The idea for this article came from Adam Urbanski of The Marketing Mentors. I met Adam last year at his Overnight Authority Event and have been following him ever since. He has these pearls of wisdom that inspire me and I can’t help but share them.
Yesterday he posted this quote I have here as the photo with this article, “Don’t let anyone ever dull your sparkle.” As I shared it on my Facebook page, I thought about the message he wrote with it and was struck at how well it fit into the series of articles I’m writing in the Empowering Young Entrepreneur series for the blog challenge.
Adam wrote, “There are four types of support people we all need: teachers (to gain new skills), doers (to get things done), pushers (to make us do what we resist), and – the most overlooked one – CHEERLEADERS (to keep us going when we feel like giving up!).”
I realized that I can be all four of these types depending on what is needed from me at the moment. However, is that wise? Or is it better that we have four different people to count on?
Let’s take a look at the role of each of these support people.
Teachers. When learning to become entrepreneurs, we must have teachers along the way to provide the knowledge we need in order to develop the skills to move forward and create a successful business. Teachers also instill in us the values, qualities and characteristics that we need to be successful. They can be anyone from a high school or college business teacher to an online expert or a businessperson we know from our community.
Doers. These are the people that we delegate the work to, the assistants/virtual assistants that we assign tasks to. These are the people who make sure our email blasts go out on time for the launch, or update our websites and blogs, manage our social media plan and so on.
Pushers. The people who hold us accountable and help us get past our fears and doubts so that we accomplish the things that we must do to build success. These people are psychologists to us, knowing how to reach our hearts and minds to get us back on track or keep us on track in the first place. And last,
Cheerleaders. This may be a young person’s parent or other family member, close friend, a classroom teacher who is supportive, a mentor. These are folks who give us pats on the back and say good job each step of the way; the folks who encourage us to keep moving and don’t ever give up. Any of the other three types of people can be a cheerleader as well as play their other role in your life.
So while it’s possible that one person can play all these roles for us, it isn’t necessarily a good idea. Can you imagine how uncomfortable it would be to assign “chores” to your respected teacher or mentor? That doesn’t make sense. It also doesn’t make sense to ask the people who hold us accountable and “push” us to get things done to do those things for us.
After considering all of this, I have concluded that we need different people to play these roles for us. That will serve to make us stronger, provide different perspectives and not confuse us as to what we can expect from the people in our lives who want us to succeed.
Which one of these roles do you play for others, or need to have in your life?
