Should you hire a business mentor? Honestly? Probably not. (Oh, by the way… I’m a business mentor. #ShockingTwist)

In addition to doing Tarot readings (my main gig) and teaching yoga (my side gig), I also offer business mentoring for people with mystical businesses (astrologers, healers, mediums, and sometimes fellow Tarot readers).

People often ask me, “Should I hire a business mentor? Would it be helpful? Or maybe I don’t need a mentor right now. I dunno. What do you think?”

Most of the time, my answer is, “Don’t hire a mentor—me or anyone else—right now.”

Why would I say “Don’t work with me!” to so many potential clients? Seems cray-cray, right?

Nope. What’s cray-cray is chucking tons of money at a “mentor” when it’s really unwise and unproductive for you to do so. Sadly, this happens a lot. It breaks my heart.

In a sec, I will present my personal list of reasons why you should NOT hire a business mentor, coach, strategist, or consultant—at least, not right now.

You might disagree with my opinions. You might ignore my advice. But I feel like I need to share my stance—publicly—because I’m tired of seeing so many biz owners waste their time and money by investing in “mentorship” when it’s just not the right time.

So, here we go.

You should NOT hire a business mentor if…

1. Your business is not generating any money yet.

All too often, I see people throwing thousands of dollars in every direction—web designer, graphic designer, copywriter, virtual assistant, social media expert, business mentor—before their “business” has even generated a single cent!

In my opinion, this is very unwise. Like putting diamond grillz in your teeth when you can barely pay your rent.

My advice: skip the costly consultants and contractors if you are just getting started. Bootstrap it until you’ve got some revenue coming through the door.

Create a free or low-cost website using a template from Squarespace or WordPress. Hustle to get some clients in the door. Test out various service packages until you find your stride. Get things rolling! Then hire a mentor—or expand your team—to help you grow even further, if and when it feels appropriate. You might realize you never needed a mentor after all—you just needed to put in a little time and effort!

2. You are already in debt.

When people say to me, “I need to hire you for business mentoring. Just one thing: can you split my payment across 4 different credit cards?” this breaks my heart.

If you cannot afford to hire a business mentor without sending yourself into debt, or worse debt, then maybe now is not the right time.

Hold out. Bootstrap. Be resourceful. Get the basic pieces of your business in place, first, and get some coin coming through the door before you start spending it. See point #1 above.

3. You are looking for someone to magically reveal your “life purpose” over the course of one conversation.

If you feel deeply confused about what you are meant to be doing with your life—or if you have too many ideas and can’t choose—I feel you. As a Gemini with a zillion ideas flowing through my brain every day, I can totally relate to that feeling of overwhelm.

But let me tell you: hiring a business mentor is not going to provide the “revelation” that you are seeking. In fact, nobody can flat-out tell you, “This is your purpose!” (and be wary of people who claim that they can!). This one’s on you.

Your life purpose doesn’t “exist” somewhere and one day you “discover” it like a lost mitten (“Oh, there you are!” Finally! I’ve been looking for you!”). Your life purpose is something that you are continually constructing and refining through your choices.

Working with a career coach, mystic or mentor might provide little clues here and there, but ultimately, your life purpose is up to YOU to define.

As the playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

And as the rapper Grap Luva once said, “You won’t get a harvest if you don’t sow seeds […] The choices that you make will fulfill your needs.”

4. You are looking for someone to hold your hand through extremely tiny logistical steps, like uploading a file to your website or formatting text on your blog.

If this is the kind of support that you want, hiring a business mentor is not the way to go. You’ll be wasting your money—and their time!

Google instructions for this kind of stuff and do it on your own. Or if you really can’t deal with it, hire a virtual assistant for $15 – $50 an hour to handle it for you. Check websites like elance.com, guru.com, and fiverr.com to search for a techie assistant if you don’t know anybody who does that kind of work.

Your business mentor does not want to teach you how to turn bold text into italics. Trust me on this.

5. You don’t believe that you can do this on your own.

This is a biggie.

Ask yourself, “Why do I think that I need a business mentor?” Be honest with yourself.

Are you seeking “expert advice” because, deep down, you don’t believe that you can pull this off on your own? Because you don’t believe that you are creative and resourceful enough? Because you don’t believe that your services are actually worth paying money for?

If your desire to hire a mentor is rooted in fear—“I suck, I’m not enough, I need hellllp!”—then I’d strongly encourage you to work on investigating and healing those emotions before you cough up hundreds of dollars to work with a business mentor.

You’ll get much better results out of your mentoring partnership if you go into it with a positive, pro-active, empowered mindset—not a fearful one.

Now, the flipside. You should hire a business mentor if…

1. You want “insider knowledge” on a specific topic. You’ve got a set of questions prepared, you want to make sure your plan is the best it can be, and (most importantly) you are ready to act.

Let’s say that part of your business plan is to do a series of seminars in different cities. You want to produce these seminars on your own, sell tickets online, and hopefully fill every seat. Oh, and obviously: you want to be an awesome teacher so people tell their friends all about you!

You decide to hire a business mentor who has tons of experience producing seminars and other in-person events. She’s the seminar queen!

This person has tons of insider knowledge to share with you—like the best tool to use to sell tickets online, websites with listings of event venue spaces in different cities, ideas on how to keep your costs low and profits high, plus expertise on how to stay calm and centered before each event so that you can deliver a fantastic presentation. She’s walked this road before, many times. You’re thrilled to pick her brain!

This is an example of a situation where hiring a mentor makes total sense. You have questions about a specific topic. She’s got answers plus insights about your unique situation that you won’t find via Google.

This mentoring relationship is going to save you time, energy, and money because you’re getting a fast-track ride to the knowledge you need. If you can afford to hire this mentor—and if you’re feeling ready to make an action plan and rock it out, not just “think” about it—I’d say: go for it! This will probably be a wise, helpful investment for you.

At the end of the day, the ideal scenario is for you to “become your own business adviser,” as the beautiful Hiro Boga often says—to tap into your own intuition, intelligence, resourcefulness, and creativity, rather than continually relying on other people for advice or motivation.

You started this. You can build this. You can solve your own problems.

As one of my personal business heroes once said, “Everything is figure-out-able.”

A mentor might be able to accelerate your learning curve, but never forget that this is your business journey… and you’ve already got everything you need to rock it out successfully.

Theresa

PS. If you run a spiritual, mystical or healing business and you want to pick my biz brain… click here. You’ll find info on my business mentoring services. I recently switched a few things up, so you’ll find new options on how we can work together.

Please do not hire me if you are feeling broke, freaked out, or if you want a font formatting lesson. 🙂

Please DO hire me if you’ve got specific questions about a product, service, seminar or some other kind of business offering that you want to create… if you want to talk about inspiring, exciting, non-sleazy marketing ideas… or if you want a second set of eyeballs on your business plan for next year to see if there are any opportunities you might be missing or over-complicating. YES, please. You’ll find instructions on how to start the mentoring process here. I’d love to open up my brain to YOU.