How to FIND Mentors: Unlock Success in 13 MINUTES

Good morning, Believe Nation. In today's episode of Believe Life, we're going to talk about the why and how of finding a mentor.

Make happen. And then I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I made it happen. I remember I went to work for this man named Jim Rohn. Anybody here heard of Jim Rohn? Wow, quite a few. Jim, I went to saw him when I was 17 years old. A man that my family had known. My dad said, "He used to be such a loser and now he's so successful. How is that?" And I was totally broke, our family was broke, and I needed to earn some money, so on the weekends he was fixing homes and then flipping them. And so I went to help him move some of those homes. And while I was moving, I said, "Listen, my dad said you used to be such a loser and now you're so successful." Kids can get by with this shit, you know. I thought I was asking just a normal question, right? And he said, your father said what? In the end he said, well, he's probably right. I said, what changed you? He said, I went to a seminar. I said, what the hell's a seminar? He said, well, this man who has this incredible life experience tells you the best insights he has and saves you like a decade or two. I said, wow. I said, how long is he talking? He goes, 3 and a half hours. I go, holy shit, that's a long time. 9, 4, 6 day things, right? But I said, well, I don't understand. He goes, Tony, You can learn on your own experience, and that's the most expensive way to learn because it costs you time and you'll never get the time back. He said, you got to spend the money. I said, how much is it? This is 1977, shows how old I am. I'm a 17-year-old kid. And he said, it's $35. And I'm like, holy shit, because I'm making $40 a week as a janitor. That's a week's pay for one little evening. He goes, well, you shouldn't go. You should just figure it out on your own over the next 30 years. I said, can you get me in? He said, yeah. I said, will you? He said, no. I said, why not? He said, you won't value it. He said, if you struggle to be there, you'll take notes. And I did. I figured out every, every, like, thought was worth 3 cents and shit. I was like committed. But the interesting thing was I made that little decision and it led me to a whole different life because I decided from that point forward I wasn't going to learn by my own experience.

Alright, so the question was how do I suggest attracting mentors into my life, and with surfing, for instance, I ended up learning how to do a pop-up from a guy named Brad Gerlach, who was formerly number one ranked surfer in the world, and I did it via Skype video. I was actually in an apartment in Berlin when it was raining, and he was in Los Angeles, and we did it remotely. Uh, the fastest answer is you pay them. Honestly, for like Brad, you could do it very, very, very affordably. That's the path of least resistance. There's a question of how to find them, and then there's a question of how to engage with them. Those are two different things. In terms of how to find them, I'm going to have to defer, just in the interest of time, to the deconstruction section in The 4-Hour Chef, where I talk about how to track them down on Google and different questions I use. In terms of how to engage, you can certainly just pay them. Secondly is to freelance write. Write a piece and interview them as part of that piece. And then tack on an extra 5 or 10 minutes to ask you what you'd like to ask them would be my recommendation. But if budget allows, the most direct way is just to pay them for $50, $100, $200 for a Skype session.

I have no idea what finding a mentor was like 10 or 20 years ago. It's always been the same. How do you find a boyfriend or girlfriend? Is you fish where the fish are. You go where they are. The way you find a mentor is you look around yourself and you— or look around your world and you say, who would be a good person to give me advice to help me at this stage of my career? And then you approach that person. And in approaching a mentor, you ask them for 10 minutes of their time to ask them 3 specific questions which are in writing, and you give them a copy of it. No more than 10 minutes. Most people who are valuable as mentors are also extremely busy, and they do not have time for open-ended rambling conversations. You know, I have people say, 'Please be my mentor and tell me everything I need to be successful at life,' and I hang up the phone figuratively. I push delete on the email because I simply don't have the time. If a person writes me and says, 'Could you answer this specific question?' then will almost always answer that specific question. So look around yourself and say, who would be a good person to be a mentor? And then remember, a mentor relationship has to have some benefit for the other person. So what are you going to bring to the party? Whatever the person offers you in terms of advice or guidance, do it and report back. But then ask, how can I help you? What can I do to help you? Even if it's merely moving boxes on moving day. What can you do to help your mentor? Remember, the rule in life is you have to give to get. And the more you give of yourself without expectation of return, the more that will come back to you in the most unexpected ways.

