Why Mentorship Is the Fastest Way to Succeed in Entrepreneurship

What if the fastest way to believe in yourself is to borrow belief from someone who’s already done it? That’s the heartbeat of today’s story: a simple Christmas gift of candy machines for Sean’s kids sparks a bigger lesson about ownership, cash flow, and why guidance beats guesswork when you’re building something that lasts.

We walk through the turning point that took Sean from the ceiling of in-person training to the momentum of online coaching. A chance coffee-shop encounter led to a mentor who didn’t sugarcoat strategy. The beloved plan to sell mobility kits to seniors? Cut it. Sell fat loss, meet urgent demand, and package outcomes people already search for. That single pivot—made before months of sunk time—unlocked $10K, then $15K, then $22K months, proving that clarity of offer and audience creates scale without burnout.

Across the episode, we dig into the mechanics of smart mentorship: picking leaders with real receipts, paying for speed instead of paying with years, and letting someone else’s certainty steady you through the shaky start. You’ll hear how belief transfer keeps you from quitting, how market selection matters more than hustle, and why subtraction is the most underrated growth tactic. The throughline is simple and practical: choose rooms that raise your standard, adopt models that match real demand, and act fast on validated direction while still owning your final calls.

If you’re tired of “looking busy” and ready to build a business that compounds, this conversation gives you the playbook: align with demand, borrow belief until you earn your own, and execute with focus. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a nudge, and leave a review with the biggest pivot you’re ready to make. Your next win might be one good mentor away.

