeff gave me that stopped a life from being terminated from a stupid chain of decisions on my part. Jeff mentored me way back in 1992 and 1993. He passed away soon after our time together.

            As I write this chapter my eyes have filled with tears numerous times. I think of this book being written as a way for me to honor my mentor. Jeff was a mentor that gave me hours of his time to help me grow as a man, and without saying a word got me to stop drinking. He got me focused on developing my other areas of interest and to start studying sales, marketing and business leadership. He taught me how to communicate with love and wisdom.

            I’m writing this today in large part due to Pastor Jeff Brahim seeing in me what nobody else saw and then taking the time to nurture my strengths and strangle my bad decision-making. So if this book has any impact on your life you can thank the late, great Jeff Brahim.

            This chapter is about coaches and mentors. We should all look to be mentored, but just as important you should look to be a mentor too. As a father of 3 of the world’s most incredible kids, I now know just how important my time with them is. I know how much I can shape their future and give them the love they need to have a solid emotional grounding in their lives that I never had.

            A Mastermind buddy of mine recently asked me to join him as a founding partner and a faculty member of a big-hearted, charity minded business called Mentor’s Club. Dr. Reggie Cochran is the Dean of Faculty for Mentor’s Club and has been both a friend and a coach for me. Like Jeff, Reggie has the patience of a Saint and the wisdom of the much sought after guru at the top of the mountain. He helps my overly Impatient Entrepreneurial Brain to settle down and to focus by asking all the right questions.

            He also keeps, politely, kicking me in the behind to get me moving on any one of my 147 different ideas of the day. So the action step for this chapter can be 2 steps. One is find a mentor by looking above you in the company or in your profession. Look for the opportunity to take a potential mentor out to lunch. Big Tip: Don’t jump down their throat with questions. Develop a relationship first. Start by asking around within your own personal network. Take it slow but never give up.

The second way to gain a mentoring or coaching relationship is to hire one. Honestly this is the only way I’ve had a mentor in my life since Pastor Jeff. I pay for it and it’s worth a thousand time what I’ve invested.

            This is going to be the fast track approach to your success. Hire the “Guru” in your industry that seems to fit your personality or style. If you can afford personalized coaching do that. If group coaching makes more sense financially go that way. Just don’t put off what could be the “one little step” that could be the difference between staying where you are in life and living your dream life.

            Big Tip #2: Go to www.TheHowToClub.com and get yourself involved there. This is a great organization that I volunteer literally thousands of dollars of my best material and time to help Chuck Norris and Shakira with their charity work. For about $1/day you get access to dozens of professional coaches and mentors and tens of thousands of dollars in courses ranging from martial arts to marketing and from lawn care to language skills.

            As I write this part of the book, I’m also writing a few new courses to be added to TheHowToClub.com. I was just on the phone with Edie Rather, the internationally known speaker and sales trainer. She has asked me to collaborate with her on 2 of the most in demand subjects of the century; copywriting and the Internet.