The School of Greatness - 319 Skills, Value, and Mentors

Episode Date: April 22, 2016

"Always give back and pay it forward." - Lewis Howes If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at http://lewishowes.com/319

This is 5-Minute Friday, Skills, Values, Mentors. What's up everyone? Welcome to this episode. I just got back from giving a speech at my alma mater, Principia College. And as I'm speaking right now, I'm driving past the bluffs of Elsa, Illinois, towards Alton, Illinois, just along the Mississippi River. The moon is a full moon tonight, and the river is glistening and shining. And I just gave a talk to some of the alumni and also a lot of the students at Principia College who are about to graduate here in a couple weeks.

And I shared a story about my life at college 11 years ago when I graduated and what my life was like there when I had really bad grades. I was poor in school. I was unsure of myself. I didn't know what was going to happen after school and after football, which was my dream. And then talking about the adversity and the challenges and the obstacles and opportunities and incredible achievements that have also happened over the last 10, 11 years. fun to go back to the place where it kind of all began and shed some wisdom and shed some light on everything that those kids are about to face for the next decade of their life. And I shared a lot of stories. I answered a lot of questions, but it came down to skills, value,

and mentors was the common theme. Skills. When you are in school or you are trying to achieve a dream and you're leaving one job to the next and you're trying to achieve something, you need to learn to develop new skills. Someone asked the question, well, what if I'm not really enjoying school? I feel like it's kind of average. I'm not getting a lot out of it.

Should I stay in school? And I said, you know, that's up to you. But I got a lot of value from being in school and the communication I learned and the sports experiences I got. But what I suggested is, listen, if you're doing something that you're not super excited about right now, but you know it's going to help you long term. What you should focus on is developing the skill of mastering the thing that you're not excited about. You're in school for a couple more years. Master the art of learning. Master the art of communication. Master the art of completing homework in excellence. Master the art of becoming better at everything you do. Even if it's not that fun, not that enjoyable, become better and master the skill. That's number one.

You've got to be able to learn how to master skills because that's going to translate into life after college or life after the job or life after this and that. So one of the key things that great people do is they learn how to master skills and they do full immersion into mastery. So master skills and continue to add tools to your tool belt. Add these skills to your tool belt. That's the first thing.

The second thing, value. You know, a lot of these kids were like, you know, I'd love to get this job. I'd love to be an entrepreneur. I'd love to do this. But the challenge is you're not going to be able to get to the results you want. You're not going to have the success you want or achieve the great things you want without adding value in the world. I talked a lot about contribution.

And as opposed to coming from, well, all this should be given to me. No, you should be giving to other people first. And the more you want to achieve something big, you want to me. No, you should be giving to other people first. And the more you want to achieve something big, you want to get a job, you've got to enroll people in how much value you can add to them. You're trying to get an internship. You're trying to be mentored by someone. You've got to convince them that you're going to be able to add so much value. Then you have to deliver over and over and over again. This is what great people do. They learn how to solve problems, solve challenges, solve people's pain, and create solutions for people by adding value,

whether that's working for them, whether that's working for themselves and with clients one-on-one. They know how to create value out of nothing because they develop a skill and an expertise first that they master, and through that mastery, they add value. So first is skills, second is adding value with the knowledge that you have. And the third thing, if you're looking to get to the next level, if you're looking to get to the top, to get a big job after college or transition into a new position, you've got to model successful mentors. You've got to find key people that you can hire, hire them to coach you, work for them for free, pay them to work for them. Whatever it takes, you've got to find the people that you're so inspired by, the people that you want to model success by, and you need to learn from them. You've got to learn through osmosis, whether that's consuming their podcasts and videos and books and articles or being around them. You've got to learn through osmosis, whether that's consuming their podcasts and videos and

books and articles or being around them. I prefer the human connection and being around your mentors that you want to learn from because that's going to accelerate your growth. And the only way you're going to be around the mentors is if you add value to them. You make their life easier. You make them more money. You save them time. You save them energy. Not asking them to teach you everything. Not asking for advice all the time. Rather, you've already developed some skills that you can solve a problem or make things easier, save them time, money, and energy. And that will add them value, which will give you more tools and more training and ultimately more relationships to support you along your journey.

Skills, value, mentors. This is an incredible process that anyone can follow, whether you're in school trying to graduate and get to the next step, whether you're already doing something great and you want to pivot and transition into a new area, you've got to immerse yourself in developing skills and become a master at them. You've got to learn how to turn those skills into value for people and learn how to package your skills to offer value.

You've got to build incredible relationships with those who are already achieving the results that you want to achieve so that you can learn their formula and model their success. This is 5-Minute Friday. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please share this with your friends. Share the show notes with your friends over on Twitter and Facebook, lewishouse.com slash 319. Let your friends know if you have a friend who's in transition or who's looking to get to the next level, send them this episode on skills, value, and mentors. I hope you enjoyed this one. Leave a comment as well and tweet me at Lewis Howes or at Lewis Howes on Instagram and Facebook and let me know what you thought of this post. I love you guys very much. It's been fun for

me to connect with my alma mater and continue to serve and be in contribution and be generous with my wisdom and with my time and energy to give back. And I think it's always important for us to remember who has been there to support us when we needed support and always remember to give back to them and pay it forward. I love you guys. I appreciate you. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Outro Music