How To Find The Right Mentor

Believe it or not, everyone has mentors. We are tribal beings. Human beings model one another. It's in our nature. We don't have to try to model each other. And so on one level or another, we are all following the examples set before us. So we all have mentors, even if we are unaware of them. But when most of us talk about finding or modeling mentors, what we're talking about is being intentional with the people that we model. That's the purpose of having a mentor. It's having someone that we can intentionally model so that we can follow in their footsteps, learn from their wisdom, and to avoid the traps and the pitfalls that, that we would fall into on our own if we didn't have help. There's three different types of mentors. There's the people whose content you consume but you might not have a personal relationship with. There is mentors that you know personally and have some sort of friendly relationship with. And the third is people that you pay. Now, the biggest area of opportunity for the vast majority of people, especially entrepreneurs and people who want to have success is that first area of mentorship. Because content and mindset and access to people is absolutely abundant. This is something that didn't exist even 25 years ago. We now have access to the minds of pretty much anyone on the planet. And this is new for us as a species and as an association, as a society. So for the most, for most people, they don't necessarily need to know their mentors personally because they have access to their thoughts and their habits and their behaviors for free on the Internet. So a lot of people will jump right into asking individuals, will you mentor me? And they bypass the treasure trove of habits and strategies and content that exists for free everywhere. But for the purpose of this video, we're going to focus on making that leap from someone whose content that you follow to going to a personal relationship and then considering paying someone for mentorship. So throughout this video, we're going to talk about approaching that, choosing those mindfully, and how to ultimately close the deal. If you will get the mentor to say yes and invite you into their circle.

Let'S talk about building relationships with the people that you would like to have in your circle. And I'm going to start with the best strategy or tip that I can give you for any relationship, including mentors. And that is when you are starting a new relationship, always start with the smallest and easiest yes possible. I get blown up in my DMs from people who just say, will you mentor me? And I Answer that by sending them to our mentoring program where people are in a community@capitalism.com and we work with them in a group. But what most people are really saying is, will you give up some of your time for me? And even though we have no relationship, it's kind of like going up to a girl at a bar and asking her to come home with you without having any relationship or any rapport at all. Ask any woman, you know how they feel about that, and they will say things like gross pig, and very stereotypical of the men that you want to avoid in all areas of your life. You don't start a relationship and you don't start a transaction without having some sort of rapport at the beginning. The way that you do that is by offering something. Now, some people will say, but I don't have much to offer. How do I build a relationship when I don't have much to offer? You always have something to offer. If you are contacting someone whose content you admire, you can offer to share that content. You can offer to interview that person and share their content with your audience. You can offer to work for free for a year, you can offer whatever it is that you've got. And most people miss such an opportunity of understanding and learning where that person is in their journey. Remember, mentors are just people too, which means that they're on their own journey, they're pursuing their own goals right now. And if you pay attention to what they post or what they say publicly and you tune into the goal that they're trying to accomplish and where they are in that journey, you'll be much more specific about the help that you can offer or the resources that you can make available in order to be genuinely giving to that person. By the way, the simplest way to do that is to make introductions and relationships. So if you become the person who is offering to make introductions that are helpful to each other's journeys, you become the person who has contributed to multiple people without you having to give up anything or even have anything to offer. So making introductions is a great way to build your network and to make deposits into the relationship bank account so that when you go to make a withdrawal, there's actually something in there. Most people are trying to build relationships on credit. They're just taking and taking and taking, and now they're indebted to that person. The secret is to flip that and to make deposits into other people's bank accounts on a relationship basis so that later you can cash the check in the form of an ask Or a request for help.

From there, after we've gotten the easiest yes possible, it's about getting the next yes, which is a little bit bigger. We never then say, great, would you mentor me for a year? It is then about, is there a way that I can contribute ongoing? Is there a way for me to be plugged in? Is there a way for me to be involved? Can I contribute to your assistant? Can I contribute to your employees? Fun Story is my longest standing mentor. His name is Travis. He's one of the, like, three people on this planet that I would jump in front of a train for. And I met him when I was 19 or 20 years old. I tell this story in my book where I didn't mean to sneak into a bar. It was a restaurant at the time, and then it turned into a bar. And so they didn't card me because I was already in the restaurant. And I see Travis come in. And I had gone to this gathering hoping to meet Travis, and Travis was bombarded with people who wanted his attention. And so my thought said, well, if I can't get Travis's attention, then I want his wife talking about me the entire ride home saying that Ryan Moran was such a nice boy. And so I chatted her up for hours. And guess what? We are friends to this day. That is a way of getting into the circle without being one of those, what I call, ask holes. People who are in the middle just asking for attention, asking for advice, asking, just draining the person of everything that you can get from them. Contribute to the people around them, contribute to the people in their circle. Do you have any idea how neglected most people feel when they're in the halo of somebody who has some status or some celebrity? And so if you show up and contribute to the people around them and they become your circle now, you are one degree away from the person that you want to meet. So a way to do that is to offer ongoing contribution to those individuals, which now puts you in the circle. And so now you are in the halo effect of the people that you really want to be mentored by. And if you do your job as a mentee, the person who is contributing to that group, then you put yourself in the position to benefit from the wisdom from the person that you ultimately want to learn from. One thing that will get the attention of the person that you want to connect with is showing them how you took an action based on their advice. One thing that most people don't understand about mentors or leaders is that the vast majority of people don't do anything with the wisdom or the knowledge that they share. And so one of the things that I recommend is writing a handwritten note to that person and saying what you decided to do or what you changed as a result of a piece of advice that they gave you. So let's say that this is a person you have no relationship with, but you listen to their podcast. One way to get your foot in the door is to reach out to the assistant or to that person and say, is it okay if I tell you how your work impacted my life? That's an easy yes, right? And then a handwritten note that simply says, dear so and so, thank you so much for the podcast that you released on this topic. As a result of your advice, I decided to X, Y, and Z. In fact, I'm already A, B and C as a result of having that knowledge imparted upon me. If I can ever be of assistance or contribution to your goal to X, please consider me a resource. That's a pure give and a pure example of you taking the advice of the person that you hope to mentor you. So what that does is it actually shows that you're a good mentee. It actually shows that you're willing to take the advice of the people who share their knowledge with you. Most people don't do that. Most people just ask for the mentorship, and they never do anything with the knowledge that is given to them. So if you can be ahead of that and show how that person's advice is already impacting you, that goes a long way.

