How to get a mentor

Let's talk about mentoring, man.

So let's first set the context.

I've been waiting a long time to talk about this on camera. So I don't know if you guys are excited, but I'm very excited because personally, I have had mentoring make a huge difference to me. I think you have as well. And it's something that's not well understood. One of the. We may do another role play again. So everybody get ready. What are you doing? Because so far you've done that a while ago.

No kidding. And somehow I'm an expert.

What does that say? Here's the thing about mentoring. We get these emails every week that are like, either will you be my mentor? Or what words do I use to ask someone to be my mentor? Which is like.

I asked a question here about.

He said, basically, yeah, I don't want to.

Actually, the person with software, he said, I don't want to obviously ask when you. Could you be. Could you be. Won't you be my mentor?

Yeah. So let me first suggest, like, what I think about mentoring, why it's useful, what the misconceptions are, and then let's just kind of chat about how we've come through. So mentors can be older, they can be younger. They are typically people who have been successful in something that you want to do, but it doesn't always have to be directly relevant. So I've got a mentor who works in a totally different field, and he's just been successful. He knows how to run meetings really well. Okay. And he's like, he taught me a lot about how to send effective emails. That is not directly relevant to personal finance or whatever, but it's something that I want to learn how to do better. How do you meet them and how you get the most value from them. We'll talk about the tactical stuff, but just at a high level, you shouldn't just have one mentor. Mentoring should be something that you have many mentors, and it's a repeated thing. You don't just get a mentor and then now you can say you have a mentor. It's actually a relationship that you build and you learn from each other, and mostly you learn from them. So that's kind of my take on it. I think that if you don't have a mentor today, you can get one.

We'll talk about the tactics. Okay. So my high level thought is number one.

Yes, it's very important.

Like, studies show there's a famous Harvard Business Review article published in 1980 that.

Looked at.

Successful executives, and they Ask these successful executives, like when you look back on your career, what was maybe the most important thing that got you here? And many of them said mentor John Doe. So mentoring super important.

And that being said, I feel like.

Mentoring is a word, a concept that's thrown around. Like networking is as this kind of super passion, right?

Like these words of belief, passionate, like.

You have to go network with people and say and like yeah, it's an important concept. Like any mentors are important, but let's not overstate their importance. Like it's not like a cure all.

You're not a fantasy of any.

And nor should like one's whole focus be on I gotta like sign up mentors. That's the wrong mentor.

Actually it's kind of like getting, raising venture capital. People often think that that's the goal, but that's not really the goal at all. It's simply it will help you on the path.

So I think the other high level strategy thing I would think about when it comes to mentors is you think about mentoring relationship.

Like you think about any relationship.

These are not relationships are relationships. Whether it's romantic, what you're meeting, expedon, friendships, mentoring, you have to take the long view. Like have you ever had a friendship with somebody where after 30 minute coffee you're like hey, renew my friend, can.

You be my friend? That re friends them totally. It doesn't happen that way. Or do you want a first date?

Do you ask for them? First date?

No.

It takes a long time for that.

Relationship to develop and the same is true with mentoring.

So there's nothing more annoying or less attractive than somebody who has a very transactional short term view of a mentoring relationship or any relationship for that matter. So when it comes to mentors or friends or interacting with people, my view is always you have to cultivate a natural, genuine love for people.

You want to meet with your mentor.

For copy, not because you want something from them, because you love hanging out with them or her.

So I think high level, that should.

Be the frame that cannot be overstated.

That just talk to your friends after today and ask them what they think about mentoring or networking and you will easily get people talking about transactional relationships. Oh yeah, I need a network so.

I can close this deal.

Well, you're not going to close the deal.

Don't want to teach school. I posted some notes on my blog conversation we had about friendship and they said most friendships are and I would say this is true for all relationships are bi directional and how the values fall. And I Know, that sounds like. But each party's not keeping score. You're not trying that, Cliff. Or it's not. You scratch my back, I scratch your. This is how a lot of people treat relationships. It's like I introduce something to somebody and then they respond, okay, thanks for the introduction. Can I introduce you to somebody right back?

Oh, my God.

Actually, now, good book on this I.

Always recommend is Never Eat Alone. I like it. I think it's. I actually wish I had written that book, but he did a better job.

Than I could have.

Okay, so let's talk about mentoring itself. Like, when did you first get your first mentor?

