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A successful business is often made of research and insight, luck, a lot of hard work and resiliency. However, an entrepreneur can work their tail off only to have their business fail, sometimes within a matter of months or years from the time they start. Now, a top entrepreneur mentor and expert at guiding high performers to find their deepest zone of genius, the road to success for Mike Zeller wasn’t always always an easy road. Becoming an ‘overnight success’ is quite rare and those who tap into their highest potential are often well aware of just how challenging the journey can truly be. It is for these reasons Mike is quite transparent about losing over $300,000 in three of his businesses within the course of a year, from playing out of position. He understands firsthand the confusion and frustration over trying to understand what went wrong and why.
Today, Mike Zeller has several businesses that have done hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. He has founded over 16 companies and has been involved in investor-backed startups that raised over $5 million. Zeller has partnered in over ten ventures and has quite impressively been a mentor to over 400 entrepreneurs all over the globe.
Zeller is a walking example and inspiration to entrepreneurs that too experience the growing pains of success, for it is not always a linear path. Precisely how he has accomplished these feats is the subject of many of his resources, talks, and mentoring. Below is a glimpse of what is required to push through the noise and clear your path towards success:
Learn from Past Mistakes
Zeller does not hide the fact that he has made some business mistakes in the past. In fact, he publishes some of his biggest losses on his website, noting that he lost nearly $1 million in one year, while also ending up in debt due to making some poor business decisions.
He shares all of this information so that others can see a real example of learning from mistakes. He teaches that if he can turn around from his business mistakes and bad investments, so can others. At the heart of his mentorship philosophy is leading by example and being an authority with direct experience.
Creating the Ultimate Balance
Mike Zeller believes that a successful person can have it all; harmonialy balance in your truest desires and potential. He claims people can be successful in both their personal life and their working life. They can be both wealthy and generous. They can be both an influencer in their community while also being kind to those around them.
He has studied under huge names in entrepreneurship and motivation, including Tony Robbins, Russell Brunson, and Jay Abraham, just to name a few. His methods take some of the best of these gurus and combine it with his own flair that is focused on helping others find their gifts and ultimate passion.
Everyone has a talent, a dream or a gift that they want to tap into or find, and Zeller helps clients not only do that from a business and entrepreneurship perspective, but also in a holistic, full-circle way that accounts for their entire life.
How Mentorship Plays a Role in Personal and Professional Development
Zeller is a firm believer in the power of mentorship. He serves as a mentor for a wide segment of high-level entrepreneurs. In Zeller’s approach to mentorship, he sees it as “the age-old art of helping someone grow into a new identity,” he adds, “what many people forget, is that your identity precedes your destiny.”
Mentorship is more than being just a cheerleader for someone else or pointing out all their flaws. It addresses some of the reasons that the person feels stuck or cannot seem to push through a certain weakness that needs to be addressed. Ultimately, Zeller finds that once someone taps into their new identity through mentorship, they tend not to regress.
A great mentor, according to Zeller, is more than a coach or a teacher. “A great mentor comes alongside you and gives you a vision of yourself from a new more powerful perspective. A perspective that is in fact more real and true than your present reality.” What if your present reality is the real imposter and your higher level self is the truth?”.” This type of internal discovery also helps entrepreneurs find and actualize a path forward that they may have always known was possible but were unsure of how to achieve it.
In many cases, an entrepreneur already knows some of their flaws that need to be addressed. However, in other situations, an entrepreneur may think that they have a particular issue, but that is not what is actually causing their inability to tap into their full potential. They might also have belief barriers about what they can and cannot do or how things should or should not be done that have to be addressed as part of the mentorship process.
Creating a Productive Mentor-Mentee Relationship
A good mentor will not just periodically meet a mentee for coffee and provide general information. Instead, Zeller suggests that a mentor should take the relationship further so the mentee can get some real pragmatic value out of it.
Mike Zeller sees several key areas that make the relationship more meaningful and productive:
- Connect with empathy.
Empathy creates a strong bond between the mentee and mentor. If the two people cannot form this connection, then the relationship may not be as fruitful to either party.
It is the obligation of the mentor to find a way to connect and relate to what is happening in the personal or professional life of the mentee.
- Establish authority.
Authority does not imply dominance. Instead, authority in this type of relationship means showing the mentee why the mentor has the experience and knowledge to be an authority on the subject.
The subject can be as broad as professional development in general or as narrowly tailored as dealing with the specific issue that the mentee needs addressed. Whatever the case, the mentor needs to come from a place of authority, or the mentor’s knowledge or information may not be useful to the mentee.
- Impart belief.
The mentor’s role is to help the mentee believe in themselves. The mentor shows the mentee that they are capable of addressing whatever problem comes their way, often by tapping into internal knowledge, passion, or drive that the mentee may not have realized that they had.
According to Zeller, the belief prong is vital: “it is what carries someone forward to a new identity. It addresses the massive gap between what they knew they were capable of and how they’re actually showing up in life.”
Following these new beliefs, the mentors next step is to create an actionable roadmap to step into the next level of identity and be accountable to it.
Mike Zeller as a Mentor
Mike Zeller makes himself available as a mentor to entrepreneurs around the world. He takes great pride in helping entrepreneurs tap into their new identity and move forward in their careers and professional life. If you are ready to elevate to your highest self and take the first step to actualizing the life you have always dreamed of, contact Mike to learn more.
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