We are a small collection of dedicated people that are committed to helping others achieve business success and personal satisfaction.
Hi, I'm Steve. After a business career spanning 35+ years, I launched MentorMyBiz specifically to help, and to guide, young or newer entrepreneurs, as well as assist those looking to grow their companies, all the while balancing their business and personal lives.
My inspiration was simple. I credit much of my own early success (and sanity!) to the Mentors that I was fortunate enough to have had helping, guiding, and supporting me.
I valued my Mentors immensely, far more than they ever knew...or likely would have believed! They've both passed on now, but I still think of them almost daily.
It was because of their belief in me, and their genuine empathy, that they became the people I trusted talking to, about anything, as I began and continued on in my journey. I hope I can be that person for you.
Read my story below.
MentorMyBiz provides an opportunity for me to do for others as others did for me.
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You've got nothing to lose,
only a supportive Mentor to gain.
Your success
is the only goal here.
Steve's story.
I grew up in an upper middle class home with my high school sweetheart parents and my younger brother. School came relatively easy to me, maybe too easy, because while I always got good grades, I wasn't the best of students. I considered myself an athlete first and foremost and played competitive hockey, football, baseball, basketball, volleyball, soccer, and golf. That was where all my energies went, doing whatever I could to WIN! Studying was always secondary to training, practicing, and competing.
At any rate, life was pretty good growing up in suburbia...until it wasn't. Life has a knack for throwing curveballs when we least expect it, and that's exactly what happened. You see my father was a high-ranking federal bureaucrat, and my grandfather before him was a well respected politician. They carried titles like 'Director General' and 'His Honourable' and 'Minister of...' with their names. They were 'heavyweights', and government and politics had become the 'family business' so to speak. And despite the pressure of trying to live up to expectations, I fully anticipated following in their footsteps. I envisioned an athletic scholarship to a big school, graduating, and then starting my career in the 'family business' of government and/or politics. But then came that curveball, just as I was about to enter my final year of middle school.
Turns out that the necessity of constantly having to be away on government business makes for a desperately lonely wife. I had just turned 14 when my mother announced she was running off with our neighbour friend from across the street. Life as I had known it changed forever. My father was devastated, my brother was lost. I just remember feeling numb. But for some strange reason, I never shed a tear. Perhaps it was because I felt obligated to keep it together and help look out for my little brother while my father put his life back together.
So things changed, and I did too. Sports meant little, school even less. Making money and 'finding my own way' became my new obsession. I also became proficient at 'hanging out' and 'partying' with my friends to escape my new found home-life reality. I made a lot of bad choices, primarily because there was no one around to tell me otherwise and steer me straight. I did whatever the hell I wanted to...at the ripe old age of 15 years old?!?!
And so it was during this time that my entrepreneurial pursuits began. While still in high school in Alberta, Canada, I began renting out halls and hosting paid events and parties for the under 18 crowd. After graduating high school, I went straight to university and then embarked on VERY diversified business, work, and professional career.
I've worked as an oilfield pipefitter, on grain and dairy farms, in construction, and in restaurants and bars. I was a personnel recruiter for concerts, events and exhibitions. I worked as a 'market researcher' and as a 'sales presenter'. I did almost a full year of nothing but volunteer work. I've renovated, owned, and managed numerous rental properties. I've been a salesperson and started a marketing company. I've owned an asset management firm, and was a partner in an art gallery. I founded and ran a development company and an investment capital firm. I've been invited on 'talk to the expert' radio programs and made TV appearances. I've sat on the Board of Directors of both public and private companies.
I've been 'well-off', living the dream. And I've been desperately broke, depressed, feeling hopeless (precipitating my first divorce and following my second).
As they say, I've been around.
