MBA1162 How To Find a Mentor + Free Ride Friday!
2 Feb 2026 · 12 min
Omar Zenhom walks through finding mentors: show up to your industry, ask for introductions, lock in meetings, and maintain multiple mentors for different areas. This week's Free Ride Friday winner is Jacob from Poland.
Questions this episode answers
2018-12-21
Over 80,000 listeners
$5
Jacob Mike Tia (listener from Poland)
Chapters
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Hey guys, usually on Friday, I remind you it's Freeride Friday and tell you about our contest that we do every week. But this Friday I'm going to do something a little bit different. I want to tell you about something that's very, very important to me and I need your a friend of mine, Chad and fellow entrepreneur. Just like you and I. Noah was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia just days before his first birthday back in December 2011. Since then, he's been having to fight for his life. Nearly three and a half years later, after a long, long battle, it seemed like they beat leukemia. Unfortunately though, my buddy Chad just learned that his son Noah has just relapsed and his leukemia has returned just in the past few weeks. His relapse is an essential nervous system and requires immediate medical help. It's going to take chemotherapy and radiation treatment to help little Noah out. Now, I've never done this before, but I know Chad personally. He's working super hard to grow his business just like you and I. And then he got hit with this challenge in his life. I immediately felt like I got to do something to try to help him out. So I'm doing it instead of just talking about it's the season of giving and caring and thinking about others. I'm challenging you to help somebody who's really in need. Who if you want to help Noah out, you can go to his GoFundMe page. I link to it easily at100mba.net helpnoa we get over 80,000 listeners of this show and we can make a tremendous impact and help Noah. If each of US just gave $5, literally no donation is too little. So if you just give $5, the cost of a coffee that you wouldn't even think twice about, it would mean the world to not only Chad and Noah, but you'd be inspiration. You'd prove that, hey, this world is not that bad after all. Again, that link is 100mba.nethelpNoah Chad, if you're listening, I have so much admiration for your strength in such a difficult time. I hope that somehow me and everybody that's listening can help in some little way. Hey. Oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show, the business podcast that gives you more than you bargain for every single day with our daily 10min and business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson, you'll learn how to find a mentor. You hear all the time. You need to have a mentor. You need to have somebody that you can call upon and seek advice. That's what the best of the best in the world of business have. They have mentors, but where do you find one? What do they look like? What are their traits? Unfortunately, when we hear the word mentor, we think of some fatherly or motherly type of person, maybe yod, some old wise person that can tell us which way to go. It's actually not that simple really. Mentors or the best mentors you can find are the ones that are a few steps ahead of you, people that are just a few steps ahead of you, that have been through your path before and that can help you along the way. In today's episode, I'm going to show you how you can find your mentor or mentors, what you can do to cultivate these relationships and seek these people out. If you don't already have a mentor, this could be a game changer come 2019, if you have one. Maybe it's time to think of the next level, the next mentor that's going to take you to the next stage. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I'm going to be honest Finding a mentor is not straightforward. It's not easy. They're not just going to fall in your lap. You can't just go to, you know, givemeameamentor.com and get a mentor. One, you have to be careful about who you choose as a mentor. And two, people that are good at what they do, they're busy. Who's got the time to give you and guide you along the way. The good news is that the best mentors are people that genuinely want to help other people. They don't want you to go through the same struggles that they did and get a satisfaction out of that. So I'm going to give you some advice in today's episode on how to find a mentor. Does it cost money? Does it cost time? What do you need to do? Well, the first thing we need to establish is that you're not going to find anybody. If you live under a rock, if you just don't socialize, if you don't actively try to grow your network, that means going to events, going to conferences, being a part of your community in whatever market you are, whether you're a doctor, a lawyer, you have a fitness business, you are a financial advisor, it doesn't matter. The point is, is that you have a community, you have to be a part of it. You have to be an active member of that community. You have to meet new people, you have to make connections, you have to make introductions. One of the best ways to meet new people is to make introductions. I make it a habit to try to connect people as much as possible. If I know somebody that is really good at something and I know somebody that might need their help, then I try to make an introduction, I try to introduce them to each other. And it's not a big formality. I just do it over email, introduce them via email. But if you do that often enough, people will appreciate these introductions and start introducing you to people that might help you see it's in our nature as human beings to reciprocate. But you won't have anybody to introduce to anybody if you don't meet people. So you have to get out there and you have to make it a priority to be a part of your community to go to these conferences. I mentioned to search your industry, if you're in software, go to software conferences. If you're a YouTuber, you should go to VidCon. The point is, is that you need to go to places where you meet new people, build friendships, and therefore you have some way to make some connections. Now, when you do this sometimes. It's very organic and people just straight up introduce you to somebody and say, hey, Omar, you need to meet this person. They've built a software business. They've been doing this for 15 years. They live 15 minutes away from you. You guys should meet up now. Two things, it's not enough for you to get the introduction. The other thing is you don't need to wait for an introduction. If you know that person knows somebody that can help you, you can reach out and say, hey, do you know so and so if you do, I would love an introduction. This is your life, this is your business, this is your future. It's okay to be a little bit assertive. As long as you're polite. It's a okay. But once you get the introduction, you can't just sleep on that. You have to capitalize. So