Every effect has a cause. If something happens, something caused it to happen. I taught 250 students, and most of them failed. I’ve talked to many more people outside that group who learned a skill, tried it, quit, and that was the end of it.
When I looked closely at my own 250 students and asked what actually caused the failures, I found two things, over and over.
They chose the wrong mentor.
And they were only looking for success, never prepared for failure.
Let me explain both.
Choosing the wrong mentor
Nobody teaches you how to spot a good mentor from a bad one. We’re mostly blind here, so let me fix that.
Look at how someone presents themselves. If they’re constantly showing you their success, their cars, their lifestyle, their achievements, if they present as a hero, be careful.
You don’t need another hero. You’re already the hero of your own story. You have goals, and you have problems standing in the way of them, internal and external. That’s what makes a story a story.
Think of Ertuğrul from the series. He’s the hero, he has a mission, and he has real problems along the way. Now imagine if Ibn ul Arabi showed up in that story with the same problems Ertuğrul had, needing help himself. Ertuğrul wouldn’t be able to learn anything from him. A hero can’t guide another hero.
What Ertuğrul actually needed was a guide, someone who wasn’t fighting the same battle, but who understood his struggle and had real competence to offer. According to Donald Miller’s Building a StoryBrand, a guide has two qualities: empathy and competence.
Empathy means they understand what you’re actually feeling right now. Competence means they have real knowledge and skill, and they’ve used it.
Look at how a potential mentor presents themselves online. Are they talking about your situation, your struggle, and their actual knowledge and skills? Or are they mostly showing you what they’ve won? The first is a guide. The second is just another hero, no more equipped to help you than you are.
Only looking for success
The second cause is you.
If you’re the hero of your own story, look at how heroes actually succeed. Read history. Nobody gets there overnight.
Abraham Lincoln failed for decades before becoming president. Nelson Mandela’s fight spanned most of his life. Every real story of success is also a long story of failure.
The problem is simple. We fail, and we quit. We don’t like the discomfort of struggling. But think about it, if the hero in a film gave up the first time things went wrong, would anyone watch that film? The bigger the hero, the bigger the problems they face along the way. That’s not a flaw in the story. That’s the story.
You will always have problems. No one solves them for you. A good guide gives you a plan, direction on what to do. But you’re the one who has to act on it.
So what actually causes failure?
Not the plan. Not the industry. Two things, over and over: following the wrong guide, or giving up the first time the plan gets hard.
Fix both, and you’re already ahead of most people who try this.