With over 35 years 'in the trenches', in a variety of different commercial categories and roles, I have been central in initiating and completing in excess of $350 million dollars in business transactions. I have created successful companies and products that started out as little more than an idea on a napkin...and I have also tried to bring products to market and started and ran companies that failed, miserably. That’s all part of the journey, and how we learn. Throughout it all, I believe I’ve developed a great ability to quickly understand unique or challenging circumstances. Combined with creative problem solving, a wide ranging knowledge base, and a diversity of experiences, I’m confident these traits will serve others well with how best to navigate the myriad of challenges aspiring or new business owners and entrepreneurs will undoubtedly encounter.
It is this diversity, the exposure to so many different industries, and the varied people involved in them, that, I think, makes me a good Mentor, and I have been happily mentoring, helping, and guiding people for over 25 years now, without compensation or expectations. I did it because it felt good, and that’s what you do if you can and you’re so inclined.
And it all really started when I went to work for a large consumer finance company immediately after university. It was then that I knew working a lifetime for someone else wasn't going to work for me. I was quickly rising up the corporate ladder when the entrepreneurial bug bit again and it wasn't long before I left to start a retail kid's clothing company (of all things??) in Vancouver, B.C.. That venture quickly grew to multiple stores in a number of well-established regional malls...but it was that same rapid growth that ultimately led to the company's demise.
The highs and lows of that business, and ultimately it's failure, almost did me in. I questioned everything, and struggled mightily with bouts of depression. It took the better part of a year to dust myself off, get my head straight, and get back in the game.
Lessons learned and wounds licked, I was now in my late-twenties when my first Mentor entered the picture. On his advice I migrated to the real estate sector; first via the hard-knocks world of time-share resort sales, followed soon after by taking on the role of Director of Marketing for an apartment syndication firm based out of Calgary, Alberta.
My efforts there produced over $80 million in syndicated investment sales in just three short years. More importantly, I gained a new and valued Mentor in the founder of that company who actually encouraged me to strike out on my own again. Despite making him a lot of money, he knew I would never be truly happy working for him forever...or for anyone else for that matter! And so, with his blessing and unwavering support, I eventually made the leap to once again pursue doing my own thing.
In the decade following, I started several companies and marketed and sold a wide variety of real estate projects, some $200 million dollars worth. Eventually, I narrowed my focus and co-founded a company exclusively devoted to raising investment capital and developing seniors' assisted-living housing projects. As President and CEO, we grew that company to over $100 million before the portfolio was sold, pieced off to larger public companies and pension funds. At 50 years old, I entered into what I thought would be a happy life of semi-retirement.
Now, for better or for worse, I'm not one to sit idle for too long, that's just the nature of an entrepreneur. So after a few years living a life of leisure and sailing amongst the islands off the coasts of British Columbia and Washington state, I eventually moved to San Diego, California and was soon back in business...but I was well out of my real estate 'comfort zone', trying to develop new 'consumer products' and establishing new 'start-up' businesses.
It was during this time, when I myself could have used some help navigating the 'new product' and 'start-up' world, that I saw so many newly-minted entrepreneurs and struggling small business owners following bad advice and/or being taken for a ride by the very people they had hoped would help them. And so I endeavoured to help out as many of those people as I could as best I could, and vowing then and there that if I ever got the chance, I would try to do something completely different to help the people who need it the most to achieve the success and lifestyles they sought and deserved.
That time finally arrived and now MentorMyBiz represents my passion project realized. Helping people. That's it, that's all. The foundation of MentorMyBiz is built on the success I found (among more than a few failures!) in a wide variety of ventures over the past three decades, doing hundreds of millions in business, and creating hundreds of jobs (which is maybe what I'm most proud of!).
I now spend my time enjoying life, watching my adult kids grow on their own journeys, and mentoring and helping others who genuinely want to break free of the 9-5 and do something truly inspiring for themselves and their families.
Please get in touch if you think I might be able to help you. I look forward to chatting about your hopes, dreams, goals, and challenges.
Wishing you well,
Respectfully,
Steve.
Identify Issues. Create Solutions. Build Relationships. Deliver Value. Serve Others.