say, for example, that scenario where somebody introduces me to somebody who's experienced, that I can learn from and is local. The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to make sure that I have a chance to meet this person. Hey, I'd love to have a dinner with you, have a lunch with you, my treat. It's going to cost me, what, a hundred dollars? Well, worth the investment to make that connection and make a good first impression. When you do meet and you do realize, hey, this person can really, you know, help me out and bring me to the next level in my business, then it's not time to be shy, be honest with them. Say, hey, you have a lot of experience. I can learn a lot from you. I'm not a chump, you know, I know a few things. I've learned things along the way, but I can learn a whole lot more. I'd love to make this a regular thing. Can I buy you lunch once a month? You know, can we spend an hour a month? Can we spend two hours a month? Whatever it is, if they say, hey, I'm super busy, I'm not able. What about once every two months? Once every three months, whatever. The point is, is that it's okay to ask. And for the most part, if you have a mutual understanding and that they like you and you were introduced and you were recommended by the person that introduced you to each other, there's a good likelihood they're going to say yes. At that point, make sure you close the sale, you close the deal, and say, hey, give me your calendar link. I'd love to lock that in our next meeting. Don't leave that meeting. Or at the very least, you know, make sure you follow up on email that day, after the dinner, after the lunch. Hey, what does next month look like for you? I'd love to have another chat. Now, this is not the only way you can find a mentor through introductions or through networking. And mind you, you can have more than one mentor. You can have a mentor that's solely for the growth of your business. Then you have a mentor for public speaking. Then you have a mentor for work life balance and how, you know, fit in more things into your schedule and be more productive. The other way of finding a mentor is simply paying for it. I know people that do this all the time. It's totally normal where they join what's called a mastermind, or they join some sort of circle where they have access to somebody that they can learn from. They may pay, you know, five, six, seven, maybe $10,000 a year, but people find value in that they're surrounded with other people that are trying to grow and push each other and they have access to somebody that can mentor them. So paying for a mentor is possible. If you're hell bent on not going to conferences or not networking or you're just, you know, just disastrously introverted, then that might be an option for you. And I know people that are successful with that option. They actually pay to be part of a group where they have access to a mentor and a community that pushes them along the way. They meet, you know, every so often, every year, maybe once a year, twice a year, three times a year. They maybe they meet online on video calls, and it works out for them, it helps them out. As long as you get to your goal and you get the, you know, the guidance you're looking for, it's all good. You can ask for personal coaching as well. If you follow somebody, you read their blog, you are part of their community, their email list, you can reach out to them and say, hey, do you offer personal coaching? I'd love to be coached by you. They may not be available now, they might be available later. The point is, is that this is an option. You can pay for mentorship and it's totally fine. How do you find these groups? How do you find these services? Well, it's actually pretty quite easy because Facebook has tons of groups that are connected. So say, for example, you are part of mastermind group. They'll have a Facebook group that's connected to that mastermind group, and you'll find that mastermind group, you know, in your niche on Facebook if you do a search. So if you're in the search bar. And let's say for example, you're in the wellness business. So you write wellness business mastermind group and you'll see all these groups that are masterminds in this genre and you'll at least get information about the business, about the website, which you can contact and check out and see if it's your fit, something you like to kind of learn more about. So most of these groups have a group in Facebook and you can kind of learn about them through the backdoor.
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One of the things that a mentor will give you is perspective. They're going to give you a broader understanding about your journey and what you're trying to build. They're going to tell you, hey, slow down or hey, work on this or, you know, really focus on that. Perspective is priceless and something that you only get with experience. So finding somebody that has more experience than you really gives you the advantage. You need to move ahead and to move ahead faster. So whether you need to invest the time and effort and money to go to conferences and network and make introductions so you can get introductions, or whether you have to pay for a mentor through a mastermind group, it's going to be worth it. You're investing in yourself and investing in your future. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. Today's episode is not over though, because it's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride to easy course, our 30 day course on how to build your own online course over at easycourse Co. Let's see who won this week's free ride. And the winner is Jacob Mike Tia all the way from Poland. Jacob says Best Business Podcast ever. Five stars. I just installed the itunes app on my phone just to leave this review. This podcast and Omar totally deserve me to take the moment to write this because the things I Learned on the $100 NBA show are priceless and I'm hungry for more. Well, thank you so much for that amazing review, Jacob. You are our Random Free Ride Friday winner. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Your mission is to email me at omar00nba net so I can hook you up with the free ride to ezcourse. If you want to win a free ride just like Jacob, just leave us an iTunes rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw to win a free ride, a $500 value over at EasyCourse co. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Sometimes your relationship with your mentor will fade away. It won't last forever. Maybe it'll last for a few months, a year, two years. That's okay. You get busy, they get busy. You might outgrow them. Or maybe it's just not a good fit. It doesn't mean you stop looking for mentorship. Keep looking for mentorship and find ways to find others that are a little bit ahead of you to shine a little light on your path. Thank you so much for listening. I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.
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