Podcast Intro
Welcome back to a new episode of the Coaching Hive podcast, where we are focusing on the Coaching Hive Blueprint. We are now several weeks into our journey through the Blueprint. If you remember, we got started with a mindful vision, which really creates a foundation for everything that you do in your business. Then we talked about creating a daily rhythm so that you get things done this week.
We are going to shift gears a little bit and talk about mentors and peers. I don’t know about you, but being an entrepreneur, building a business of any kind, whether it’s a side hustle, a full-time or part-time gig is lonely. You can feel like there are all of these opportunities to connect, but no real opportunities to connect.
So this week we are going to spend our time talking about mentoring, finding a mentor. What do you look for in a mentor? And we’re also going to talk about the importance of surrounding yourself with peers who are working toward building their business as well, because we are certainly better together.
If you are ready to get started, grab that notebook, grab your tablet, whatever you’re taking notes on today, grab a cup of water, a snack, whatever you need to stay focused. And if you’re ready with our theme of simplicity, clarity, and vision for 2022 in mind, let’s jump in.
Mentors and Peers: A Necessity to Success
Here we are. We have this mindful vision. We know kind of what we want for our business. It’s creating a foundation for everything that we’re doing.
You have even now created some semblance of a daily rhythm, knowing that your daily rhythm or routine is going to ebb and flow; there are going to be adjustments. Those adjustments will probably happen the moment you get everything going just the way you want it to, something will shift and your daily rhythm will have to shift. That’s okay. The idea behind having a rhythm is knowing that you have time and focus to get things done, knowing that you’re not scrambling at the last minute and really just making time for your business.
Today I promised you we’d talk all about mentors and peers. Let’s start with the concept of surrounding yourself with peers or colleagues, people who are on a similar path that you’re on. We know that when we have social support, and social in this case means “others” not necessarily like hanging out and having dinner together, we are much better prepared to take action. Our mental health is better. Our physical health is better. Our whole wellness is just better.
If having peer support colleagues who are in your corner, working towards similar things is so important. Why do we shy away from it? Well, I have a theory on this.
I hope you’ll indulge me in sharing my theory. I think that we have gotten so used to having big groups, like Facebook groups that you belong to, at our beck and call where we can post any time of the day and almost always someone will be there to respond. I think we’ve gotten away from the intention of sitting down with the same people over and over and moving through this journey together. Maybe we have gotten away from it because they aren’t always available. Your peers and your tight-knit circle may not always respond to you right away, but if you hop in that Facebook group there’s always someone there. So I think that we have gotten kind of safe and secure in the Opportunity to have instant feedback.
But here’s what happens when you connect with a peer group that you are working together with over time. Yes, they are not going to respond to you in 30 seconds, however, they know where you’ve been, where you want to be, where you are right now, and how to think through the question that you’re asking in a way that takes all of that into account. These people know you; they know what you want. They know where your challenges lie. They know what your strengths are and help you lean into those strengths and move through the challenges with more ease.
So whenever someone asks me, do I really need to get a group together of peers and work with them and set up times to meet? My answer is yes, because those are going to be the people that follow you through your career. Those are going to be the people that walk alongside you. They link arms with you in a way that participating in a big anonymous Facebook group won’t give you when you post your question on the Facebook group with a thousand people. They have no idea who your clients are, who your customers are, what exactly you’re trying to accomplish in your business, what stakes are present, and what’s actually going on. They don’t know if right now you are so limited in your time because you’ve got family stuff going on that offering a big grandiose solution is not anywhere in the cards or the deck.
Asking that same question to your peer community, a curated community that you have of peers walking the journey with you day after day, week after week and month after month, they do know. And that means that their wisdom, their ideas, their advice is going to be tailored to what you need right now.
Doesn’t that sound amazing?
Having a peer community at your fingertips, not instantaneous, but at your fingertips, who knows what you want, where you’re headed, where you are right now, and can offer you information, advice, concepts, tools, techniques that fit your exact situation.
So when someone asks me, do I really need to develop a peer community? My answer is 1000%! Yes, you do. It’s critical to your success.
Now, finding your peer community is going to take time. Here at the Coaching Hive we have a peer community where our coaches get together throughout the month and then live on a Zoom call twice a month. They are coming together. They get to know one another. Yes, there’s a social aspect to it where we know that someone’s drum kit might be sold or someone else is moving, or maybe someone else has been experiencing illness in their family. We know all of these things, which means that the information and the ideas that are exchanged are custom. They’re tailored to that coach at that moment. And it’s neat to see those light bulbs go off. It’s neat to see you become invested in your peers and their success, and you get excited.
You celebrate with them and you mourn losses and things that happen in the business and your life, right alongside them. You are creating a genuine connection based on relationship and history. It’s more powerful. It will help you move further in your business than the random questions that you post in a Facebook group to a mass of people who are not with you all the time.
