INBOUND 2016: Kareem Taylor - "Why You Should Be Mentoring"

Thank you. Hello. Did everybody eat food and stuff? Okay. I just want to make sure who I'm talking to. Hungry people are like, you know, not hungry people. So thank you all for coming to my session today. I'm really happy that you're here. I'm happy that you are in Boston. I'm happy that you, like showed up, are in your seat and are ready for whatever it is that you came here to Inbound four. Before I started, I wanted to just check real quick if you're sitting next to someone, if you could do me a favor and just look to them and just shake their hand. If you're not sitting next to anyone, can you just raise your hand real quick and can you shake your own hand? That was like, I made that up just now. So that's what I want to talk about, talk about today. There's something interesting that happens when you can not know someone at all, shake their hand and then all of a sudden you're best friends. I'm not saying you just exchanged stories. I'm not saying that you are going to hang out, maybe have a drink later. But I'm saying that now, because you shook each other's hands, you're now more likely to do something together in the future. And if you can agree with me, if you can agree that that's actually possible, then what I say today about mentoring will actually make of sense as it relates to personal development and then also how it relates to in the workplace as entrepreneurs, running businesses, working within businesses. Before I started, I wanted to just tell you a little bit about me. So I grew up in Brooklyn, New York City. And when I turned 18, it was time to go to college. But guess what happened? I didn't have any money and my mom sent me down south to South Carolina to work in this thing. Oh no, this is not a picture of me at all. But I know you're like, wait, is that she sent me down to work in this factory. So I worked in a tire factory in Greenville, not Columbia, Greenville, South Carolina, in the middle of the woods. And my job was to stack huge truck tires and airplane tires onto 53 foot trucks. And so every day all of the 18 trucks will pull into the back of the factory and then all of us workers in the factory would pick a truck. So 18 hour days, literally this is what I would do. And the only reason I did this, and I felt comfortable doing this because I had a mentor at the time who told me that one day I'm going to make a movie out of this. So that was what got me to do this. I was like, I didn't go work at the fast food restaurants or any other thing that was available to me at the time. I just went and did what my mentor told me to do because apparently it was good for me. And so I did what my mentor told me to do, and I worked at this factory. And so I'm no stranger to hard work, but I knew that this is not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And so in order to actually get to the next level, I had to figure it out. What's the best way to figure something out? If you don't know, you ask someone. And so once I got to college, I needed to quickly figure out what it was that I was going to do. And luckily, I found a mentor my freshman year of college who discovered that I had a voice. He said, you sound weird, dude, but I think I could do something with that. And though this talk a little bit right now sounds like it's about me, this talk is really going to be about you. And so I want you to listen just closely. So he told me that I had a voice. And it so happens that about three years after that, I moved to New York, graduated, moved to New York, and pursued this career as a voiceover actor. And the only reason I did this is because someone told me that I could do it. Now, of course, I had studied and I did work that I was capable of doing, and I took all the courses that I needed to take, and I did work. I just showed up to do the work that I was supposed to do. But I listened to someone, a mentor. Four years into doing this career, I had landed huge advertising campaigns in New York, from CNN to Taco Bell, Comedy Central, all of these advertising campaigns from all these agencies in New York, Louisiana, Chicago. And I decided that I wanted something else. And if you've ever been there, then you kind of know what I'm talking about. When you have completed one dream, it is time to move on to the next. But it's not quite that easy when you spe a lot of your time and money and effort on building something. So I built a reputation as a voiceover actor. I built a reputation online, sharing my brand with people, meeting a lot of different producers, creating relationships. And then finally I decided. I woke up one day when I was in New York, and I decided I didn't want to do this anymore. And there was only one way I thought, to get to figure out what I wanted to do next. And so that created a sort of crossroads for me, because what I wanted to do, what I wanted to do next, I knew was gonna be hard to do. It was gonna be very difficult to do it by myself. And some of us are very. The reason we showed up today is because we're very strong. We're very confident. We do what we do for a living. But what we have a really hard time doing is asking people to help us. Asking people, hey, here's what I need to do. Can you help me? And this is where mentorship differs from coaching or consulting or anything like that. Mentorship is more of this that I'm describing. Not someone telling you how to get more followers on Twitter or telling you what's your value proposition and helping you to figure out those things, but literally giving you some sort of direction. And so I knew that that's what I needed to get from where I was comfortable with and to get into these waters. So I know you're probably wondering, what is a mentor? Because everybody has sort of a definition. I