Before, you know, people ask me about college, people ask me about mentors, you got to get in however you can at the ground level with somebody, go work for free, and then be impressive. So that's the second part. You know, the first part is get your foot in the door. No matter how you can. Ideally in something you could see yourself doing for 20 years. You can get the formal education later to back it if need be. But first make sure it's the right thing by getting your foot in the door. Some of you might need to get your foot in the door a few places 'cause you're not sure what you should do. This is how you get a mentor and how you find your business destiny. A lot of experiments. Then like I said, secondly, and people forget the second part, so they come and say, "Ty, I did what you said and it didn't work," you know? I read this and this stuff's not working. Well, and pardon my hair by the way, just woke up. I say, did you do number 2, the second component, which is were you impressive? How do you become impressive? Know stuff, be on time, ownership. I was talking about that. You gotta take ownership. Man, the world's so full of people that are just so focused on themselves that they forget you get promotions by impressing other people. So you have to be impressive for them. People say, I'm not gonna do stuff for other people. Why not? Why not? That's how you get ahead. You gotta hook your, as he says, hitch your wagon to something that's going somewhere. So people that are impressive, they only want to be around impressive people. That old saying, you know, like attracts like. It's not true as much as people think, like The Secret, but that is somewhat of, if you study psychology, certainly Angelina Jolie, it's no coincidence she's married to someone who's kind of her male equivalent. Same in business, same in mentors, same in business partnerships, same in opportunities. People want to be around amazing people. Why I'm big on reading, knowledge, is because not only does it revolutionize your own life, but it impresses people. Not that you want to do it to impress, but it's a nice added bonus, little perk, you know? So get out there. If you don't know what you're doing, and even if you do know what you're doing, remember Sam Walton spent a lot of time with competitors. Get out there. Don't be afraid to start at the ground floor, whether it's with a mentor or a new business opportunity. Don't skip ahead. And then make sure you're very impressive. Show up early, take ownership, act like whatever you're doing, you own 100% of the shares in it, even if you, you know, are sweeping the floor.

This is the part that can be tricky. Connect with courage. So a little bit about my background. I grew up in Fresno. And I am half Armenian. However, I am not close personal friends with the Kardashians, nor do I have their social or professional connections. So about 10 years ago, when my co-author Susan Murphy and I had this crazy idea to write a book and interview 50 CEOs and protégés, we had no connections and really no business doing this at all. So we set out and we said, "Wouldn't it be cool if we interviewed people from media, technology, and politics, like the CEO of NBC and the CEO of Universal and the US Treasurer?" But we didn't know how to connect with them. So we devised this process, which, which 10 years later has become this whole how to get a mentor and turned into an assignment I give my students every single semester. And it goes like this: When you wanna connect with someone, you make a hit list or a target list of who you wanna connect with. And then you research or cyber sleuth them. It's so much easier these days with LinkedIn to do that. So find out everything about them. Find out where they went to school and who they know. And then try to find someone who knows them that can provide a warm connect. That way you're not having that uncomfortable, cold connection feeling. And if you keep going with that, sometimes it took us 3 or 4 or 5 meetings to meet the person who could provide the warm connect. Chances are that you'll put people in a better position to say yes to you. So that part's really important. But the part I left out is the courage part. And this is something that I really have not shared before. I don't know I don't know why, it's probably because it's embarrassing. But I'm gonna share it with you today, and that's the courage part. So how do you get the courage to do that? I have to tell you, when I make a connection with someone, I have a stomachache before I do it. It's intimidating, it's scary. So I had to devise a ritual for myself that I would use before I would connect. And so my ritual is actually a song. And the song is by Janis Stanfield, "If You Were Brave." So I'm going to demo some courage today. What would I do today if I were brave? So you can see why, thank God, I stayed in graduate school. Thank God for tenure, 'cause my singing career is going nowhere. May that wasn't the smartest thing ever, but seriously, that's my song.