I Was Wrong About Mentorship...

I've had a lot of mentors in my career. Many of them were paid, a few of them were free. The point of a good teacher is that the student does pass the teacher. I see this thing that happens all the time. When you are a kid and you learn arithmetic. First you learn your numbers and then you learn how to add. You level up and you learn how to multiply and then you level up from there and you learn algebra. When you get to algebra, you don't think, man, my arithmetic teacher is a idiot. I can't believe they didn't teach me this stuff. It's like, dude, you weren't ready and you had to have the arithmetic in order to get to the multiplication. It's not that that teacher was an idiot, it's that that was the sequence. And so when you have a first teacher that te you the basics and you have a more advanced teacher later, it doesn't mean you should shit on your first teacher. It's like that person got you ready to receive the next thing. Earlier on in my career, I definitely did the other way. This guy didn't know anything. This guy is the guy. Rather than seeing it like you would see any other thing that you'd have in school, I've had the opportunity and the, and you know, the gift of being able to mentor whatever you want to say, you know, provide advice, counsel, share my experiences. A lot of people hold me in a regard and most people who are winners are competitive. It's just like who you are, right? You want to win, you want to beat everybody, because that's, that's part of the competitive drive. But I think there's like a, a comma there that needs to get put in, which is that you have to accept two things. One is that you are going to die and no one is going to remember like real, real 10,000 years from now. No one's going to remember at all. Number two is that when you're at the end of your life, the people who are going to be your by your bedside are not the people who you vanquished, but the people that you helped. I know that I have passed a lot of the mentors that I've had in my career in terms of financials, et cetera. Earlier on, used to think that made me better than them. As I've had a couple more years and some more scars, I've realized something different, which is that I was only able to get better than them because they gave me the head start. Step on my shoulder, you can reach that Next branch. I think I experienced a lot of joy knowing that other people don't have to suffer as much. You know, we were walking around outside yesterday, and someone's like, dude, I did everything you have, and we're doing $4 million a year now. Like, he was, like, emotional. Just knowing that it's happening, it makes stomaching the hard times easier. It feels like it's not just me trying to do this for myself. It's me trying to do this for a lot of people. If I'm failing over and over again at this thing, I know that once I figure it out, I'll be able to help a hundred people cheat code their way through it and not spend months figuring something out or two years figuring something out. Like, I was stuck at mid 30 million for three years. To everyone watching, they're like, boohoo. That's not. The point is that there's another guy who's going to get to that point, and he's going to move right past it, like, in a blink of an eye. Because I've had the right advice that I didn't have. And I think that if the mentees and the mentors both see it that way, then the mentees will stop shitting on the mentors that help them, and the mentors will stop trying to hold back secrets that have propelled them further. Because the point is not that you're going to beat everyone. You're going to get really old, and then you're going to die as you're getting older. They're going to be people who are younger, who had a head start. And as long as the next guy honors the fact that that guy died on the battlefield, to give him these lessons and come back. And they have to recognize that they're going to die on the battlefield, too, for the next generation to pass them. They have it easier than us. That's the point of progress. And so rather than lamenting that the next generation has it easier, I thought that what we all say, I want to make the world a better place. Well, that's what making the world a better place looks like. We say that this is our mission with our business. We want to make the world a better place. We want to make an impact. And then when it actually happens, we resent the kids for the fact that they didn't have it as hard as us. That was the point. My point is not to beat the progeny. My point is to forge as far as I can look back and be like, hey, watch out for that hole. Watch out for that rock. Keep going, keep going. They move through the path that we tread three times faster than we did because we already cleared all the trees. They get to the next non clearing and they have to start hacking away and hacking away and hacking away to forge the next path. And then they become the mentor. Turn around and the next generation moves six times as fast to cover my distance and their distance. If you look at some of the greatest success stories, a lot of them talk about their mentors. Warren Buffett had his mentor early on. The quick story on that was that he said, I'll work for you for free. And Paul Graham told him, you're overpriced. He was the one who's going to be giving far more to this relationship. Even if Warren gave him his time, he still was going to be on the losing side. But he still did it anyways because he recognized that Warren had a gift. Warren passed him in his career. You'll notice that Warren isn't like, man, I'm so much better than Paul Graham. I passed that dude in my like 40s. He doesn't talk like that. We really do stand the shoulders of the giants. When I think about like the gratitude that I have for the Gary Vees who's 12 years older than I am, he's forged so much of this path that like, I didn't have to think about how am I going to create this whole thing. It's like he already had a blueprint and I can just start laying that out immediately. Execute. There are guys who we have in our portfolio right now who are in their 20s, who are making twice what I was making at 30, but if they came to me below and then now they're above, that was the point. Gary Vee didn't have Gary Vee to mentor him on his career. I do right now. We all do. Many of us will pass Gary. And I don't think Gary might. There's a 20 year old. It might be you who's watching this. And you've got me. That's the point. I'm still going to be hustling, trying to beat you. Don't get me wrong. When I see guys who are in their 60s, I'm like, man, by the time I'm 60, I'm going to be 10 times as wealthy as that. 10 times the real estate, 10 times. Yeah, but if they had had themselves as mentors, they would too. If your mentees and the students that you have and the people that you help and the two people that you teach don't move above you, it means that you're a bad teacher, not a good one. The new definition of success of a teacher is that the students surpass the teacher and then get to the point where they're both looking together with his experience and his raw talent, looking at the new landscape, saying, all right, what do you think we should do if this video changed your mind about some of the shit talking that you've done to a teacher or to a mentor who was earlier on in your career? Shoot that guy text and be like, hey, like, respect, I appreciate you. I can't tell you one how much it means to the mentor when they get that text. And I also think too, it'll help you spit out the poison that you had that wasn't real. It was only made up in your head. I think if you can do those things, this video would have been a success.