#016 DON'T BE AN ASKHOLE: Etiquette for Mentees and Mentors in Entrepreneurship

In this episode of the Call Her Coach Podcast, Stef Willis breaks down the real rules of mentorship, leadership, and personal responsibility in entrepreneurship, network marketing, and home-based business. If you’ve ever wondered what your mentor’s role actually is, how to respect your coach’s time, or why boundaries are essential for success, this episode is for you.

Stef explains the difference between being a strong mentee vs an entitled one, why leaders must protect their time, and how adopting an employee mindset will keep you stuck in business. Whether you're in MLM, direct sales, coaching, or building an online business, this episode will help you understand the etiquette, expectations, and mindset required to grow.

This conversation also covers leadership standards, mentor boundaries, high-income skill development, and the truth about what it really takes to succeed as an entrepreneur.

If you want to become the kind of person mentors want to help  (and the kind of leader others respect)  this episode will change the way you approach business forever.

Topics Covered in This Episode

• Mentor vs coach: what their job actually is
• Why your mentor is not your boss or therapist
• Mentee etiquette in network marketing and online business
• Leadership boundaries and protecting your time
• Employee mindset vs entrepreneur mindset
• Why success takes repetition, not motivation
• How to ask better questions to your mentor
• Respect, value exchange, and accountability in business
• Why high-level leaders stop answering low-level questions
• The difference between hobbyists and serious entrepreneurs
• Building systems so your business doesn’t depend on you
• High-income skills and why sales changes everything
• How to be a better mentor to your team
• Why people-pleasing leads to burnout in leadership
• The truth about entitlement in the coaching & MLM industry

Who This Episode Is For

• Network marketers
• Direct sales leaders
• Coaches and mentors
• Entrepreneurs building a home-based business
• Women in online business
• High-ticket sales professionals
• Anyone working with a mentor or leading a team
• Anyone struggling with boundaries in business

If you want to grow faster, respect your time, and build a business that doesn’t drain you, you need this episode.

Key Takeaways

• Your mentor is there to guide you, not carry you.
• Respecting someone’s time is part of professional maturity.
• Success comes from action, repetition, and ownership.
• Leaders must set boundaries or they burn out.
• If you don’t work, the business doesn’t work.
• High-level mentors expect high-level questions.
• The best mentees take initiative before asking for help.
• Strong leadership requires saying no.

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Your mentor, your coach, is not a 24 7 question answerer. That's not what their job is, and that's what we're gonna talk about today. Etiquette for being a mentee to a mentor and what your job is. As a mentor to your team. So this episode is specifically talking to anyone who has a home-based business, whether that be in MLM, network, marketing, direct sales, even if you have your own coaching business. We're gonna talk about some etiquette today, some do's and don'ts, what it looks like in practice. So that you can be one, the best mentee for your mentor and respect their time

0:46

So that you can get everything that you need from this person while still respecting them and respecting their time.

Speaker 0:55

And then also so you can be the best mentor for your collective community because you only have so much time in the day and your time is incredibly valuable. So let's get into it.

Speaker 2 1:16

Welcome to the Call Her Coach podcast. I'm your host, Steph Willis, neuro operational coach and creator of becoming her the neuro identity calibration system behind high-end Regulation for female entrepreneurs. This. Podcast is for high functioning type A women who are done with surface level mindset hacks and ready to understand the science behind success and wealth. Here we blend nervous system science, wealth psychology and tactical, no bullshit business strategy so that you can rewire your identity, expand your capacity, scale your business, and increase your income if you are ready to regulate, recalibrate, and become the most wealthy version of yourself. Let's dive in.

