Personal Letter to My Mentor
Nobody knows this, but all of the amazing men and women that have won my Turbulence Training Body Transformation Contests owe their success to one man – and it’s not me.
And when we finish with the 1st Early To Rise $100,000 Transformation Contest next year, those winners will also owe this man a great deal of gratitude.
That’s certainly what I have for this guy – a level of gratitude that is almost second to none.
He’s been my mentor since 2007. That’s when I first entered into his world after resisting for so long. Unfortunately, holding back from hiring him as a mentor was one of the biggest mistakes of my career.
When I finally started opening my mind to his ideas, he showed me the way to a significant change in my business that has changed the lives of thousands of people while helping me grow my business bigger than ever.
“Craig,” he said, “You really need to be doing a before-and-after Transformation Contest.”
Month after month he told me this at our meetings and on our calls until FINALLY I understood the value it could add to the lives of my Turbulence Training readers.
That’s where it all started – and everyone that enters one of my contests should thank for my mentor for his encouragement.
Plus, he was also the mentor that encouraged me to create the Turbulence Training Certification – a component of my business that might have an even greater impact on the world than my TT fat loss contests.
And yet his impact hasn’t stopped there.
Just knowing this man has made me a better, more generous person – and perhaps even injected another level of fun and craziness into my personality.
But you know what?
I’m just one of the thousands of people he has helped “transform” over the years. He’s been at the job of mentoring others for over a decade, and I’m just a small success story in the world of people he has helped.
To this day I still review his Maverick Business Rules and other lessons that he taught me over five years ago when I first joined his mastermind group. And I keep spreading the word about how important it is to be connected with him.
He’s a friend and a mentor that I can’t thank enough.
So to Yanik Silver, I say, “Thank you Mr. Yanik, I sincerely appreciate all of the help you’ve given me over the years including the life changing ideas of the Transformation Contest and TT Certification. I hope that the new ETR $100,000 Contest makes you proud – it’s the biggest, most ambitious project I’ve ever started, and it all began with our conversation in the meeting rooms of the Bethesda, Maryland Hyatt hotel.”
And on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of people that the ETR Transformation Contest will help, I’d like to say thank you in advance of their amazing results.
Thank you for being so generous. Thank you being so helpful. Thank you for being such a great teacher and mentor.
And thank you being an even worse Baja off-road driver than me. Your (lack of) skills make me feel much better about my own. 😉
***
If you don’t know much about Yanik, you need to learn more. A few years back on a flight home from Richard Branson’s Necker Island, Yanik wrote down his legendary Maverick Business Rules.
My favorites include:
#1. It’s got to be a BIG idea that you, your team and your customers can “get” in seconds.
#10. Get your idea out there as fast as possible even if it’s not quite ready by setting must-hit deadlines. Let the market tell you if you have a winner or not. If not – move on and fail forward fast! If it’s got potential – then you can make it better.
#12. Your reputation always counts. Honor your obligations and agreements.
#20. Focus most of your time on your core strengths and less time working in areas you suck at.
#29. Mastermind and collaborate with other smart entrepreneurs if they have futures that are even bigger than their present.
You can read them all here – Maverick Business Rules
Talk to you soon,
Craig Ballantyne
“You cannot out-give the universe.” – Yanik Silver