Those are my thoughts on peer communities. Do you need one? Yes. Will it take some time to identify that peer community and really settle in? Absolutely. Is it worth it? 1000000%.
Here’s the other side of it. When you’re working in a peer community, a lot of times everyone’s kind of around the same place and that’s what draws you together because you’re all experiencing the same challenges.
You know what it feels like you feel that comradery, but when everyone’s at the same place, it’s easy to get all stuck together in that place. This is where the power of a mentor comes into play. Having a mentor, someone who is at least 10% ahead, if not more in the journey to guide you, to offer insights, to go before you and test things out.
That is what allows you to make greater progress in building your business, furthering your career, or improving your skills. Having a mentor is critical, just like having a peer community. Now, could you conceivably say that in the Facebook group there are people ahead of me. I just need to listen to what they’re doing. In part, yes. In a bigger way, no, because once more, just like with that peer community, that person that you see, who’s 10%, 20% ahead of you, they run their very specific business. They are managing their own strengths, their own challenges in a very specific way that may or may not apply to your situation. Having a mentor who is dedicated to knowing where you’re at, what you need, where you’re headed, that’s going to help you get the right information. The mentor is going to know what tools to share with you, which tools to say, oh my goodness, this is not going to be a good fit. You know, if you get a whole lot of time down the road, you can certainly check it out, but right now it’s going to be a distraction.
A mentor is someone who is focused on following your journey and walking alongside you, not dropping in from time to time. Someone who is committed to walking that path to helping you build your career or your business, whatever that looks like, whether it is a side hustle, a part-time job, a full-time job, whatever it looks like for you. That mentor is focused on you, your wellbeing and forward momentum. Now, one question that I often get is, or one statement that I hear being made is “I don’t have money for a mentor”. I get it, building a business has costs just rolling in. And unless you’ve got the income coming in to balance it out, it feels overwhelming.
You may be thinking, I’ll wait for the mentor until I’m making more money. Let me ask you a few questions here. First of all, what would happen if having a mentor actually gets you to making money faster? Because they can see the gaps, the situations, the opportunities that you need to focus on. And so you get there faster.
Now, let me ask you another question. What if mentoring isn’t necessarily a one-on-one thing? What if you can gain great momentum, great help, and meaningful advice in a group setting? Now, if you are a coach, you know that group coaching is always going to be more economical than one-on-one coaching, right? Because there are more people paying for that coach’s hour of time or two hours or whatever that looks like, which means it brings that participant’s costs down. So if you are in the boat of thinking, I can’t afford a mentor, I highly encourage you to find a group mentoring situation.
This is what we do inside the Coaching Hive. We utilize group mentoring so that we come together as a group and you can bring your specific questions. There are hot seats available where you can share what’s going on. There’s time dedicated to your problem, your challenge, or your question. Everyone else benefits from hearing about where you are and what you’re considering. And you benefit from that one-on-one attention in small snippets. So if you are thinking to yourself it is too much money, I don’t have the money for a mentor then search.
There are so many options out there. Yes, there are really expensive mentoring situations out there, but there are also affordable mentors. There are affordable mentoring situations out there that you can use, especially as you’re getting going. And then you never know, maybe that mentor has other options where you can get more one-on-one attention or more direct access, or even just more frequent access.
For example, inside the Coaching Hive, we have a Coaching Hive Elite tier where we meet for co-working sessions once a week, we meet twice a month for peer masterminds, where there are 12 minutes solely devoted to you and your question. Everyone is focused on how they can help you move forward. We also have an extra mentoring call just for our Elite members.
Like I said, there are always options available at different price points. Please don’t let money be what stops you from using a mentor because that mentor is going to help you take faster steps and faster action. And the faster we take action, the sooner we know how to adjust. The sooner we get back out there and try again. Just like changing any kind of behavior, it’s a trial and adjustment process. When building your coaching career or building your career as an entrepreneur, you’re going to go through a trial and adjustment process over and over. It’s a rinse and repeat situation. Having a mentor helps you go through that, get to that rinse and repeat cycle faster, with more focus so that you’re shifting the things that need to be shifted.
And you’re leaving alone. The things that you need to leave alone. It takes some of the question out of what to do and adds in that confidence. And that confidence tends to seep through everything.
So there you have it. Do you need a peer community? Yes. Do you need a mentor? Yes.
Action Item for the Week
Your action item for this week is going to make you think a little bit stretch a little bit because I want you to do a little bit of research. I want you to think about and research who could be your mentor. Think about what you need to take the next step and your entrepreneurial journey or your coaching journey, building your business, whatever you’re calling it, think about what you need. And then think about what each mentor that you identify has to offer.
