Mike Greene – The Secret Millionaire

MIKE GREENE ON MENTORING

About 15 years ago, one of my bosses suggested I get a mentor and I thought it sounded all sort of cliché and American, but I decided I’d go for it. And I got a mentor, and it worked out really well. Then about 12 years ago I got a mentor who really did make a difference, probably because he really challenged me. He made some of the biggest changes to the way I look at life and business, and the way he did that was through a couple of things.

First, he taught me about transition mapping, which is partly what the book is based on. I’ve refined it a bit and applied my own behavioural profiling to it, but he started me down that path of three year planning in detail, with a structure, on one page. And it’s very important that it’s a one-page strategy, rather than reams of paper or a telephone book. The reality is, if it’s not on one page it won’t be read, if it’s not read it won’t be acted on, and if it’s not acted on, you won’t achieve it.
“Secondly, he said to me that because I love what I do, there’s a danger that I do it all the time and that I’m so close to it I don’t see it as clearly as I could, and don’t see the bigger picture and opportunities around it. So, he suggested to me that each year I punctuate that year with something that becomes an exclamation mark in my life, if you like. It defines that year and makes a real difference of it – because if you do what you love one year passes into the next and time passes quickly. But also, it took me so far away from my ‘normal’ that I looked back from afar and got an overview without being too caught up in the busy-ness of business.

So I did a couple of mountains, marathons and long-distance cycles, and that’s why I’m doing the Clipper race next year. Every year for the past 12 years I’ve done something that has taken me geographically a long way from home, but also away from technology, time, emails – and family, to some degree, for a short period – often in quite a remote location where there’s time to think.
Other than me buying a lunch or a dinner my mentors never charged me, and because I’d not paid for any of my mentoring, I was more than happy to give back and mentor others. I’ve done that with major global blue chips, at company level, at individual level, and I’ve also done it with homeless people. The process works at whatever level. It forms most of what I do now.