was a little skeptical about talking about mentorship because as soon as you mention it, people start going to sleep because they're like, oh, I know I should mentor. Everybody knows that. I know I should ment. I know I need to mentor. I know I need to spend more time giving my time. And also, people who want to be mentees are saying, I know I need a mentor. I know, all right, stop bugging me. I'm going to do it when I feel comfortable. And all of a sudden, 10 years later, you still don't have a mentor. So a mentor is someone who has expertise and experience in a particular area and who can advise you as you go through the same process. But mentoring as we know it has always weird. It's always been something. If you've experienced this before, where you fill out a form, you fill out what you like to do, some program or someone at work matches you together, and all of a sudden, you're supposed to be best friends, and they're supposed to know what you want. But that's not how mentorship works, because I guarantee you that the people who you shook hands with, I'm not saying you guys are going to be mentors and mentees, but the people that you shook hands with, you're going to have a better relationship with them than you will with who you were matched up with if you. That has happened to you before. So the look of mentorship has always been weird. It's always been like, old guy, young guy, older woman, Younger woman. It's always been these images of this is what the relationship looks like, that the relationship feels like someone with a lot of wisdom, who's a lot older than you, who can pass on to someone young. And it's this guy with the finger, like he's going to tell you something very serious that's going to change your life. These are the images that we've been shown for so long that has kind of crippled us in what we do for a living. Because if what we do for a living is connect with each other, build businesses together, get forward together, then it's kind of a little twisted. We need a new way to look at it. And so I believe that we're at the end of an era where we stop pointing to each other saying, hey, you should be a mentor, you need a mentee. But instead, we're in a new era of when if you need help, you need to understand how to build relationships. That it's not just about pointing to people and telling them that they need to do something, but it's about understanding literally what it means to build meaningful relationships. And so it's just changing the thinking a little bit from pointing the finger to learning how to build meaningful relationships, seeing an opportunity before it can turn into a mentorship, and understanding that. And so I have four attributes over the last two years I've been looking at mentorship. I wrote a book called get yout Life. And yes, it's called get yout Life. And in the book, there's a big chapter that seemed to be the most popular chapter where I talked about how we all are playing in each other's movie. There's supporting characters. There's a lot of different moving parts of people who are going to move you from where you are to where you would like to be. And studying this over the last two years, all relationships that seem to go somewhere have a few things in common that no matter how many Harvard Business Review reports you read, how many reports in the Economist you read about people and global connection, they all have something in common. All of these mentoring relationships have something in common. Generous, connected, selfless, purpose, driven it. But you can't decide this stuff, right? It almost has to happen organically. A lot of times we don't think about what's going to happen when we retire. Anybody here ever watch a retirement speech? You've been to one. The biggest thing that people say at the retirement speech is other than talking about themselves and their career. They always start with, I would like to thank. I would like to thank Dr. Boswell. I just made that name up. I would like to thank Mrs. Smith. People are always shouting out their college professors, their second grade teacher, their high school basketball coach. Why is that so important? Why do we do that? Why is that the first thing? No matter what, how many awards you've won in your career, no matter how what you've done, where you've traveled around the world, it always seems that your legacy ends up becoming about who poured into you. And Maya Angelou has that quote. You probably know where I'm going with this. Do you know she has the quote that we're not going to remember what people said, but we will always remember how people made us feel. And that is consistently true across the generations. Picture of Mark Henry for comedic purposes, because he did retire a couple years ago and had a speech, but he kept talking about how he kept thanking the people that had done him well in his career. But the biggest issue that I really wanted to bring to you today, like, if I had to stop my talk right now, the biggest thing I want to talk about is seizing an opportunity. So many of you are here at Inbound, and maybe you've spent some money, maybe you've traveled very far, but all of you here in this room, I think, have an opportunity that's bigger than anyone has, because all of you are sitting down at a conference, ready to meet people. I'll tell you a quick story. I was in Atlanta and I needed an internship. And so I was walking by in my mass media department, I walked by this billboard and it said, internship fair. Now, I had a mentor that told me, if you want to be successful in the film business, you have to get an internship. So when I saw this billboard, I decided I was going to go and go to the internship fair. And so that's what I did. I went to the internship fair, and I met Lorna from Rainforest Films. And I