Speaker 2:06

All right. First off, I wanna say like, congratulations If you became an entrepreneur, you started a home-based business, you started your own coaching practice, anything like that, I'm really kinda, again, speaking to the network marketing family today. I wanna just congratulate you for a second because you made a decision that really does put you at the top 1% of the people in the world by making that decision. You decided that instead of going to a job inside the matrix, inside the system, that you were gonna do the hard thing? Yes, the hard thing. It is more difficult than going to a nine to five. You decided to do the hard thing so that you could have a level of freedom that people inside of the matrix will never begin to understand or experience. So, you know me, I am super big on setting realistic expectations when it comes to entrepreneurship, leadership and things like that. Starting a business is like planting a seed. You wouldn't plant a seed today and then expect a full grown tree tomorrow, right? That just, that's unrealistic. And if you have those expectations, you are going to be let down in a very big way. My friend. So I wanna save you from that. What are you gonna do? You're gonna water it, you're gonna nurture it, you're going to, uh, I don't know, feed it with plant food. I don't have a green thumb, but y'all get what I'm saying. More importantly, you're gonna give it time to grow roots before you ever see any of the harvest. And building a business works the same way when you decide to start an online business. It is not a lottery ticket. The people you see winning out the gate have put in years of work prior to that. Maybe it's work on themselves, maybe it's networking in general before they ever had a business. Maybe they go out and talk to people, right? All of those skills are transferable and you can take those into a home-based business. What trips people up a lot of the times is that you come in, you start a business, and you have the employee mindset. You have been. It's not your fault. It is your responsibility, but it's not your fault. You've been indoctrinated from a very young age, from preschool to go to school, be told what to do. Don't think your own thoughts, don't speak up, don't question things. Just do them because that's how they're supposed to be done. Get outta school. Go get a job, be a good employee. Do exactly what the company tells you to do. Do exactly what the boss tells you to do. Don't have an opinion and you'll possibly get a promotion. Entrepreneurship is not the same. You need to have your own thoughts. You need to have. Critical thinking skills. You need to question everything. And in business, if you don't work, it won't work. I guess the same thing in traditional nine to five. So if you don't go to work, they're not gonna give you a pay. What you put in is what you're gonna get out. Success does not happen overnight, and I don't know where people got the entitlement of thinking that it does. The biggest mistake that new entrepreneurs make is expecting instant results. And when they don't get instant results, they think that the company's broken, the compensation plan's, broken, entrepreneurship, a scam, all these things. They showed up for a couple minutes, they put in a little bit of half-assed effort. They stuck with it long enough to like maybe see like other people winning and then they say like, oh, it's not for me. This is too hard. Yeah, no shit. Nothing in life that's ever worth anything is easy. This is your own business. This is, it is up to you. It is your choice on how much time you're willing to put into it. Your coach, your mentorship, your leaders are here to support you, but the success of your business is ultimately in your hands. Your coach is here to support you. Your mentor is here to support you win. You need them, but they are not your boss. They're not an on-call service, and they cannot, and they will not work your business for you. And to even think that they should is extremely disrespectful. If you're working with a mentor, a high level mentor who has. Results. Who has gotten other people results? Let's take me for example, I have built a multiple seven figure business from the ground up. Prior to that, I spent tens of thousands of dollars into my personal development, into my knowledge, into my business acumen, into my skillset, so that when I found the right vehicle, which I do have now, I can take that and I can scale it, and then I can teach other people that. That is something that needs to be respected. So if you're a mentor out there and you've done similar things, I want you to know your time is valuable and you do not have to give it freely. Your job as a coach, as a mentor is to help someone be better. It's not to be a twenty four seven on-call service for these ask assholes. I just had someone in my dms, not on my team, but like, I just had this happen and it prompted this episode.'cause they're like, I know you're so busy, I don't wanna waste your time, but da da. And I'm like, what? Are you kidding me? I don't have. A husband that I wanna spend time with. I don't have an entire team of over 600 people that you know I'm supporting. I don't have a business of my own. I don't have a social No, it's fine. Like take all my time please and be rude about it. At the same time, like as a leader, as a mentor, you have to hold your boundaries and you can do it in a loving way. You can do it in a kind way. You don't have to be an asshole, but you need to love yourself enough to set those boundaries. And if someone's disrespecting them, byebye. It's not worth it. So what does this look like in practice being a mentee and a mentor? Okay. Consistent action. If you're starting a business with a mentor who has results, who has helped other people get results, you need to protect their time period. That is your job to do. They will also do it, but you need to hold the standard. You need to take consistent action. You need to show up daily. You need to implement the strategies that they are teaching you. You need to plug into the systems. And the training that they give you, you need to stay focused on your goals and your goals alone. They cannot do that for you. You need to take personal ownership and responsibility for your business growth. You need to ask for support when it's needed, and you need to track your progress. You don't need to come to your mentor if it's something so simple as, how do I make a reel? Go out there and make a reel, and then ask your mentor or your coach for feedback. If you are someone who has been a mentor and a leader in your space for years, you have probably progressed beyond the foundational, basic things. And you should, you should not be teaching how to create content for people on your team. There are so many resources out there that you can get plugged into. You can go to YouTube, you can type in social media content. For dummies, like it is the mentee's responsibility to do that, they have to learn and adapt. They have to fail forward many, many, many times. They need to master the basics. They need to learn from the feedback they need to learn from the failure, and continually improve their skillset. That is the only way you can't go through. A training program or an onboarding or a coaching program one time and think that you're gonna know everything and that's enough. Absolutely not. That's not having realistic expectations. Do you think the first time Taylor Swift puts out a song and you listen to it one time, you can repeat the lyrics back word for word verbatim? No. You listen to that song tens upon hundreds of times, and then eventually, like you can't get that song out of your head. That's how you need to. Approach learning and training and the coaching and the skills and all of that. And then you take your higher level questions back to your mentor period. And there was a point in time when I questioned myself actually, because there were a couple people that were like, I wanna be on call for my team at nine o'clock. If they need me, I am there for them. It doesn't feel good to me. To ask them if they have done X, Y, and Z since the last time we talked, and if they haven't, then they don't get access to me. And for a second I fucking questioned myself.

