What is the Difference Between a Coach and a Mentor and How Do I Know Which One to Hire?

I want to talk about something that comes up a lot. I think on social media we see a ton of people who claim to be coaches or mentors, and I think that's awesome because I believe.

Every single person has knowledge to share and every single person has a unique way of looking at and teaching things and can help someone else. I don't care if you have been in business for 30 days, you likely learned something that some that you could teach someone just starting out. So, I think that coaching and mentorship is awesome.

I think where it gets confusing is where people are saying, Okay, I'm going to teach you this and this course, and then I'm going to have group coaching, and then I'm going to have this mentorship opportunity. And it's like, well, what are all these things and what do they mean and why do I even need a coach or mentor? And how. 

How do I go about, finding one and all that? 

So today I kind of just wanna go over the differences between a coach and a mentor. Now those two phrases are used interchangeably a lot in just kind of everyday vernacular, right? Like, we'll say, Oh, my mentor, my coach, I absolutely do it too.

So I will sometimes be like, Oh, she's my mentor, or, Oh, I had a call with my coach. , but technically they are two different things and I think it's kind of important to realize the difference when you're looking for a coach or mentor yourself. Right. 

So basically a mentor, I kind of think of a mentor as think if you were at a corporate job and you are like an entry level associate, and then there's someone above you that is kind of guiding you in the whole overarching.

Way of this is what it's like to be in this company. This is how you know we do things here. I'm going to share with you my knowledge and my skills and my experience in more of a global view, right? So it's like someone higher up than you that's kind of giving you an overview of all different things, right?

So if someone came to me and was like, Yeah, I want to work with you as a mentor. , you know, here's my business. What can we do? That would be more of a mentorship role, right? Because we would look at your. All of it, right? And we would say, Okay, social media marketing, we need to work on that. The legal side of things, we're going to work on that.

On systems. You need to, you need to do that. Hiring. We need to look at getting someone in here or, getting someone out of that role and, and putting someone different in. So mentorship is just kind of all of that, right? And so say we're talking about, a mentorship and we're doing hiring.

That is when I would use my expertise in my hiring practices, how I've done it in the past, and I would kind of say, Okay, in my experience, this is how I would do it. Right. So that's kind of the mentorship role in a coaching role, I think of coaching as something much more specific. Right. 

A coach is going to guide you. Specific to your goals to help you, you reach your, your full potential. But basically, a coach I feel like is going to be a more specific. kind of expertise, right? So if you came to me saying, I need to absolutely overhaul the legal in my business, then I would be coaching you on just that thing. I wouldn't say in my ex.

Experience in my business, legal looks like this. I would say no. In my experience as an attorney and a business coach, in your case, in your specific case, so not just overarching, but in your specific case, you need to do X, Y, Z, right? So even you know, the same if you came to me and said, Okay, I wanna self-publish a.

Right. I wanna self-publish a book. I want you to coach me on it. And I've actually coached multiple people on this. And that is because that's a very specific thing. And that would be, we would look at your book, your goals, and what you need to do every step of the way, right? So I would coach you along every step of the process.

Now, when I was writing my book, that's exactly what I did. Wanted to write this book. I wanted to get itself published. I wanted to do it in the fastest, most efficient way possible, right? Think about it. This is the pushback that people always say with coaches or mentors. They always say, There is so much free information out there that I could just.

Google it and YouTube it and read articles and do it that way. And you know what? A hundred percent you can do it that way. And I love the hustle. And if you have the time to do that, then by all means do it. I mean, I think that's great. I, I would never discourage someone from taking the time to do the research.

What I will say is that if you want it done efficiently and you want it done as fast as possible, which I did. What I did was I hired a coach. I hired Kara Allwell, she's the champagne diet. She has published nine books, she's self-published, nine books, best sellers, and I wanted to get in her brain and I wanted her to help me do, get my book published the same way she did.

And that's exactly what I did. I hired her, we worked together for three months. It was awesome. She totally helped me go from basically just having the. Copy of the book, not even completed to the published book. So, that's a more specific coaching situation. Right. So I think really the thing when you are deciding between a coach and a mentor, and again, like I said, they, they sometimes combine, like I'll have people's.

Come in and we do both, right? We'll do an overarching view of their business and then they'll say, Oh, I really need like coaching on social media. Like, how did you grow your social media following? And I'll say, Okay, I'm going to coach you through how I did it. But I may also say, in my experience in my business, it's helpful to hire this out, or something like that.

So I hope that that clears up the coach or mentor kind of question in your mind. They are used interchangeably. So if you are going to hire a coach or a mentor, make sure you kind of know what exactly they are offering. Like, are they offering teaching on one thing or are they offering, you know, all of their experience to impart to you?