said, hey, Lorna, I wanted to work here. I want to be a film director. Can you please give me an internship? And so Lorna didn't listen to me and didn't give me an internship, of course. And a year later, anyway, she called me and she said, kareem, would you like this internship? And I said, yes. And so I showed up to Rainforest Films wanting to be a film director. Within that time there, I decided I wanted to be a voice actor. And so in order for me to be a voice actor working at a production company, what's the first thing I did? I walked around the office and I kept saying this to myself this summer, the biggest event of the year. I'm so serious. I was doing that particular voice because I wanted them to hear what I had to do. You might be thinking, what does this have to do with mentorship? I'll tell you why. Because very often people ask me, the guys who ran this production company, Rob Hardy and Will Packer, those two men end up becoming a mentor to me. And a lot of friends would ask me, how did you get Rob Hardy and Will Packer to be your mentor? And I'm saying it's not as easy. It's not an easy answer to say that. The way I got it was because I saw an opportunity. I didn't ask them to be my mentor. I didn't show up to their offices unannounced or anything. I just. I saw an opportunity. So there's something that goes along with sort of the roadmap, if you consider how relationships grow and how relationships form and how we find opportunity. But the people that we need to help us, we have to look at it from the opportunity. And it's the same as coming to inbound. It's the same as going to anywhere where there's an environment created for connection to occur that you don't necessarily always know who will be that person that gets you to the next level. And so it turns out that Rob Hardy and Will Packer recommended me to a friend at cnn. And all of a sudden, I was a voice on. Not all of a sudden, but all of a sudden for a short story. I was a voice on CNN and landed a huge campaign on cnn. And friends asked me, how did you get that? That. Is it an easy answer? You've probably been there before where you're doing something and people ask you, how did you do that? And you just don't have a single answer for them. You can't explain it very quickly. It's not as easy as, oh, I met Rob, or I met whoever I met, and they made this happen for me. It all started with you actually seeing an opportunity. Tristan Walker, I love what he's been able to do with this company that he started called, called Walker and Company. He's trying to build a kind of company that can compete with Procter and Gamble. So I'll tell you this. Tristan Walker walked into Walgreens, and he looked at the bottom of the shelf in the men's grooming section, and he noticed that any product built for black men was always at the bottom. And it was dusty, and we never bought it because it looked weird. And it looked like no one cared. So Tristan Walker saw an opportunity. So what did he do? Strategically moved to Silicon Valley, worked at a company called Foursquare, built relationships, and now all of a sudden, he has his own company. Now somebody's going to ask him, how did you get that? How did you build this company? How did you meet your investors? How did you make that happen? But no one's going to ask him, what opportunity did you see that made that possible? No one's going to ask what happened? Where did you work before? Who did you meet when you worked there? How did you build those relationships in order to push you to this point? And so while many people who might see historians think to themselves, oh, I need to get funding, I need to just get funding. I need to figure this out. And not thinking to themselves, I need to see the opportunity to connect with other people. I need to notice environments in which I can actually flourish. And Tristan Walker did. Now, the thing that stops many of us is fear. Are you scared yet? He's like, yeah. I can't tell you how many college students come up to me and say, I wish I would have been more involved in college. Right. I can't tell you how many employees come up to me and say, I wish I would have just connected with more people at the office. I wish I would have just talked to more people. I wish I went to my boss's office and said something other than hi and buying hey. Here's what I have. I can't tell you how many business owners come up to me and say, I wish I would have created more relationships with the people who worked for me. And it all comes down to fear. We're afraid because we don't know what's going to happen when we actually create some sort of vulnerability within us on how to create a relationship with someone else. When we do that, we're sort of giving a part of ourselves up so that we can gain a little bit. But that's always very difficult. We end up looking like this guy when it's time to ask someone for help. But what would you do if fear wasn't an option? How would you create relationships with people? How would you actually get what you need by noticing an environment and asking someone for help? Would that change things for your business? That's a real question. Yes, you would it change? And Seth Godin and Steven Press will always talk about this thing that sort of stops us from actually pursuing the thing that we want to pursue. And it's because of this resistance inside of us that doesn't allow us to build relationships. So outside of actual mentoring, as an overarching topic, the idea is that we don't stop ourselves from creating the relationships that are actually going to flourish. And if we can actually get out of our head just a little bit, we can build relationships that actually turn from sort of just an happenstance of meeting someone and actually turn into a meaningful relationship. But we have to get over the