Okay, so I think there are two ways to find mentors. One is work within your network. And people often underrate the size of their network. If you say you're a young person in school or something, like your network consists of your friends and your friends, parents, your teachers and your teacher's friends, your parents and your parents, friends, your extended family, the people in your neighborhood.

Like, the first guy I met who.

Was kind of a true mentor to me, I grew up near. He was in my neighborhood, and he was retired Pricewater and Scooper's partner. And he's just in the hood. I actually saw him at a funeral once and started talking, and we realized I lived near him, and then I started seeing him on the weekends, and it kind of grew from there. So that's one bucket of your existing contacts, and the other is cold calling. And that is the process of looking up interesting people in your community. Community. And trying to figure out who might have valuable things to teach you and reaching out and writing a really killer email saying, hey, I've researched you, I know what you're about, and I'd love to take you out. The question's not, will you be mentoring? Can I take you out and pick your brain?

Okay, that is super interesting.

And by the way, a lot of.

What you just said is in your book in more detail.

My Startup Life. I have it in my room.

I'm going to go get a copy so we can show it on screen. One simple thing that you can do, and this doesn't just apply to mentoring, is sit down on a piece of paper and build a simple process snap or an engagement funnel. I know this is super weird. I mean, this is the thing. I don't recommend this for everyone because some people will take this advice wrong. I can tell you this video is going to get cut up into a small tactical post. I'm going to build an engagement. My relationship. Now, please Listen carefully. Sometimes it just helps to break down every point of interaction before if you've never done it before. So for example, you just said something really fascinating. You said, when you email someone, cold email, and you would like them to be your mentor, you don't say, will you be my mentor? You break it down further and you say, can I take you after coffee? So if you wanted to meet someone to potentially be your mentor, what is every step you could take? Maybe first researching them, then checking LinkedIn to see if you actually know them, then emailing and ask them out back.

To Google News to see if they showed up in an article and say, hey, I saw you were quoted saying this and actually find it provocative for higher profile people to express a really professional disagreement. People get flattered all the time. So you don't say, oh, I love your work, say, hey, I love your work. But I actually have a question about this thing. I think maybe I have a different perspective on it. That's often more than, that's really good.

That's really good. Because I know we've both been watching somebody online who has been interviewing a couple people and he's very open to.

Talk and he's effusive praise.

And I'm like, all right, that's not. I mean, he's interviewing great people. But at the same time, there's something besides having your own values and saying, you know what, I really like what you're doing. But there's one thing that I don't.

Agree with you on that shows that you are confident in your own knowledge. And by the way, I know we're kind of jumping all over, but we should also define what a mentor is. My definition of a mentor is somebody.

Who is helping you both intellectually and.

Emotionally on both professional and personal issues. So for me, a mentor is somebody who you go to not just for tactical business advice. To me, my term for that is an advisor, business advisor.

And like, we don't want to get.

Caught up in semantics, but I do think there's a difference between somebody who can offer really good, like business advice versus a mentor, where your conversations tend to be more expansive and wide ranging. You might talk like long term career issues through, you might talk about those types of things with a mentor, you might talk about work, life, balance issues. Those are the types of conversations I think you have with a mentor and then you can have. And because of that type of emotional engagement, I think there's necessarily a maximum number of people with whom you can have that relationship. So I don't think you can have like 50 mentors. I think you have an infinite number of advisors and people who give you advisor you go to on specific things. But for a mentor, I would say.

If you can have a few people.

With whom you feel like you've known for a few years, with whom you have conversations that transcend normal business boundaries, that I think you have a genuine mentoring relationship.

Okay, let's go to a couple questions and then we'll get back to some of this stuff. Great questions on twitter.com ramit what are some of the most valuable things that happen as a result of your mentoring relationships? This is from Max Marimer.

Good question.

Personally, I can literally look back, as Steve Jobs said, and connect the dots from some of my earliest mentors. And these were in college, I remember. I mean, it'll take me all the way back from college to writing a book and starting out, which is rich. I got into a freshman seminar which was a small group with one professor called Armando Fox. And he was super helpful. And he once said he took us to one of his research areas, which was called the I room. And afterwards I stopped him and said, hey, I'd be really interested in doing research here with you. That one decision, to just come up to him and talk to him actually had a lot of impact because he introduced me there. I later did research for someone else in that room. I later found BJ Fogg, who became one of my mentors at the Persuasive Technology Lab. He encouraged me. He said, people are looking for thought leaders. There's a lot you can do. And he encouraged me to do that.

He also taught me how to write.