Speaker 3 10:21

I questioned whether I was a good leader because I was holding boundaries for myself in order to help other people get what they want. I questioned myself for a moment because of the gaslighting and the manipulation that I had experienced in this season of my. Whether I just needed to not love myself enough and go back to people pleasing, fuck that. If you're there right now, I'm here to tell you, fuck that.

Speaker 10:51

We are no longer in that phase of my life because I know for a fact the value that I bring to people that work with me who respect my time, get results exponentially. Your job as a coach is not to be liked. It's not to be there on call for your team twenty four seven. It's simply not. If I tell you to do something as a seven figure business owner who has the skillset and the knowledge and the experience that I do, and you don't do it, guess what? Access revoked Your probationary period just ended. I'm out. If I give you a simple task to do, which I do. For the people who work directly with me, it's typically in the first week. They don't know I'm doing it, but I give them a very, very, very simple task. And if they don't do it, guess what? Access removed. You can come to the weekly calls, but other than that, like I'm not taking time outta my day to help you if you are unwilling to help yourself. as a leader, you have to hold that standard for yourself. You have to love yourself enough, and you have to respect your time enough to know your value and to know your worth. That's self love. So let's talk about what this does not look like. If you're a mentee, waiting for someone else and expecting your coach, your teammates, to do something or build your business for you or to be checking in on you. That's not happening. If you need an accountability buddy, if you need an accountability coach, go hire one of those. But your mentor is not that. They are there to help you build a business and to make money and to scale your business and to give you feedback on the activity that you are taking, period. If you're treating your business like a hobby or putting an inconsistent effort, guess what? You're gonna get inconsistent paychecks, and you're gonna get frustrated with yourself and you're probably gonna blame others. But the success is 100% in your control. You don't need a mentor. I mean, do they help? Can they exponentially collapse your timeframe on where you're at now and where you wanna be? A hundred percent. But do you have to have one or need one? No. You have Chad, GPT, you got Claude, you got Google, you have YouTube. This is not the 18 hundreds. You can go figure it out on your own. You're a smart human being. I say that with so much love because. You need to respect your mentor. They don't have to help you. They really don't. And I think in the network marketing industry, this gets twisted and confused a lot because you think that you're gonna have permanent access to this high level person forever. You can ask'em any question you want at any time of the day just because you decided to start a business with them, and that's not the case. That is not the case. And if there are people out there that are doing this, that are on call 24 7, they're gonna be capped at some point and they're not gonna be able to go any further. They're gonna get burnt out, they're gonna quit, and then they're gonna come back and they're gonna have boundaries. As a coach, as a mentor, as a leader, our job is not to be liked. It's to help you become the best version of yourself. I think back to when I was in sports and did I like my coach all the time? Hell no. Fuck no. There were so many times I wanted to throw a basketball at my coach's face. I would be crying, but it's because they were pushing me because they saw my potential. That's their job. Their job isn't to be liked. I digress. Let's go back to kinda what this doesn't look like from a mentee perspective. If you are ignoring the feedback, if you are ignoring the proven strategies that have been tested and duplicated. You're skipping trainings, you're skipping the weekly calls that your mentor is putting on because it feels hard or new or un uncomfy, you're not gonna win. Every skill can be learned with practice and repetition. Repetition is the master of all skill, and