When Your Mentor’s Business Goes Bust

Most people would agree that if you want to succeed in business, then you need to have a great business mentor. But have you ever considered what would happen if your mentor’s business went bust. If you think that could never happen, then consider that has been the experience of some of the greatest businessmen. Richard Branson’s mentor, for instance, was Freddie Laker.

So what does actually happen when your mentor’s business goes bust, and more importantly what lessons are there to be learned?

Here’s a great little article I came across on this very subject by Mark Anastasi, author of The New York Times Bestseller The Laptop Millionaire: How Anyone Can Escape the 9 to 5 and Make Money Online.

Here are Mark’s considered observations on this subject:

In the past few months, even as my own business has gone from strength to strength, I have observed:
– Mentor #1: lost £2 million pounds when the UK real estate bubble burst.
– Mentor #2: went from £3.75m a year to having just 300 pounds to his name, because of a nasty divorce.
– Mentor #3: lost 75% of his assets and became an alcoholic when his wife left him
– Mentor #4: is being accused of setting up a Ponzi scheme and defrauding investors of millions of euros
– Mentor #5: went from $10,000 a month in passive income to zero when Google introduced the ‘Penguin’ update and his sites disappeared from the search engines.

Here are the 4 lessons I’ve taken from this:

1) Don’t be lazy. Don’t be greedy.

In almost every single case they got too greedy, and that proved to be their downfall.
If you are motivated by a sense of purpose, a mission that gets you excited about life, rather than just ‘doing it for the money’, you probably won’t experience these sorts of life ‘crashes’.

2) Always add more value

My business has grown year after year for 8 straight years because I’ve kept creating content and events that people enjoy, value, and benefit from. Profits may not be stratospheric, but are consistent and sustainable.
Money is nothing but the measure of how much value you are creating for other people.
Or, like Brian Tracy says, ‘You get paid in direct proportion to the amount of value that you deliver according to the marketplace.’
Does your business mentor have a sustainable business model?

3) Don’t rely on just a single source of income or traffic.

If your business is reliant exclusively on Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. you don’t have a business. Instead, use the Internet and these aforementioned websites to build a list of loyal fans, subscribers, and clients that want to do business with you over and over again, for years to come.

4) “Happy Wife, Happy Life!”

My South African friend Craig often reminds me of this saying. ‘Happy Wife, Happy Life!’
A loving and nurturing relationship, and having a supportive partner, can be the best asset on your quest for financial independence.

Oh, and a fifth lesson:

What was it about my own mindset that attracted these specific individuals into my life?
Was it naivety? Is this part of growing up as a business owner? Or was it my own greed glands kicking in? Article In Full

Another standout probability of a mentor going bust, is the likelihood that they will rise again as the strength of the mentality that enabled them to originally rise to the top will still be there to help them rise again, albeit older and wiser. Freddie Laker after all, rose again after his spectacular fall, as have many others. As one of the lyrics in the well known Frank Sinatra song “That’s Life” puts it:

Each time I find myself flat on my face,
I pick myself up and get back in the race.

Hopefully the experience of your mentor’s business going bust is something that won’t happen to you and the better your mentor is, the less likely it is to happen. If it should happen then this article will help you to stay on track with your own goals. It would be good to have your own thoughts on this subject, especially if you’ve seen your own mentor’s business go bust.

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Tagged with: Business • bust • mentor