Transcript

Why Mentors Matter

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I worked with a lot of mentors and different coaches who provided perspective and challenged my perspective and helped me to expedite my growth because I was willing to invest money in that relationship and I did what they told me to do. I trusted them because they had experience and results that I wanted. And not every time, not 10 out of 10 times, you'll do exactly what your mentor says. Sometimes you got to make your own call. But the whole point is when we have people around us who are knowledgeable, who are experienced, who have results, it's such a value add to your life because you're getting support from them, you're getting direction from them, and you're really buying their certainty. Welcome back to another episode of the Unstoppable Mindset Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Crane. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year's, you guys. I hope you're having a good start to the new year, and I hope you're fired up and as excited as I am. Hey, if you haven't already, please subscribe and share my channel with as many people as possible. Put it out there on social media. Tag me, Sean underscore crane underscore official on Instagram. Love and appreciate the support. Uh today I want to talk to you guys about entrepreneurship. I want to talk to you guys about mentorship. Uh, I want to share with you a little story real quick about something that happened recently with my children and uh really like how it paints a picture for uh the the benefits and the reasons why we need good leaders and mentors and people around us in life. Okay. So I got my children candy machines for Christmas. I got them these big old candy machines, and the goal is that we're gonna go to like a boys and girls club or a girls, Inc., or my son does Krav Maga, which is martial arts, and we're gonna leave those candy machines there, and kids are gonna buy the candy, and my children are gonna learn how to make money. And I explained to them, well, look, I bought the candy machines, but you got to pay me back first of all. Okay. So they're each gonna have to pay me back 300 something odd dollars in quarters and pennies and nickels and dimes and crap. So I'm gonna have a bunch of change, and then also they're gonna have to buy the candy every month with the revenue they're making. So I explained to them, after you do all that, you'll start to have a profit, which means you'll have money that you can save, you can spend, you can do whatever you want with it. The goal is that I'm teaching them about entrepreneurship. And a good friend of mine, Jordan Lung, who owns trade-up marketing, great company. Go check them out if you haven't heard of them. He gave me the idea. He told me he's doing this with his children, and they're a little older than my kids, you know, Preston's five, Scarlet Six. But I want to plant seeds for them early on. I want to do this with them to teach them about business ownership and entrepreneurship. I don't want them to just become employees one day. I want them to create something that's theirs, you know. I think that's really important. Um, and so when they opened up the candy machines on Christmas, they're like, what is it? You know, they're just in boxes. And I said, Hey, these are candy machines. And I explained to them a whole idea that I just shared with you. And they go, but where's the candy? Like, we want to eat the candy. Where's the candy? Mind you, they're young children, and they were more excited at the thought of eating candy than the idea that I just had explained to them. And this is the whole reason, you guys, we all need mentors and elders and people in our lives that are wiser or more mature or who have results to learn from. Because in that moment, my children couldn't understand the concept that I understood, and it's my job to teach them. And that's what good mentors do is they're gonna help you to see stuff in your life that you can't see currently. They're gonna help challenge you in ways that's gonna get the best out of you, and they're gonna help you move quicker towards your results than you would move on your own. So the same scenario that played out with my children also played out with me five, six years ago with the first mentor that I hired. His name was Will Nelson. I'll never forget it. I was down at a coffee shop in Santa Barbara, California, pretending to be busy on my laptop. I don't even know what I was doing, maybe screwing around with some images on Canva or something, trying to look like an entrepreneur. Um, and at this time I was still doing personal training. And I knew that that was a dead end. I knew that I couldn't trade time for money and grow a really big business and company and take care of my family the way I wanted to. I also wanted to help more people and reach more people. And I'd been hearing about online coaching. In fact, I had a couple sales calls with guys who tried to charge me money to work with them, and I didn't take action because I was uncertain. And I see this big buff white dude walking through the parking lot filming a selfie video. And I made a comment to him as he walked into the coffee shop, like, oh, did you inspire some people? Or like, what are you doing? I don't know what I said, but he sat down with me and he started explaining how he helped entrepr uh he helped personal trainers take their business online and teach them how to create an online coaching business. Like exactly what I was looking for. And he was local in Santa Barbara. He had just walked from across the street at the gym where he worked out and he also had an office upstairs so I could come and meet him. I was like, wow, this is like perfect. This is like divine intervention, it felt like, you know? And uh he he told me it was$5,200 to work with him. Well, I just got out of prison, I was broke. Like I might have had a thousand dollars to my name if that. And I remember just trying to figure out how I was gonna hire him. And I knew I was gonna take action, I just had to figure out how. And uh I ended up borrowing the money and paid him the$5,200. And the first time that we met, I started telling him about this idea I had. You know, as a personal trainer, I worked with a lot of elderly people in the gym. It was like for six months, it was just a bunch of old people there. So I was in the process of getting certified as a corrective exercise specialist, and I would help them to foam roll certain stretches, using bands, how to really balance out their body and avoid aches and pains and you know, make sure they're not getting injured when we're working. So I thought that I was becoming valuable for them, right? And I had this whole idea that I was gonna package up these foam rollers and these bands, and I was gonna sell a$5,000 package to these elderly people, and it was gonna help them to be able to sit comfortably and not have pain and all these things, right? I had this vision of what I was gonna do with my online coaching business. And the first meeting I had with Will, he looked at me when I told him my idea, he said, nah. He's like, he didn't even take a breath. He's like, nah, you're not doing that. You're selling fat loss. And I'm like, fat loss? What do you mean? And he's like, dude, you're selling fat loss. That's what everyone wants to buy, that's what everyone needs help with. Like the small little demographic of old people, they don't even know how to use the internet or social media. How are they gonna find you? And they're gonna be way more skeptical than the younger crowd is about buying something from you online, right? So just like that, just like I did with my children, he painted a picture of what was possible for me because he had experience, right? He had results, and he was my mentor. And he was doing it because it was the best thing for me at the time. And so I started my online business and I started selling fitness and nutrition coaching. And I remember forever doing in-person coaching, I wanted to hit 10K, and I could never hit 10K. The closest I got was like eight grand, and then COVID shut all the gyms down and I lost all my clients, and that's when I started my online business. And I remember like the first or second month online, I hit 10K. And then the next month I hit like 15. I think one month that year I hit like 22,000. I was like, wow, this is freaking incredible. Like, this is life-changing, you know, and then over the years I grew my company and I've got to this point where I'm at today. I worked with a lot of mentors and different coaches who provided perspective and challenged my perspective and helped me to expedite my growth because I was willing to invest money in that relationship and I did what they told me to do. I trusted them because they had experience and results that I wanted. And not every time, not 10 out of 10 times, you'll do exactly what your mentor says. Sometimes you got to make your own call. But the whole point is when we have people around us who are knowledgeable, who are experienced, who have results, it's such a value add to your life because you're getting support from them, you're getting direction from them, and you're really buying their certainty. Like if you have someone who has results and you're skeptical or scared to start on a journey to open a business or go online and you're coaching like I did, and you see someone who's done it, you're able to tap into their belief before you really have it. Like they could transfer their belief onto you, and that's so valuable because one of the main reasons people don't have success when they're making change is they quit because it's scary and they don't believe it's possible. And at some point when they don't get the result, they just stop. And so, you guys, if you don't have a mentor and you really want results in life, go invest in yourself. Hire the right person, get in the right rooms, it'll change your entire life like it did for me.