Sharing wisdom
When speed is a factor, Wyland says it’s time to trust your gut, faith or heart. It’s not a matter of whether you like the person; it’s a matter of how does this feel?
It’s normal that sometimes partners outgrow each other. You may need to raise the bar, or you may have different needs. But, again, relationships fuel everything. You may need help, while being a source of connections to someone else.
If you’re looking to make more connections, Wyland says be proactive and ask people who you trust. People love it when you say, “Can you help me figure this out?”
“The greatest privilege in life is helping someone succeed,” he says. “A lot of times that means you’ve introduced them to and basically made it easier for them to avoid bad decisions and find people that can align to help them get to their greatest potential.”
WealthStone and its team have mentored a lot of young entrepreneurs. The company also helps select startups.
“Part of our ministry is to help startups. We think it’s really interesting to add wisdom to guys in their 20s and 30s and do it very inexpensively, so that they can get the benefit of a WealthStone without having to, quote, pay what a fully mature company would pay,” he says.
However, one of the company’s imperatives is that the people it works with — startups or otherwise — have to be coachable, Wyland says. They have to be willing to take time to listen, accept advice and actually implement it.
“No coach wants to coach an athlete where the athlete won’t follow, ‘you’ve got to work on this and improve that,’ and they come back a week later and they’ve done no exercise and no practice,” he says.
Just like a coach might tell an athlete he or she is off the team because they didn’t study the film, WealthStone has fired clients. Wyland says some people pretend, but if they’re too busy to listen, it’s not going to work out. And sometimes, those people will come back later and say, “I really should have taken the time …”
Wyland also has learned how important it is to say no. He knows WealthStone’s ideal client, someone with complex operations who can take advantage of all the firm’s capacities.
“Then we know who to say no to that doesn’t really fit that, and who to embrace and really pursue because we know we can make a big difference or bigger differences in that space,” he says. “We’ve done that OK. We haven’t been fabulous at that. But we have really benefitted from keeping our capacity available, by not having it taken up by clients that we really can’t serve completely or fully.”
Takeaways:
- Do the due diligence before you partner with someone.
- Connections matter. Slow down and really get to know people.
- You can be both a mentor and mentee.
