Dan Martell - October 05, 2015


Finding a Mentor Is Easier Than You Think


Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

241.22719

Word count

1,203

Sentence count

46


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about how to find a mentor and how to keep them. I share my personal story of how I found my first mentor, and how I kept them as mentors for the last 10 years. I also talk about the 4 things you can do to find and keep great mentors.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.320 How to find a mentor.
00:00:01.360 It's probably the most important topic as an entrepreneur
00:00:04.040 you gotta figure out.
00:00:05.080 And it's why I've been holding off for all these months
00:00:07.320 before I shared it, because I wanted to make sure
00:00:09.120 that I had the absolutely best framework
00:00:11.400 for you guys to follow to find a kick-ass mentor.
00:00:14.200 You know, I've got four ideas that I wanna share with you,
00:00:16.160 but before I get into that, I wanna share with you guys
00:00:17.880 a story, my personal story of finding my first mentor.
00:00:20.880 You know, I was really struggling in my business,
00:00:22.760 Spheric Technologies, I was probably 26 years old,
00:00:25.320 and I just figured a cold email to the former premier
00:00:28.440 or the province where I lived, I'm Canadian,
00:00:30.580 would help me find people like me.
00:00:32.840 I just figured there's gotta be other people
00:00:34.400 that have built this kind of business in the past
00:00:36.760 that might be able to give me guidance and ideas
00:00:38.800 and kind of a direction for me.
00:00:40.840 And I cold emailed this guy named Frank McKenna
00:00:43.360 and within 30 minutes he wrote back
00:00:45.100 and I emailed him probably at midnight
00:00:46.980 and he introduced me to three guys.
00:00:48.580 Those three names were Jerry Pond, Steve Palmer,
00:00:51.280 and Ken Nickerson.
00:00:52.820 And if you guys know who those people are,
00:00:54.280 I mean Jerry Pond is now kind of the Ron Conway
00:00:57.020 the godfather of tech in the province.
00:00:59.180 Ken Nickerson's one of the top angel investors,
00:01:01.320 and Steve Palmer at the time was the CEO
00:01:03.120 of one of the largest technology companies in our region,
00:01:05.260 and is now the co-CEO of another technology company.
00:01:07.900 Really great operator, and those three people,
00:01:10.200 even though I didn't get introductions,
00:01:11.640 I reached out to them, and all three responded.
00:01:14.200 But I wanna share with you guys how I got them engaged,
00:01:16.940 and then also how I kept them as mentors
00:01:19.400 over the last, you know, almost a decade.
00:01:21.820 You know, so the first one I wanna share with you guys
00:01:23.840 is when you reach out to them,
00:01:25.420 You wanna make sure that you have a big problem.
00:01:28.160 You know, many times when people reach out to me
00:01:30.420 and they want me as an advisor or mentor,
00:01:32.500 they don't have something to dive into.
00:01:35.440 They're just like, hey, I saw you online
00:01:37.160 or I follow you on Twitter, I watch your videos on YouTube
00:01:39.440 and I'd love to sit down and pick your brain.
00:01:41.400 Big no-no, don't do that.
00:01:42.840 Have a problem, have a specific problem
00:01:45.400 that you can dive into or you can connect that mentor,
00:01:48.480 that potential mentor to the challenge that you're facing
00:01:50.880 so that they can say, oh, that's something I've been through
00:01:53.420 and I can give you some quick thoughts.
00:01:54.980 Now, the second thing I want to share with you guys is make sure that you start small.
00:02:00.220 You know, the biggest mistake you can make is reaching out to one of these potential mentors and saying,
00:02:04.260 hey, I'd love to come and visit your office and get a tour.
00:02:08.060 I mean, I've heard people say that.
00:02:09.420 They're like, oh, I'm in town.
00:02:10.340 I'd love to come to your office, meet your staff, get a tour of your business.
00:02:13.440 And I'm like, why?
00:02:15.280 I don't have time to do that.
00:02:16.840 I'm busy.
00:02:17.340 I have a company to grow.
00:02:19.520 And what I want to suggest to you guys is start small and build from there.
