Conventional wisdom tells us to seek knowledge from those who are further along in the journey than ourselves. But to burden yourself with the quest of seeking (and then paying) for someone 1-1 in the early stages. It just isn’t necessary when you first start out, and here are 5 reasons why:

Mentors are bloody expensive

As is their right. They’ve put in years of hard work. And you sliding in their DMs and flattering them doesn’t give you the right to demand services for free. But that doesn’t mean you need to fork out for one straight away.

Let’s say you have $3000 to start your business and $0 revenue. That’s not a lot of runway. Trust me when I say that your money is better spent elsewhere.

Mentors are an accelerant, build a foundation first

The best coaches and mentors help you stay focussed, keep you accountable and help flatten the learning curve. But if you haven’t got a solid foundation their advice will be wasted and you won’t see ROI until much later. There’s plenty of advice out there that is enough to take you from 0-10k a month.

If you haven’t got the basics in place. Start there. Once you’ve shown yourself you can learn and apply free information use that to build up some revenue streams, then look to reinvest your cash into a mentor.

“Free” mentors aren’t always the best…

Free mentors often aren’t niche enough to help out. Family members is an example of this type. For sure, it’s a blessing to have a relative care enough to give you advice. But they’re highly unlikely to have specific experience in your area of focus.

This hampers the effective of the advice they give. While she’s likely very wise, your 80 year-old grandma will be great for some things but likely unable to give you advice on your social media marketing agency.

The info you’re seeking is out there

Look on youtube, read blog posts, grab some inexpensive books. There’s hours of content out there. The best thing about the content economy is that a lot of people are already putting out their best advice in return for your attention.

Solopreneur Justin Welsh mentioned on the Dan Koe podcast that when you buy a course you're not paying for the secrets. They've already given out the info for free.

What people are paying for aggregation, they're paying for all the information to be formatted out in a succinct, applicable way that's easier to consume and execute upon.

Paid Communities are the next best thing

Often the reason you’re looking for a mentor is that you’re tired of working in isolation, banging your head against the wall. Mentors charge $300+ an hour often for their services. However many of them will have paid communities that give you a great opportunity to network with other people on the some path as you, for a fraction of the price.