you're not gonna win if you are comparing yourself to others. Everyone's journey is unique. You have to focus on your own progress and celebrate every single small win. Regardless of what it is, maybe you woke up this morning and instead of hitting snooze, you woke up at your alarm. Celebrate that. Be grateful for that. Maybe instead of watching TV all night, you read 10 pages in a book before you did. Okay? It's these little bitty things in your life that you gotta be grateful for, and you have to celebrate yourself for. Let's talk about some types of questions that would go to a high level mentor versus questions that would not, and if you're a mentor, I want you to kinda be calculating what your time is worth. For me, if I make a sale and I have someone come onto my team, on average, I'm earning between 6,000 and$8,000 for that. Do you think that six to$8,000. Is worth 24 access to myself, my knowledge, my skillset, my energy, my mental capacity for the rest of my life. No, absolutely not that honestly, let's just say for easy math example, my time is worth a thousand dollars for an hour. And mind you, I have paid someone a thousand dollars an hour to help me. Before I paid them for three hours. It was$3,000. A thousand dollars an hour, and that was conservative. So let's just round it out and say, my time is worth a thousand dollars an hour, and if I made$6,000 or even$8,000 from that one sale, that would be eight hours of my time. Split that up however you want. But I think if we kind of put that into perspective and we give our teams that perspective. The questions that they start asking are gonna be a little bit different because they're only gonna have so much time. So an example of this would be any income producing activities, right? Like we don't want our teams to sit there and struggle doing the wrong things over and over again, and then expecting to win. That's not, that's not gonna be helpful. So what they do need to do is take action, even if it's messy, even if they have no idea what the hell they're doing. Take action because I guarantee you, you have trainings, you have systems, you have onboarding, if you disappeared today, I would hope that you would have systems in place to support your team, and if not, here's a reality check for you. I've built systems to where if I disappeared, my team would still win. I didn't have anything when I started. I had to figure out on my own. So I built everything that I have from a place of, I wish I had this. And if it was something that I had to repeat multiple times, guess what? I created a system for it. And sometimes your teams will take advantage of that. Sometimes they will not appreciate all of that work, and that's okay. But that doesn't mean that they get to bypass or disrespect your time. So things that would be income producing. Okay? Social media can be a lead generation activity, but they don't need you to learn how to create a post or create a caption like that's so low level. You don't need to be involved in that. You have trainings, you have systems. There is YouTube out there. There are short form videos that can help them. They can go follow someone that they like and Get some inspiration there. Like that is not your job as a coach, as a mentor. Okay? Now, let's say you are in sales, okay? Like I am. I'm in high ticket sales. Me helping my team develop their skillset in sales. Is extremely important. That is a high income skillset that once you learn it, it's not going anywhere. You're gonna have that for life that's gonna help you in every discipline of your life, with your marriage, with your kids, with your social relationships, with your business with. I mean, let's just say like for job interviews, my previous, like years and years and years ago, my corporate sales journey started. Because a recruiter saw my network marketing online and they were like, she's a hustler. We want her on our sales team. And that catapulted my income for the rest of my life with these sales skill sets that I have learned to this day, over the past 10 years, I will never go broke again because I have this skillset. My husband and I talk about this all the time, and God bless him. We love him. I'm like, if we ever, if I ever had to go back to the workforce, do you know how valuable I am?