00:02:22.920 So what's start small mean?
00:02:23.940 it might mean just getting a response via email.
00:02:26.580 Maybe it's a very specific question like,
00:02:28.380 hey, Dan, I've seen you've gone through this in the past,
00:02:31.140 I'm going through this scenario,
00:02:32.460 very short, one sentence each,
00:02:34.460 what do you suggest I do, A or B?
00:02:36.320 And just have them respond, start small,
00:02:38.180 get an interaction going.
00:02:39.720 Then the key, and this is the third aspect
00:02:41.800 that you need to get really great at
00:02:43.060 to find and keep great mentors, is circle back.
00:02:46.700 You know, if I respond to an email and I say,
00:02:48.700 you know, I don't really understand
00:02:50.020 the whole context of your situation,
00:02:51.420 but based on what you've told me,
00:02:52.680 I would suggest going with option B.
00:02:55.060 In six months, maybe after you've already played out
00:02:57.360 the scenario, maybe even sooner, in six weeks,
00:02:59.520 you can circle back and say, hey,
00:03:01.420 this is what you suggested I do, I did it,
00:03:03.640 that's the key, is take action, and here are the results.
00:03:06.900 And to me, that is probably the most valuable thing
00:03:09.600 you can give a mentor, is not only be an active listener
00:03:13.300 and ask really great questions, but on the other side is,
00:03:16.980 circle back and let them know how their advice
00:03:18.960 or their guidance helped you.
00:03:21.120 I mean, to me, as a mentor, and I've been fortunate enough
00:03:23.880 to mentor dozens of entrepreneurs over the years,
00:03:27.040 it's just the way, it's kind of the circle of value,
00:03:30.160 is they ask you questions, you give them answers,
00:03:33.100 and then they go and either do or don't do them,
00:03:34.760 and I would suggest circling back,
00:03:35.980 even if you don't follow up with them,
00:03:37.620 but that'll give them some value,
00:03:39.160 and the other thing I want to share with you guys,
00:03:40.880 it's a big idea, is really to give praise back
00:03:43.860 to your mentors, you know, any chance I get
00:03:45.440 to do a video like this, or if I'm on stage,
00:03:47.600 I love telling the story about, you know,
00:03:49.500 Jerry, Ken, and Steve, and just how invaluable
00:03:52.780 their advice was at that specific moment in time.
00:03:54.840 I was 26, I was really, really struggling.
00:03:56.960 I seriously, I was about on the verge of going bankrupt,
00:03:59.540 and I just needed some guidance.
00:04:00.920 I needed somebody to kind of say, you know what,
00:04:02.480 the biggest thing that I heard from all three of them,
00:04:04.760 check this out, the biggest advice I got was,
00:04:07.060 you know what, you're doing really well.
00:04:09.120 And at the time, I thought I was a complete failure.
00:04:11.420 Even though the company had grown millions of revenue,
00:04:13.680 dozens of employees, I really thought that
00:04:16.600 I wasn't doing something right,
00:04:17.780 because obviously I wouldn't be in this position.
00:04:19.340 And I thought, just having somebody tell me
00:04:21.520 that not only it's normal, but you're doing well,
00:04:24.720 congratulations for having these kind of problems,
00:04:27.380 that to me unlocks so much potential
00:04:28.900 and really why I've been able to go on
00:04:30.820 and build the other companies that I have.
00:04:32.140 So I want to share that with you guys
00:04:33.220 because I think that the most important thing
00:04:35.500 you can get from mentors is to make you feel
00:04:37.280 like you're not alone.
00:04:38.400 And that'll really help you grow your business
00:04:40.300 and really achieve in life.
00:04:42.080 So I want to ask you guys to like this video,
00:04:43.980 leave a comment below, and let me know
00:04:45.480 if you have a mentor, how did you find them?
00:04:47.720 You know, help everybody else watching this video.
00:04:49.220 Leave a comment below.
00:04:50.060 Tell the story of how you found your mentor.
00:04:52.260 I think that's a big question everybody asks.
00:04:54.160 Then I also wanna challenge you guys
00:04:55.420 to live a bigger life and a bigger business
00:04:57.400 and I'll see you guys next Monday.