How to Get Free Mentoring from Top Executives

And then I had a formal mentor who was being groomed as the COO at Starbucks. And this was while I was the COO at 1-800-got junk, kind of from the 40 million to 100 million phase. And every month, I did a one hour call with Greg, and every quarter, I would go down to his head office in Seattle for a full day, or he'd come up to Vancouver to our head office for a full day. So over the course of two years, he really mentored and grew me, and he was doing it for free. And I actually reached out and found Greg and asked him to grow me. And I gave him five core areas I wanted to get better at as a person, and five core areas I wanted to get better at as a leader. And it was in that mentoring stage that he really kind of helped develop me.