For instance, as a mentor, I have been a health coach instructor. So I know in depth, the skills, the tools that you use as a health coach. I’ve built two coaching businesses using the coaching I Blueprint framework. I am also a StoryBrand Certified Guide so I can help you with your messaging, which means you can get to your ideal clients with a little bit more ease and without so much confusion.
Ask questions of your potential mentors. How can they help you? What are they reading? What is the goal of mentoring in their mind? Are they going to tell you what to do or are they going to walk alongside you? Will they do both based on what you need in the moment?
The same goes for your community. I want you to start researching who might be part of your peer community. If you developed a relationship with a few coaches, as you went through a training program, or as you built a business, if you’re just an entrepreneur, look for people with whom you have a connection, and you’re kind of moving in the same, the same direction, trying to move forward.
You’re committed. You’re ready to take those action steps and start creating lists of potential peer colleagues that you might want to sit down with, get to know, and really work with over some length of time. Like I said, that’s kind of built into our Coaching Hive model is we have that peer community. We take the hard work out of it.
As coaches come to the Coaching Hive, they are applying. Then they’re sitting down and talking with me before they join our community. What happens is we have a really cohesive community that is supportive and open and full of people, willing to step outside their comfort zone, get a little uncomfortable and try something new. I want you to find that too.
I want you to find that peer community and that mentor who’s going to help you to grow, help you to step outside your comfort zone, and really explore the possibilities available to you.
I know this is a big ask. I know that the action item will take you some time this week. So go ahead and let it be a multi-week action item if you need.
How are you feeling now with that in mind?
I want you to take a moment and celebrate because we’ve had an opportunity to make a few micro decisions over the last few weeks. You decided to get clearer on your vision. You decided to start exploring your daily rhythm. And today you are making the decision to really get serious about finding a collaborative, supportive peer community, and mentor.
This is going to be an iterative process. Every step along the journey is an iterative process. Just like most roads are two way. This journey is two way. You might find yourself at one stage of the journey and then heading back to make a few adjustments along the way. The key is to keep making decisions. The key is to keep putting things into action every single day in your business. You’re following a blueprint. When you have a blueprint, you’re going to stay on track. It’s going to help you keep moving forward and keep you from getting stuck, or if you do get stuck, you can look at where you are in the journey and identify the next step so that you can keep going.
I am so excited that you are here with me. If you have not had a chance to take the Coaching Hive Blueprint Assessment, I’d love to invite you to do that because it’s going to give you a sneak peek into the upcoming stages, but even more importantly, it’s going to give you some insight into what’s already working in your business and where do you need to focus some more attention? And you can find the assessment at www.coachinghive.com/assessment. Once you take that assessment, you will receive a report in your email inbox. So be sure to find that and download that PDF. Take some time to read through it. And then you’ll notice that you’ll get a second email from me, inviting you to set up a time to talk about your results so that you can take that next step. We can explore. If the Coaching Hive is the right next step for you, and if not, what the next right step is, please know that the email inviting you to set up a time to talk is not automated, which means it might take me 24 to 48 hours to review your results, and then send you that email to schedule your 15 minute call.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I love the concept of being able to put things into action. I cannot stand when things get stagnant, knowing what steps to take, following a Blueprint, it just makes everything simpler and I am looking forward to our coming week’s episodes, where we continue talking about our concepts of micro decisions and the Blueprint.
If at any point you are sitting in your chair, you’re taking a walk, you’ve got your earbuds in and you’re listening to me and thinking to yourself, wait a minute, I need more help. I need a mentor. I need a peer community. I need someone who can help me figure out what to say to my potential clients. I’m here DM me on Instagram at www.instagram.com/coachinghive and we’ll talk about the options. We’ll talk about what’s available so that you can keep moving forward. We’ll talk about what fits your needs.
As always, I want to thank you so much for listening to today’s podcast and I have a shameless ask. If you got something out of today’s podcast episode, please rate and leave a review for me. I love seeing those reviews. I look at them, it helps me plan, future content, know how to better serve you. And of course it lets me know that you’re listening and building that coaching business or that business in general of your dreams.
And if you feel so compelled, I would love for you to share this podcast episode with someone who might need to hear it. You can do it so easily. Just keep it simple. If you want to share it with your community, your friends, just snap a screenshot on your phone, post it in your Instagram stories, your Facebook stories on your Facebook wall, your Instagram feed tag me. And let me know that way I can hop in and answer any questions that pop up in your circle of friends and peers. If you are tagging me on Instagram, remember it’s www.instagram.com/coachinghive. And if you are on Facebook, it’s www.facebook.com/coachinghivelife.
That’s all for now! I look forward to seeing you back here next week for another episode of the Coaching Hive podcast, where a focus on mentoring and community removes the overwhelm of building your successful coaching business and adds in a dose of momentum.
Until next time, have a healthy, safe, and happy week.
~ Dr. Moira