Emails and run meetings. And I met tons of other people. Ominiar Network Consulting, VC Consulting, worked for Seth Godin. All these things because of a few simple decisions back then. The point, of course, is that one simple decision, you have to maintain the relationships with each person. So any of my business can be traced back to a lot of that stuff. Specific example.

I found mentors really good.

At giving the cliched advice that we.

All hear a million times. But when they give it because it comes from them and because it comes with such authority, it actually means something. So how many times have you heard things like, you gotta be persistent and work through the hard times. You hear that so much that we're basically numb to that message. But when it comes from somebody who.

You know, with whom you have a.

Personal relationship and who's authoritative, it really makes a big difference. So, for example, I remember having an Email exchange with a guy who was mentoring me when I was first starting my company. Said the line quote, good things, good things come from the desire to make them happen.

And that's kind of like, you know.

You hear the Millie Hyde, like Twitter quotes are always like these self help things.

And he got my eyes glazed over them.

But when it came from him, it made a big difference. Another example, when we had a kind of a. It was a difficult bunch of deals I was working on. Sales leads were falling apart and the pipeline was drying up. And I felt like this whole business concept was kind of not working out. No one wanted the product. Remember having a phone conversation with this Pricewater scooper's retired guy who lived in my neighborhood and going through the pipeline, I'm like, it's dried up.

I don't know who.

It seems like this is all falling apart. And he said like, well then this is, you know, this is where, you know. I don't think he said it this cheesy, but he's like, this is where like great men are. Will you endure and keep going or will you just give up?

And again, cheesy.

When I have a self help book, but when delivered by somebody who knows you, I think it's easy to underrate how much of an impact that can have. So to me, I kind of, those are really valuable things that came from my relationships.

Here's a great question. This comes through twitter.com vermeet if you were already a mentor, what would you expect in specific from the other person? Great, great question. What should you be expected to do as a mentee? So I would say first of all, at a minimum, you should be expected to communicate with them regularly. Regularly means every X weeks. Okay, It's a weekly thing, maybe once a week, maybe once every few weeks, whatever. But it's frequent and it's repetitive. The other thing is don't just put yourself in a position of always asking questions. Add value as well. Never UD alone talks about this.

Ben talks about this on his blog as well.

But let's pretend that Ben were mentoring me. Yeah, well, care. I love it. Of course I'm going to be having Ben's blog on RSS and I'm going to be having Google alerts on your name. And when I see something about how you just wrote this huge article in the American magazine, I may say, wow, that was really great. I really love that. It reminds me of these two articles I've read because of course we're in the same domain. And by the way, I Noticed something here if you have some time. You mentioned that Americans are blah blah blah. Well, one thing I noticed about my.

Friends is they're not blah blah blah.

So how do you reconcile that? Adding value, forcing them to think as well. I would say that's one. So being communicative, challenging them. And.

If you search my blog Ben Kenzoga blog In the search mentee M E N T E E I did a list of like seven things. I remember brainstorming that post with Cal Newport who writes a great blog. I love findingthorpe.com yeah, I'm a huge fan of Cal. But anyway and I listed some topics there. Here's one kind of thing that most people want to talk about when it comes to being a good mentee. Again, this is kind of the larger.

Theory I have on interacting with busy people.

I mentioned earlier you might want to express disagreement. Another approach you might want to take is to engage them on areas they're not often engaged on. So I remember having breakfast with a guy who was CEO of a very large company and very, very busy and it took a long time for me to get this meeting. He was somewhat advising me and I.

Could have peppered him with the same.

Bullshit questions that everyone asks, what are the keys to success? Or how does one go about building a business? Or how do you sell customers? But I know he would often get very quickly bored if we had that conversation.

So what did we talk about?

We talked about religion because I knew he had some interest in like spiritual systems. We all know that I had done research. And then recently I met with a VC here in Silicon Valley and we were talking about various companies and stuff. Halfway through I noticed that you seemed kind of disengaged, so I totally switched gears. We talked about European politics. He's originally from Europe and he got much more engaged. And it doesn't mean that every interaction can't be about what you're ultimately looking to talk about. Sometimes in the heat of the moment, talk about things they're not used to talking about, engage them in that way, and then later on in a follow up email you can say, hey, great talking about religion. By the way, do you think you can introduce me to Joe Blow who can help me with my business?

So if you're an mentee to somebody.

Who'S busy and gets hounded with the same bullshit questions, try to engage them on different topics.

I love that.