Mentors Can Change Your Life

The following is part of an article my oldest son wrote a few years ago. 

When I was 14 years old, I flew to
Boise, Idaho to spend a month with Chris Verhaegh. That was a month that changed my life.  

While I was there, Chris took me to about a hundred different places and each one had a lesson of its own. 

He taught me lessons at a motocross race, coin shops, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, auto body shops, a grocery store, and in his airplane hangar. We visited hangars in his neighbors’ backyards where I met mechanics that built their own ultra-light airplanes. 

Each one had at least one lesson to learn. 

Here’s just one example.  

One day he took me to a landscaping company where they were selling huge oak stumps for $500 each. 

 Landscapers were buying the stumps for big expensive houses that needed “something.” 

I told him, “Back home in
Alabama, we burn stumps like that. I’ve seen big piles full of stumps just like that burn all day.” 

He said, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” 

Now even though I was just a kid, I knew everyone had heard that saying. Then he said, “You should stop burning the stumps and start selling them. Why burn something others are willing to pay good money for?”The important thing I learned was not that you could make money with stumps; it was that successful people learn to see opportunity in other people’s common problems. 

I’ve never met anyone who thinks like Chris Verhaegh.  

Neither has Mom or Dad. 

 He retired when he was 28 and has spent the rest of his life learning and raising four kids with his wife Karen.  

He’s also mentored other young men who have been more successful than me. Chris has also taught investors in many cities and countries how to profit in the stock market.

Drew has seen that a good mentor can change your life. I have too. 

So many books, so little time… 

Rhea!

who hopes you find a mentor

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