Speaker 4 18:56

And he's over there like, yeah, dummy, I do know. And then we like talk about his skill sets and he doesn't have sales skill sets, he doesn't have any high income skill sets that could be an asset. He's like, I could go and be a supervisor again or a manager and make probably 60,$70,000 a year, but that's it. I have invested in my knowledge and my skillset to where I will never go broke again. So if it ever came down to it, guess who'd be going back to the workforce in some capacity. Actually, I would never, because I have the skillset, so I never have to him. On the other hand, if he didn't have me, he would have to go back to the workforce. Like he doesn't have a high income producing skill set like this. Sales skills, pay the bills in any type of industry you need. Salespeople do.

Speaker 5 19:44

Now I wanna preface this and say that my husband is not an idiot. Like he was the one that retired me at 29 because of the skillset that he learned in investing in finances. So we have different skillsets, um, but typically with what he knows, he's still gonna have to go back to school, get certifications, and do things like that in order to help people, because that's how the system's set up. It's rigged. So he has. Very valuable skill sets, but in the workforce, he would have to again, go get certifications and all things like that. Like I don't have to do that.

Speaker 20:16

I actually started looking at this the other day'cause I was curious. Like I got on Indeed, I got on Google, Glassdoor, like all the things, and I was like, how much would I be worth in the workforce with the skillsets that I have? And it was anywhere between four and$500,000 for a skillset that I learned not in college or getting a formal education. I do have a bachelor's degree, but it's in psychology, it's not in sales. Sales is the number one skillset that you can learn that doesn't require. A college degree. And in fact, if I were an employer, I would not hire someone out of college that had a sales degree, which those are a new thing now, and it's only because universities understand how valuable that skill set is, and they want to profit off of it, but you don't have to go to university to learn sales. Okay? So that's something that I can help and develop my team with. I create an entire. Training platform called the Deep Impact Sales Methodology, using the cash flow framework that walks them through exactly how to do this. They should be going through that 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 times until it's ingrained in their subconscious, and then they come to me with high level questions. What does that look like, Stephanie? This is what it looks like. They come to me and say, Hey, I had this sales call and this person said this. I said this. I was a little unsure of what I should do here. Um, I lost the sale I think because of this, but what do you think? Could you give me some feedback on how I could improve next? Okay. What is not an equal value exchange question would be something like, Hey, so I have a call coming up on Thursday and I'm kind of nervous. I don't really know what to say. I don't really know what to do. I'm like, I'm scared of X, Y, and Z. I don't. Could you close it for me? Could you do this? I, I'm just not sure. That is not worth my time to answer that. There's nothing I can do to help this person. If you need a mindset refresh, like we got books, we got podcast. I can't go inside of your mind and reprogram it as much as I would love to. I can't do that. That has to be on you. Okay. If someone comes to me and they're like, Hey, how do I open up a sales call? And I look in my system and they haven't went through the sales training, how disrespectful is that to a mentor? You're basically saying, your time, uh, is worthless. I'm just gonna waste it. And for me, money can be made, money can be lost, money can be made. You cannot make more time. I take my time very, very, very seriously as I hope everybody. Listening to this does time is one thing that you cannot get back. be respectful of your mentor's time and energy. If you ask them a question and they give you an answer, you better have a pen and paper. You better write it in your notes so you don't have to ask the same question again, because again, that's disrespectful. You asked a question, you didn't take the time to take notes and to remember it, and to study it and go back. Don't expect your mentor, your coach, your leader to say it again, we are all busy. Some, some of you listening to this, you are moms. Some of you are still working full-time jobs as you're trying to exit the matrix. And as a mentor, it is your responsibility to set the expectation and the right tone from the beginning of your relationship how this person. Can work with you, how they can respect your time, what that looks like, and what an equal value exchange looks like for both of you, so that they can get what they want and you can get what you want, which is respect. Now, just because you joined a business, talking to the mentees out there, I want you to keep in mind that everybody, even your mentor