How A Mentor Can Help You Achieve Your Goals By Doug Bennett, with special guest Sarah Bloxham

For anyone who is setting goals, I think it is vital to have some form of mentor or accountability buddy to help. 

I have had many in the past, and all of them have played a large role in helping me get to where I am now. 

That is one of the reasons why I enjoy mentoring others. I love seeing what other people can accomplish with a little push and a well-thought-out plan.

A great example of what you can achieve with a little mentoring is my good friend Sarah Bloxham, CEO (she has “Chief Talker” as her title) of Let’s Talk Mortgages and Insurance in Auckland, NZ.

Sarah saw me speak at a conference back in 2018 and reached out to me for some help with her business as she was really up against it at the time. Since then, we have been speaking weekly, and I’ve managed to help her do some amazing things!

This blog is based on a conversation we had last year about what she has accomplished – all from a little nudge in the right direction!

To listen to the full conversation, you can tune in to episode seven of my weekly podcast, “Goals Do Come True”.

Let’s start at the beginning.

The little notebook of goals

Sarah: “Before we met back in 2018, I had goals, but they weren’t going anywhere. It was quite a struggle back then. My business had gone flat, to the point where I was in the process of selling my car for equity!

Now, I’m a very independent person, and it takes a huge amount for me to ask someone for help. But when I heard you speak about that little notebook and the goals you had written down years ago and now achieved, I decided to sum up the courage to reach out to you. 

In one of those little black notebooks (which I gave Sarah), I wrote down my own list of goals. I remembered to write them out as if I had already accomplished them, like I was living them.

Here is what I wrote down back in 2018:

• I am an MDRT member. (MDRT is a group of the top insurance advisers in the world.)

• I have two holidays a year.

• I cook regularly.

• I get weekends away.

• I am appreciated.

• I can breathe.

• I have a new office.

• I have an assistant.

• I have a good work/life balance.

I wrote these goals down on 2nd June 2018, but it wasn’t until recently I rediscovered my book. After going through each of these goals I had written down back then, I was amazed that I had achieved 70% of the list!

I now have my weekends back. I have two holidays a year, an awesome assistant and a big new office space!”

Big goals are very possible to achieve

Sarah had some big goals on that list. To get a brand new office space and a full-time assistant in only three years, after she was just about to sell her car, is incredible!

Many people might say it’s just not possible to achieve these goals, but the madness of it all is that it IS possible. You just need to write them down and get the right support around you to start taking action.

And if you do, you will discover that not only will you see your goals come to life, but that success will breed other great achievements in your life!

For example, Sarah has gone on to win some fantastic awards since she has started her journey:

Sarah: “In late 2018, I won the New Adviser Of The Year Award. Then, I won a Rising Star Award for financial advice in New Zealand AND a Rising Star Award for my network in 2019.”

I’m very grateful to have played a role in helping Sarah achieve her goals. Not only has it helped her, but being a mentor to someone means that I have been inspired to do more too! If you’re a mentor and you help people, you’ve got to up your game.

Setting out goals for personal life

One of the best things that I have found about goal setting is that it doesn’t just apply to the world of business. Someone like Sarah has been able to use goal setting for various aspects of her life too.

Not only has it allowed her to help a lot of people, but she’s managed to use goal setting to give her back some of the work/life balance that is so important. Everyone needs to have those weekends away and holidays to reset and recharge.

Sarah: “There are two goals I have set in my business that allow for a good work/life balance. Firstly, I set up from the very start to not work weekends. Sometimes I’ll be tempted to do client work on a Sunday night and be available for people, but they need to understand that downtime is crucial to stay on track.

Secondly, since COVID-19, we have swivelled the business to grow fast but still fine-tune how we look after our clients remotely. This meant that we could still be in the business, meeting clients, and be at home too, which helped me get my life back.”

Getting the right work/life balance is something that we have spoken about regularly because it’s easy to get carried away in your business. That’s why I would always say it’s worth setting out a work/life balance goal early on. 

Setting BHAGs

One thing I always like to make a reference to in the blogs is that goals need to be BHAG: Big, Hairy and Audacious Goals. When you aim high and set big goals, you will be surprised at what becomes possible. 

With that being said, I wanted to find out if Sarah had any of her own BHAGs she was working towards:

Sarah: “Normally, every 5th April to 31st March, we take in a set amount of revenue which has been fairly similar over the last couple of years. But last year, because we were so busy, we had hit that number much earlier in the year. So I decided to make a goal to double it, and I’m delighted to say we have achieved that too!”

Telling your subconscious what you want 

Isn’t that amazing? The incredible thing here is once you set your goal up, and you’ve written it down, you’ve told your subconscious what you want. Then, all of a sudden, it starts looking out for the information you need to achieve that goal.

The crazy thing is that unless you tell your subconscious what you want, it’s just going to wander around aimlessly pulling things in, and it won’t be able to take you anywhere meaningful.

So, when setting goals, it’s vital that you write them down first because that will open the doors for new opportunities. These opportunities will come your way, they’re designed to, so you must take them when they come!

And always try to reach out to someone for that extra mentoring and support – it can make a big difference!

If you want to hear more from Sarah, she can be found on LinkedIn or you can visit her wonderful website.

You can also hear more from Sarah and me on setting goals by tuning in to episode seven of my podcast “Goals Do Come True”. Or If you are looking for a mentor and you are in financial services, feel free to get in touch with me at doug@dougbennett.co.uk and I will see if I can help. 

More to come next week!