5 Reasons why teaching how to fish is difficult in business

I must say that after 10 years and mentoring over a 100 people, mentorship is not the easiest thing to do, even worse is mentoring people in business. Everyone wants to fish and get the right fish so to say. So a person will walk up to you and they will ask “Please be my mentor?”. It’s a simple enough request but one that has a lot of work that comes with it. In this request you need to be able to tell who is looking for a savior and who truly wants to do the work. For some they want you to make all the decisions for them and if you are not careful they will exhaust you with questions for every single action that they do. But I digress in this subject, let me stick to the subject of the article 5 reasons why teaching how to fish is difficult in business.

1. The Fish is the Problem

In most times a person wanting to start a business, sees the profit and the tonnes of money in the bank account. The person might already own a business and all they are thinking about is how to make millions. So it is no wonder that most companies close in the first 1 and half years after the start up has occurred. The problem in most cases is the fish, people see the fish more than they see the process to the fish. It is good to envision the target or to see what it is that you want, however it becomes a problem if you think that the fish will just land in your bucket and you go home a conqueror, there is more to business than just landing the fish.

2. The worm is forgotten

If you are going fishing you will need the worm or whatever it is standing in for the worm. Most people think about the fish but forget the worm that is used to catch the fish. There is an amount of work that is required to get the worm, and selecting the best worms for the job is necessary. So when a person comes to me, they are talking about the fish, I ask them about the worm. How much work you are prepared to getting the worm will tell us how much commitment one has to make. The killer part of being a mentor is when people expect you to help them get the worm by you getting the worm on their behalf. It is at this point that they are expecting you to do the work for them. Where is the experience in that? If you are going to go fishing then you must be prepared to do the donkey work to catch the worm. There is no glory in it when you let your mentor do everything for you or make decisions for you, otherwise you are just looking for someone to depend on. Besides, your mentor might have 1000 things to do besides what you are asking for.

3. Sitting is a problem

Most of the time I test people on their commitment by asking them to do the most boring and irritating thing  which requires patience. In most cases this is where we filter who is real and who is serious. For example I can ask a person to read a long book. Unknown to that person is that the key to their mentor-ship will be in that book and being patient to read it will be the answer. Sometimes you ask the person to do a research on the industry and after a week they come back with nothing in terms of details just generalized answers. You cannot catch fish if you are not willing to sit it out and wait for the fish to bite after researching on the best place to sit.

4. Sacrificing to buy the rod

Ever heard of someone who comes for mentor-ship and wants you to be the one to give them the capital. So imagine there are 100 people coming and each person wants 5,000 dollars , will it make sense? One would have to become a mentor-ship bank which gives out cash all the time. Teaching people how to fish is not about giving the person the fishing rod, it is about empowering the mind to understand how to get their own fishing rod. Until one is willing to sacrifice to get their fishing rod one might never learn to fish.  It is good to want to succeed in business but is very important to sacrifice for the success, and it all starts with the fishing rod.

5. The bucket is a problem

When you have a caught the fish, do you have a plan on what to do with it. From the moment the fish has been caught a plan is needed. Are you going to get the right bucket that goes with the fish, will there be water in the bucket, what size is the bucket, is the bucket strong enough for the fish to be carried in? So many question on the bucket, but how many people are willing to think about it. If you are now making the money what do you do with it, what happens to the profit, do you spend it, reinvest it, expand the business or are you just going to waste the money.

If you cannot read a small article we then know you are not looking for success you are looking for a distraction. Success is hard-work overtime that is focused on a singular target which is valuable to the person looking for it. It’s that simple.