resistance. I want to tell you a quick story about this guy that I met about 12 years ago. When I first started my career, I was living in New York and had an opportunity to meet Russell Simmons. And I went up to Fat Farm, the clothing label that he owned, to his offices, and it was about. It looked like a room like this. And we had an opportunity to meet Russell Simmons. And I remember my mentor telling me that the way that I'm going to become successful in life is by finding mentors, finding people who could help me get from where I am to where I want to be. And so I sat in there and I listened to Russell Simmons give his speech. And when he was done, I said to myself, I'm going to go up and I'm going to talk to Russell Simmons. I'm to going to get his contact information. This was very. I don't know why I thought I was going to get his contact information, but I did. And I was like, he's going to be my mentor. He's going to show me how to make it in this world. And what happened when he was done talking? What did I do? I went to the bathroom for a very long time, hid away because I was very afraid of talking to Russell Simmons, because what was I thinking? What happens when you. When someone has power, authority? What happens to us when they're in our presence? They're not like me. They won't understand me. They've never been in my shoes. I'm not ready for this. I don't know the right words to say. And what happens? We miss that entire opportunity to actually create something meaningful, to even create to get the relationship started. And so I left, and I've never saw Russell Simmons again after that day. And that's what happens to many of us, that the idea that the mentoring relationships that we really need in our career are lost because we just don't see the opportunity. We think for some reason that it's going to happen again, that it'll be back around, that maybe next year they'll bring us back, and we miss out on these meaningful relationships that could turn into something like raising money or someone having. Having someone that has a shoulder to lean on. When you have an employee that you need to fire, you can't figure it out. These relationships begin to come in handy, but we don't notice the obvious. We always miss it. I know what you're thinking, but I'm not an extrovert, right? I'm not someone who just talks to people and I'm smiling all the time and I really want to get to know you and I can have a drink. You don't like drinking because you have acid reflux. And if you drink, your stomach is going to act weird. And then if your stomach acts weird, then you're going to have to go to the bathroom. And if you go to the bathroom, then you're going to miss out talking to this person. If you miss out talking to that person, you're never going to work in this town again. If you never work in this town again, you definitely. Right. And that's what happens to us. But the funny thing is, introverts and extroverts actually have a lot in common because both of them are thinking the same exact thing. Because you know the kind of person that you are when you see someone that you want to know and you make it a point to actually go and talk to them. Introverts and extroverts both feel this same pain of making something happen. And so if it makes you feel any more comfortable about it, there's no difference between these two guys that they're both feeling that just one decided that they were going to actually make the connection. You only get one. And I say that because sometimes we ask people for their time and we take it for granted. I've heard a lot from mentors who say, this person has no regard for my time. This person asked me out for coffee, didn't have anything to say, didn't have any specific. Wasted my time. And so what happens when you do that to a mentor? The mentor decides not to mentor again. All of a sudden they don't have any more time to mentor. That relationship is ruined. And then one bad seed ruined it for everyone who could benefit from that actual knowledge. And so what I propose, this is to the mentees, and you may know this, but if you have heard the stories that I've heard from CEOs and business owners and project managers and people who are running businesses, is that people aren't prepared to actually have the conversation. So, like, for example, when I was younger, I needed mentorship in terms of getting Good grades in school these days. I need a different kind of mentorship. I don't know about you, but I have specific things that I need to figure out, specific things that are career related. So what happens is the mentorship that you needed when you were younger, joining the team, having a coach, all of a sudden is null and void, that the mentorship you need now becomes very specific. And I've talked to a lot of people who run businesses and they're saying, I don't even know what I need anymore. I don't even know how to articulate that anymore. I don't really know. I mean, I know that if I meet someone who knows more than me in our business, that that person can teach me, but they don't know how to make it actually happen. And that's because your problems are becoming very small, specific. So it's becoming very specific to your industry, to what you do for a living. And what I propose is that you actually, and none of this says to do list, but you actually write these things out that you actually need. And you create this roadmap to mentoring, to a mentoring relationship, so that when you actually land a meeting, because you will, with the person that you hope to be your mentor, you actually know what it is that you need. I'll tell you something from a guy in LA. He's a Fox executive at 21st Century Fox. And he told me something that I haven't been able to forget. I went up to him, he's a mentor of mine. I went up to