All right, let's talk about building that core group of people who influence you and help you on your journey. I call this the Success Network. It's that group of people that are there for you, rooting for you on your journey. Some people call those mentors. And I use the word. I use those words interchangeably. And this can be group people at your church who drive the nice car. It can be people that you've done business with, who inspire you. It can be people whose content you follow. But the goal for you is to make a list of the people who are living the type of life that you perceive that you want, that are one or two steps ahead of you on the journey that you are following. And my recommendation to start is to begin with people that you already have some sort of a relationship with. Begin with some sort of a relationship that you've already got access to, where, if you were to reach out to them, they might book a coffee with you or answer the phone when you called because most individuals are trying to make big leaps in their progress when what you really need is just to see the next step forward. And so you don't need Mark Cuban to tell you what to do. You really need somebody who is a few steps ahead of you, helping you get to that level faster. And then you'll have a new mentor when you have reach that level, and then you probably have a new mentor. If you're successful, then you'll have lots of mentors throughout your life. So start with your internal circle. There is a great book written by Benjamin Hardy with Dan Sullivan called who Not How. And the general thesis of this book is whenever you find yourself asking the question, how do I do this? Replace that question with who can help me with this? The answer to that question is where you want to start pursuing new relationships, which some people might call mentors.

So you don't go for the big ask out of the gate. You build the relationship and you allow it to flourish into a mentorship over time. Now, finally, if there is someone that you specifically want to connect with and you don't have a connection to them, find out if you can pay them. So I've done this in the past where I wanted to meet someone and they didn't take on clients or do consulting or anything like that, but they did do speaking gigs. And so I invited them to speak at our annual event called the Capitalism Conference. And we hit it off, we became friends, and you might call that person a bit of a mentor to me now, it was somebody that I really wanted to connect with and they were way too successful to like take a call from me. So I just paid them their speaking fee and they showed up and we had some conversations. If they don't do that, make a donation to their favorite charity and just tell them that you did it as a thank you for the way that they have inspired you. If you can show up with money, even if it does not paying them to mentor you, if it is buying one of their products or it's paying their speaking fee or it is contributing to their charity, that shows a willingness for you to show up to learn from that person. And that is a great way to open up the door and open up the conversation for you to be mentored by the people that you might perceive to be inaccessible to you right now.

Mentors can save you 10 years. Mentors can give you the clear path to the results that you want. But the only way that you'll ever develop those relationships is if you treat them like Relationships. Mentors are people. Mentors have the same needs and desires and constraints as anyone else. So if you're a cool person who shows up to give and has dropped the expectations that they're just going to give up their time and resources to to mentor you and you work your way into their circle, you'd be surprised at how accessible just about anyone on the planet can be. I have mentors that I've been pursuing for three years. I have mentors that I have contributed to with no expectation for years. I have one person that I have spent 50,000. No, that's wrong. $150,000 getting into their network. I mean that. And I use it in my business and I plan trips and I plan orders around getting into that person's network. Why? Because I know that person can save me 10 years. And although we've only met a few times, I'm willing to spend 10 years contributing to somebody with no expectation that it leads to anywhere. That attitude is how you can build a world class network over time and put you in the position to connect with mentors that most people will never have access to. When you are starting out, the best thing that you can do is to plug in the content of the people who have the type of life or the experience that you want and to get plugged into a community that can support you on that path. If you're an entrepreneur or you're wanting to start a business, we'd love to be that resource for you. You can get started by subscribing to the channel and hanging out with and interacting with the people who are not in our community@capitalism.com and if you found value in this video, please help me mentor and connect with the other entrepreneurs who want to do cool things and don't know about this content yet. And you can do that by liking and sharing this video. And if you have a mentor or if you have people that you follow that you plug into your ears and they serve as your mentor from a distance, let me know who they are. I'm always looking for new content and for other people who have inspired other entrepreneurs along their journey. So let me know who you admire and who you look up to in the comments of this video. I consider it a privilege to be a part of your journey to build businesses and invest the profits. And I so appreciate you being here on the channel and watching the video. I'll see you guys next time. Take care.