When you go to someone for advice, be it a mentor, a coach, an attorney, or anyone else, always consider the most important question before agreeing to enlist them as your advisor.
Why are they in their profession? You should be much more concerned with WHY they are doing this than with what they can do.
The vast majority of the time, the truth is that they do it for money. It is their job, their business, the way they earn a living to achieve their goals.
The problem is that when someone is giving you advice to supposedly help you in some way, so that maybe they get you out of a problem, and at the same time they do it for the purpose of making money for themselves, there is always a conflict. of interests.
It may be subconscious, but the fact is, your deepest motivation is to have and keep a customer, which equates to long-term income.
With this as their main drive, they will never be able to subconsciously give you the best advice in the clearest and fastest way, because then they would lose the customer in one session and their income stream would fall short.
You should always ask this question of anyone, including your doctor. Ask them; ‘Why are you a doctor? Is it a good job, a good business or is it because you have sincerely always wanted to end people’s suffering?
If you’re a business coach or mentor, it’s because they couldn’t get any other jobs and this was an easy way that they thought they could make a lot of money. If they are advising you on how to make money, how much do they have?
If you are a lawyer, do they really want to help you out of your problem or are they just setting you up for a problem later so that they have more work to fix that problem, or perhaps lengthen the work so they can charge more? rates for more hours spent.
In business, when someone says; “Believe me, I am an honest person.” they are really saying; “I have a fool here that I can milk.”
This most important question to ask will determine the quality of the advice and the sincerity behind the person you turn to for help.
You may never get an honest answer, in fact you should always assume they are lying, but you can look them in the eye when they answer and at least get an idea of how bad they really are. Then you will know how much to trust them.
As Ethic # 1 says on Ethicism.org; “Take full responsibility for everything in your life”
The reason this principle is so important is to keep you from feeling silly and to avoid being fooled. When you trust someone and they cheat on you, you feel like a fool. That kills your self esteem.
But if you approach each situation with an objective reality, the result will never hurt you because you entered with your eyes open. You are not surprised when you get wet walking in the rain.
Be objective in your dealings with people whenever money is involved and you will always stay strong.