Are you doing more—and getting less done? Is your business a well-oiled machine...spinning its wheels at breakneck speed — and getting nowhere? Do you feel trapped under email and paperwork? Are you caught up in a spiral of busywork and emergencies? Are your people holding you hostage to their agendas? Do your employees suck up your time and energy instead of giving you the freedom to pursue your goals? What were those goals anyway?? Are you feeling stuck? Why don't you stop what you're not doing and get unstuck?

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As the leader of your business, you make the decisions. But how are those decisions made? Do you know what's really going on in your business? Do you have a firm grip on the numbers? Nobody can be the perfect Dealer Principal, General Manager, General Sales Manager, Fixed Operations Director, and Chief Financial Offficer all at the same time. But if you're like most dealerships we work with, you're filling multiple roles, some better than others.

A mentor can help you function better as a business owner, and as the leader of your team. You need to make crucial decisions, and mentors can help you make the right ones. Let a mentor guide you in short-term and long-term planning. Both are critical—and the value of an expert mentor at your side is immense. And once your planning is complete, your mentor can function as your dealership GPS, guiding you on your journey to implement and fulfill your plan. Mentor coaching pairs you with an industry expert for one-on-one development to help you transition from the old way you were doing business to the new way you would like to do business. Here are a number of ways a mentor can help you.

 

• A mentor will let you test your assumptions. There’s always the option of trial and error to discover what you don’t know. And experience is a great teacher. In fact, it may be the best way to learn. But you don’t always have to travel that road. Especially when your mentor may have similar experience in what you’re trying to do.

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• A mentor will challenge your beliefs. We are powerless against our beliefs. They literally control all our actions by coloring how the world shows up for us. And they are probably the hardest internal obstacle we have to overcome. A powerful, trusted mentor can get you to at least re-think your beliefs when it’s most important.

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• A mentor will help you focus your vision. Face it. Without a clear outcome in mind, you’ll never achieve what you’re after. For the simple reason you’re not clear what your outcome is. But what we call “fuzzy outcomes” is something that can affect all entrepreneurs. It’s too easy to simply shape an attractive end without considering all the details. Your collaborative circle can help you get out of the fog and get laser focused on what you want – and what’s required to get it.

 

• A mentor will point out what you’re ignoring. We tend to ignore the things that we don’t want to see. That’s human nature. We don’t see what we don’t want to see, we don’t hear what we don’t want to hear. Rather we see and hear some “version” of that. Ignoring what you simply don’t want to see is a recipe for disaster. One your collaborative circle can keep you out of.

 

• A mentor will hold you accountable. This is really important. The human condition is such that you can’t trust yourself to do ANYTHING! You’ll always find an excuse, a reason, a justification for not doing what you say you’ll do. A solid collaborative circle will hold you to account and speed you on your path to achieving your goals.

 

• A mentor will help you become more creative. This may sound shocking, but creativity is nothing more than connecting the dots that no one else has…And more dots isn’t always the answer. Often “perspective” trumps how much you know. The more (and more varied) perspective you can have, the more dot’s you can connect. And the more creative you can ultimately be.

 

• Finally, a mentor will help you with problem solving. Collective wisdom can be the key to overcoming even the most frustrating, most stymieing, most immovable roadblocks.

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