right now, started at zero. Everyone you look up to online, everyone that you follow, they started at zero. Zero sales, zero influence, zero business partners,$0. That is nothing to feel insecure about. The fact that you haven't made any money yet does not mean the business model. Entrepreneurship. Anything like that doesn't work. Business works, entrepreneurship works. You have to believe that and posture yourself accordingly, because if not, you will self-sabotage, which are the things that we talk about on this podcast. You have to take radical accountability for your success and your failures. You have to take a hundred percent accountability. And your results and lack of results. What you put in is what you get out. Your mentor is there to be a guide. Your mentor is there to offer guidance and support you as you navigate your journey. They have valuable experience and insights to share, and they're happy to do that as long as their time is being respected. They are not a task master. Your mentor will not do the work for you. They cannot. This is your business and your success depends on your effort and your effort alone and your initiative. That's it. Your mentor is a source of feedback. Your mentor will provide constructive feedback on your work and strategies and progress upon request. Again, they're not a q and A answer service. Do not be an ask whole. Your mentor is available for scheduled calls for interactions, possibly if they allow that. If not, hop on their weekly calls if they have those. If not, whatever access they give you. Respect it, respect their time. Prepare your questions in advance. Prepare your topics in advance. Don't waste people's time. I don't know where we lost this as a society. Your mentor is a sounding board. Your mentor is available to brainstorm ideas, to discuss challenges, and to help you explore different approaches to your business. And again, they are not an accountability buddy. Your mentor cares. I guarantee you deeply about your progress, but you are ultimately responsible for your own actions and your results. Set your own goals. Hold yourself accountable. We can't do it for you as much as we would love to. We cannot. Your mentor is a resource. Your mentor can and will connect you to valuable resources, tools, contacts within the community outside of the community that when you plug into will lead to results. But they're not a therapist. Again, I know I've mentioned this, your mentor is not equipped to provide personal therapy or counseling if you need that. Seek professional help. All right. I kind of went off today, but I think it's something that needs to be said because you as a leader, the people that you work with are going to set the pace for everyone else around you. People are also gonna look at the results that you give to other people. And if you start partnering with people who need handholding, who need you to do it for'em, who cannot think on their own, who come to you, and they're ask assholes asking you so many questions. I know your time's busy, but da da dah, dah, dah. And it's something that they could have chat GT to YouTube or Googled in a fraction of the time. You are an asshole. Don't be an asshole. Respect people's time. If you start partnering with people just because of the sale, the initial sale, and these are not your people that will damage your credibility as a leader. It shouldn't. I don't love it, but it will. That's why you have to be very. Selective on who you work with, and especially if you're listening to this and you're in the high ticket space, you have got to, got to, got to, got to respect your time and know your value. Be a coach, be a mentor. Be a leader. Duplicate your skills into other people. Make sure that there is a mutual value exchange between two human beings. And if you have any questions about how any of this works or how I went from being the biggest people pleaser on the planet and draining myself completely to where I experienced two years of burnout and I couldn't help a single soul for two years to the strong, independent, confident leader that I am today. I'm happy to share any insights. I'm happy to answer any questions. You can absolutely send me a DM and then call her coach Instagram at Call her coach podcast, and I'm happy to help and kind of get you some clarity. I don't mean for this episode to be mean, but it is direct. It is direct, and I think that that is also a lost skill, a lost art in people, especially in US culture, I don't know when we got so soft and watered down, but you guys, it's not serving anybody. It's really not. You can be direct and you can be loving. Those two things don't have to be mutually exclusive. They can exist in the same world, and because you are direct. That means that you do care and you do love the other person that you're having a conversation with, because that takes strength, that takes courage, that takes a hell of a lot more love than sugarcoating and telling someone what they want to hear because you're afraid to hurt their feelings. That's all I have today. I love you. Go out there, crush it. I'll see you next week.