him and I said, I have an issue. I've been in LA for a couple years and I need to figure out what to do with all these skills. I've accrued all these skills. I'm writing, I'm editing, I'm producing, I'm recruiting all these skills. What do I do with this? He's like, what do you mean? He's like, kareem, just ask me for what you want. And I'm like, the first time someone ever asked someone ever said that to me, ask me for what you want. And at first I didn't know. So I looked him in the face like, I don't know. I don't even know what I want. This is what stops us. I was like, I don't even know what I want. He's like, kareem, you need to figure out what you want. This was the problem. He was an executive at Fox for 15 years and he said all the people that worked for me were always afraid to ask me for what they want that people will walk around the office. They would be upset. They were always afraid to ask me for what they want. And if there's anything that you can walk away with today. The thing is, when people did ask him for a promotion, he made it happen if he could. When people did ask him for more money, he would. When people did say, hey, will you be my mentor? Will you show me the ropes? Will you teach me everything that you know? He did. But the issue is we all get stuck, especially in the workplace, thinking that people. People can read our minds. And one of the biggest ways to create this relationship is to really get into a mentoring relationship, to really make it less about this transactional workplace relationship and turn it into something more. And the only way to do that is by entering in this mentoring relationship and asking directly for what you want. No one ever got fired for asking for more money. Okay, maybe they did. No, they didn't. No one ever got fired for saying, hey, will you be my mentor? No one ever got fired for saying, hey, I've been working on this project for the last seven months, and I want to share this with you. Will you take a look? Will you give me feedback? Because the workplaces that we work in now are becoming so globalized and becoming so smart and intelligent that the people we work with end up being actually some of the best people in the world in terms of talent. And so it behooves us to actually create these kind of relationships while we actually in that office, because we don't know what's going to happen once we leave that office. And all of a sudden you're looking for resources and all these things, and you're trying to build relationships and you're trying to go trace your steps back, and you can't because it's quite difficult. The biggest thing that I've seen talking with business owners is how they build relationships. When a mentor and a mentee talk, this is the number one question. What's your story? So I was at. I was in LA two weeks ago, and I was talking with the founder of a company in Silicon beach, and he told me that. Tell me your story. What is your story? So he has about 50 employees, and when they come in, he asked them all this question. He asked them that because he knows that some of the young people that he works with and even some of the. Some of the more seasoned people that he works with don't know what they want. So they don't know how to articulate what their story is, or they don't know how to articulate what they want out of a relationship, what they want out of this job. And so he starts with this question, what's your story? Because if he knows what your story is, he can actually help you articulate what it is that you want, what you hope to get out of this relationship, this job, the people that you work with. And so he's used this as a way to sort of gauge interest with people. But we're afraid. We're afraid. We're afraid. We're afraid to actually build those relationships. And I have a picture here of Bertha Benz. You guys familiar with Bertha Benz? Bertha took her husband's car, drove it around town just to prove that it worked. Works. And I say that, to say this. When you're looking to build a relationship, you come to people and show them how something works. You show them that this is what you've been working on. You show them. You bring them projects that you've built. You bring them your resume, your cover letter. If we're talking practicals, you bring them these things that you've been working on so that you're not just going to someone and saying, hey, will you be my mentor? Because the biggest turnoff that I found, at least, is when you ask someone to be your mentor, in their mind, that's a huge commitment. You're their child. They have enough kids. They probably work at a school. They don't want to see your face. It gets very weird when you ask someone to be your mentor. You may know this, you may have experienced this. And so what I found to work when you're looking for mentorship is you show someone how it works. So I had a man who was nearing retirement at one of the agencies I worked at, and they were giving him a lot of flack because we had to collect articles. We were doing some market intelligence, and we had to collect articles on the Internet. If you know anything about Evernote, then you can actually clip some. Save some documents that you've seen, the articles that you've seen, and save them all into a little folder. And he couldn't figure out how to do it. And so he kept asking me to do it. And I said, dude, I'm not doing your work. You need to figure out how to do that. And I realized at that moment, though, when he asked me to do it, that there was an opportunity to actually create a mentoring relationship, that even though this guy is older than me, has way more experience than me, there was actually a relationship there that I felt could be formed. And this is me thinking how I think that, oh, maybe we could actually have a mutually beneficial