The Mentor Who Had to Face Himself

By Michael Connelly

When I stepped into EO’s mentoring program last year, I thought I was
there to help someone else grow.

I didn’t realise it would force me to confront my own blind spots.

Teaching has always been part of who I am. My first proper job was
teaching speech and drama. Later it was guitar. I’ve always believed that
if I’m going to teach something, I need to understand it deeply. Not only
what I learned fifteen years ago, but right up to what I learned this week.
Teaching forces you to get better.

So when I became a mentor through EO, something reawakened in me. It
reconnected me with my purpose: to learn as much as I can and then
share it in a way that makes sense to others.

But mentorship did something else. It held up a mirror.

Turning Over the Rocks

As a mentor, I was guiding conversations about courage, clarity and
looking at the numbers, even when the numbers are scary.

I found myself encouraging someone to “turn over the rocks” in their
business. To look underneath. To find the squiggly things that are
uncomfortable but necessary. Because that’s where growth lives.

Then it hit me. I wasn’t turning over the rocks in my own business.

I had what I call “The Great Cash Flow Crisis of 2025.” It turned out that
cash flow wasn’t the problem; it was just the symptom. We were bleeding
money in one business unit, but instead of going deep, I was sticking
Band-Aids on it.

Busyness was my excuse. The truth? I knew what I was going to find and
I knew it would hurt.

We think that if we don’t look at a problem, we can pretend it’s not there.
But a problem you don’t look at is still a problem. A cancer you don’t
diagnose doesn’t disappear.

So I did the thing I had been teaching someone else to do. I ate the frog.
I went back and recoded 1,300 invoices across three years. I dissected
time sheets. I pulled apart revenue lines. I faced every uncomfortable
number I had been avoiding and the answer was clear.

We had to shut down an entire business unit.

The Conversations I Used to Fear

The financial work was hard, the human work was harder. Redundancies,
difficult conversations. There was going to be real impact on real people
and their families.

At the start of that year, I had written down a personal growth goal: “Be
more assertive.”

But that wasn’t actually what I needed. I didn’t need to be harder, I didn’t
need to be louder and I didn’t need to be less empathetic.

What I needed was the ability to have difficult conversations without
shaking. Without feeling crushed by the emotional weight of them.

Somewhere in that process, supported by forum conversations, hearing
other members’ 5% reflections, knowing I wasn’t alone, I realised
something had shifted.

I was able to sit in those conversations calmly, clearly, human to human.
That was growth..

Liberating, Even While It’s Still Scary

We’re still in it. It’s still uncertain. We’re reshaping a business that’s been
around nearly three decades. We’re testing whether what remains is
scalable nationally. We’re exploring what works, what gives fulfilment,
what makes money and it has to tick all three boxes.

That’s scary, but it’s also liberating. For the first time in a long time, I feel
like this is truly my business. I’m in control of it. If something doesn’t
drive the economic engine, even if it brings joy, I can say no.

That’s not harsh, that’s responsible and I don’t think I would have had the
courage to make those decisions five years ago. I didn’t feel in control
back then. I didn’t have the same peer network and I hadn’t yet learned
how to face the uncomfortable truth without flinching.

EO didn’t give me the answers. It gave me the environment where I could
hear other people’s stories of success, of failure, of reinvention and realise
I wasn’t the only one walking through fire.

The Unexpected Lesson

Becoming a mentor reconnected me with my purpose as a teacher, but it
also forced me to become the student of my own blind spots.

I had to apply the same standards to myself that I was asking someone
else to apply to their business. In doing the hard thing (the work I had
avoided because I knew it would be painful), I found something I hadn’t
expected: Control and Clarity.

This has been the kind of freedom that only comes from facing what you
already know is there.

The hard conversations didn’t break me, they set me free.