Heroes and Mentors

Hey, Seth Godin and I are right in tune at this time of year apparently. I posted about a brain trust yesterday and here are some additional thoughts on that very subject from Seth himself (who happened to be one of my imaginary charter brain trust members)

Seth echoes how important and powerful it can be to have a mentor or a hero. It can be a means of guidance, a way  to spur one on to action and a meaningful way to remind us that even the most successful people have been where we are at one time or another (or multiple times).

It's always nice to be reminded that overnight success takes years of hard work (Rob Zombie), that failure isn't failure if you don't let it be (Donald Trump, Thomas Edison), that it's never too late to make a difference (Louis Pasteur, Ulysses Grant) and that sometimes doing what they say is a HUGE mistake, just might be exactly what you need to do (Walt Disney)

The Brain Trust

So I remember when reading Jack Canfield's "Success Principles" (which I highly recommend) one of the items he discusses is a brain trust, or a mentoring group who meet regularly and advice one another on their various pursuits. Typically these people are not specifically involved in your business, or art, or endeavor, but have some meaningful input. Typically, it would be people you trust and admire and whose input you value (but who won't just agree with you for agreement's sake). In the event that you have no friends, or for some reason cannot assemble a physical mentoring group, he suggests assembling a fantasy team and then based on what you know about those people, imagine what they might tell you about what you are doing, where you are going and what advice they might give.

I thought it might be fun to imagine the GGE Brain Trust who would advice Green and I if we had the chance. Here's my current list (and I listed Seven because I love "The Seven Samurai" so I went with the same number. I think Canfield actually recommends five):

1. Walt Disney (who else better to fire the imagination and demonstrate how to build an entertainment empire)
2. Stan Lee (Amazing imagination and energy)
3. Seth Godin (inspiring, innovative and a marketing guru. All about doing something rather than doing nothing)
4. Jack Canfield (Obvious reasons - cited above)
5. Donald Trump (Why the Donald? Because he is a monster. He's made success out of nothing and his advice would be cold, hard and logical - unlike a lot of the artsy types I typically run with)
6. Rob Zombie (A master in branding oneself and making success in one medium translate to another
7. George Lucas (George is the weakest member of the team, but he is a natural innovator and understand a lot of what I am trying to do. When I think about where I want to be, a mini-George Lucas is a good example, so he gets a seat for now)

that's our Magnificent Seven. Make sense? Do you like the list? Who would you add or subtract? Who's on your list?