relationship. That maybe in this instance, he's not the mentor, he's the mentee, but maybe also we're both mentee mentors and we're both having this exchange and so taught him how to use Evernote. And this is very practical, but it's one of those instances where you actually, as a young person who's familiar with all this technology, familiar with all these tools that we have that HubSpot creates and all this stuff, we actually have the opportunity to share that knowledge with the people who are more seasoned and dealing with more high level strategic thinking at the organization. It is definitely an exchange. And I wanted to talk about this guy, Brian Chesky from Airbnb, who is someone I'm very interested in in terms of how he's been able to build a company that's worth billions of dollars. And you remember how I was with Rock, Russell Simmons, I went to Russell Simmons and I didn't say anything to him. But at the same time that was happening, Brian was in Silicon Valley building a company, asking people for help. And so he actually went to the people who run these companies and said, hey, how do you build a company? How do you hire the right people, people? How do I build the right culture at my organization? How do I scale? What kind of office should I move in? What neighborhood do we move in? Should I run this company? Should I be CEO, or should I remain as a founder and then just take another role? These are the kinds of opportunities and environments that I want us to notice as it relates to mentorship, in that you don't have to do it alone. You don't. You can take some of that weight off your shoulders and have others help you. And I'm not saying all of us in here are going to be friends with Mark Zuckerberg or anything like that. I'm sure some of you are. But there are people in this room, at this conference that are all interested in helping you. And if we can actually notice those environments, then we can build these relationships that that will actually flourish, especially if you want your business to grow. I think when we want our businesses to grow, we begin to notice these opportunities with the people who are in our business who work at these huge organizations who have built something that you actually admire. We notice it. But like I said, the fear is what stops us. What Brian teaches us is that if you want to grow and you want to be confident and you want to actually do it very quickly, you have to talk to the best in the business business, and they will give you the mentorship that you need. So they're not. It's not coaching. You're not hiring somebody to coach you, not hiring a consultant who does business consulting. You're literally asking for mentorship. And of course, Brian had already built something to show. And so it's this kind of give and take. Adam Grant, who wrote the book Give and Take and Originals, talks about this giving and taking. So it's not this transactional relationship, it's this mutually beneficial relationship in which you give, you take, you give, you take. And so I want to ask you all, what is it that you actually bring to the table? If you can answer this question, what is it that I actually bring to the table? What are the skills? What are the resources? What is it that makes me really good at what I do for a leader in. And when you know that, then you can better prepare to receive the mentorship that you need. And it's all important because of what purpose and fulfillment. The reason this is important for our organizations, mentoring, and you'll see this for yourself, is if you look at the top 100 companies, if you look on every list, whether it's Glassdoor or whatever company that puts out a list, what do people say about the best places to work? They have a great culture and they have great people, and those are in bold. And then you look at the smaller words that are in the 12 font, and then it's like, my boss really took care of me. My manager really made, really listened to me, really made things work for me, the people I worked with. It was amazing. But why do people say this? It's not just because there were snacks in the kitchen. They say this because they've been building meaningful relationships at that place. And consistently it gets very boring because it's always the same 10 companies on every list. It's always the same 10 companies. And it's like, what do they do that not everybody else is doing? They're helping people nurture relationships. And those people, it turns out, end up becoming more successful in their career because of those relationships. And if you were to put a stamp on it, if you were to put a title on, would be mentoring. It would be this give and take relationship, this exchange of information that's occurring that's allowing people to feel this personal growth. I asked a friend that works here at Moby's, this is a couple blocks away from my house in la, and I said, hey, why do you work here? Like, why what makes this such a great place? And working it for about three years, which I think is a very long time in today's age to work somewhere. I said, hey, why you work here? She said, you know what? They care for me. I really feel like I'm wrong. She's an artist, she works in theater. She's like, I really feel like I'm growing. Even though she wants to do theater, I really feel like I'm growing. And so you're thinking about keeping people on your team. You're thinking about keeping people interested, keeping people engaged. What is it that actually creates that connection for people? Mentoring? They actually feel like they're growing in their role. And even if it's not somebody that works in your organization, it happens in cross organizational ways in which you're mentoring someone at another company. But they literally feel like they're growing. They literally give