Post by terrywheats16 on Apr 5, 2018 15:08:21 GMT -5
Find mentors. Good mentors will make your dreams achievable more quickly. The best mentors are those who have done what you are trying to accomplish before, successfully, and who are helping you for friendship or self-fulfillment reasons. They may be formal Board of Advisor or Director members, friends, colleagues, or interested peers. Service providers can be mentors as well, but be careful, as there is always a potential for a conflict of interest when someone is trying to sell you something and offering advice at the same time. Ethical advisors will be able to navigate this conflict, but the world abounds with unethical people who will exploit it to their advantage. We had a local outsourced accounting firm whose CEO we invited to our Board of Advisors, and all of his advice seemed to result in his firm increasing our billings by an order of magnitude. By the time I finally removed his firm and insourced their work, he had come close to financially devastating my firm. The best mentors don't need anything from you, but if you have an arrangement with them for payment in cash or stock, ensure that arrangement is clear and the advisor doesn't have an interest in pushing you in a specific direction for their own gain.