you more because they feel like they're a part of something. And they feel like they're a part of something for their own selfish reasons. But we all have that in terms of just wanting to feel like we actually are growing. But the mistakes that we've made have always kept us from creating these meaningful relationships. We discount how people can help us. Oh, this person doesn't know me. This person doesn't understand me. We're impatient. This relationship isn't going anywhere. We went out for lunch and it just was awkward and it got weird. And I never was able to ask them for what I actually wanted. We can't articulate what it is we actually want. Do you want to grow in your field? Do you want to make more money? Do you want to figure out how to be a public speaker? Do you want to learn how to write a book so that people will take you a little bit more seriously? We can't articulate these things. We know it, but we can't articulate it. And expectations. You thought that when you met that investor and you created this relationship, they were going to give you $2 million for the rest of the year, and it didn't happen. Now all of a sudden, they're not good for you. And so we make those mistakes. And so I'll leave you with this. Ask for what you want. Many of us, as I've told you about the Fox executive, are very afraid for literally just asking for what it is that we want, asking for the change that we seek. Specifically, build trust by being honest. Many of you are going to experience. You probably already experienced this since you've been here. These conversations with people at the bar. And it just feels like they're trying to get a sale out of you. You just feel like business cards are coming out and it's about to get real intense. And that's not how you build trust. You build trust by being honest with each other. I'm not trying to make a sale. I'm just trying to build a relationship. We have to be intent on collision. I'll share one more story with you. You. Right before I graduated college, I think this might resonate. Right before I graduated college, I went to our student government elections, and everybody was saying that the big problem was that alumni and students didn't have a place to actually meet, that we were missing out on a big opportunity for alumni and students to connect, that the only time we actually reached out to alumni was when we needed money. Who knows this? You get that letter in the mail and they're just like, give me money. And you're like, you know, wow. The only time you reach out to alumni is when you need money. And so the alumni never gives money because they're like, you don't care about me. And so when I heard people in SGA elections saying that they wanted to, all the candidates were saying, we're going to build something so that we can build. We can have alumni students come together. I wasn't an SGA or anything. I was just a student. But I had this idea, similar to many of you, that I actually wanted to create something that would actually be a solution to that problem. And so I walked in, stormed into the alumni student relations, and I said, I want to build this event. I have an idea for an event where alumni and students can actually connect. It doesn't seem like rocket science, but for some reason, we're all fearful to create that thing. So I created this event. Event invited out first year, 40 alumni that lived in the local Atlanta area and invited out about 100 students. And we created tables and we created this environment to make sure that we intentionally created an environment in which people can connect, create these mentoring relationships in which people can connect. And so you personally don't necessarily have to be the mentor. So you personally don't necessarily have to be the one that's shepherding people around and helping people get from where they are to where they want to be. You can actually create the environment in which it happens. And HubSpot has done this very well. Conferences around the world have done this very well. But we can do this in our offices. We can do this at our colleges by creating environments in which these mentoring Relationships flourish that for the last eight years. And this is kind of the moral of the story, I think for the last eight years, the program, it's called From Paws to Clause, has been actually going on on my campus and I've had nothing to do with it. My name is not in the history books, by the way. My name is not printed on the program. No one knows that I had anything to do with this outside of my classmates. And it's still going on. And so I went back a couple weeks ago and I said, this event is still happening and someone like someone in this crowd is going to come along and say, this isn't enough. We need to do something to create a better environment for alumni and students to create these mentoring relationships. And I think you will find that no matter where it is that you work. And the last thing is maintain the self awareness that when you're looking to build relationships with people and you're looking to not only be a mentor to someone, but you wanting someone to mentor, you have that level of self awareness so that you know who you are, what it is that you do, how you come across to people and sort of what your image is to others. A lot of issues that we have always goes back to not being self aware, that maybe we're asking for too much, maybe we're actually asking for too little. That when you write an email that's about two sentences to someone you never met and you ask them for mentorship, they're going to say no, because you didn't spend any time doing it having that self awareness of understanding how you come across to other people. And I want to end up with a quote. My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. Thank you.