Many of our readers have requested a post on finding and cultivating a strong mentor. We’ll outline a step by step process on finding a worthwhile mentor. The bad news is that most people, particularly on internet forums, have not passed step one.
Search When You Want to Quit: Most people don’t deserve to have solid mentors as they have not put in the work to deserve assistance. This is similar to why most people are broke. A solid mentor will only help people who have put themselves through pain and suffering. If you’re struggling with women, money, sports or even something as simple as dancing, you should force yourself to try it yourself. Talk to 100 women before you ask for any help with game. Edit your resume 10 times before asking for professional help. Practice your jump shot on video camera before you ask for help with your form. This list goes on. When you’ve tried and failed many times, now you’re in a position to ask for help as you’re about to quit.
Filter Potential Mentors: Zero in on what you need help with. Maybe it is style, maybe it is conversational skills, maybe it is your form when doing heavy squats. Once you have the exact issue you are facing, find a person who is particularly skilled in the craft. For sports it may be smarter to hire a trainer and for style it may be smarter to hire a fashion consultant but ideally you have something to offer in return for the information they will provide. This means you will form a strong bond with your mentor as it is a mutually beneficial relationship. With that said, the title of this section is filter. Why? Finding a mentor who is only firing on one cylinder is always worse than someone who is firing on every cylinder.
Run them through these simple questions:
1. Did This Person Have Less to Work With? As an example, getting career advice from a trust fund baby is useless. If you’re looking for advice, find out how many opportunities the person had and ask yourself if you’ve had more or less opportunities than them. If the person overcame a more adverse situation… You’re on the right track.
2. Ask a Layup Question: This is very similar to our advice on Wall Street, where you want to lower expectations and over deliver. To make your life easier, ask a few fake novice questions about the topic. Why? This will allow you to quickly filter the fakers from the people who legitimately want to help and have been around the block. If you’re eating healthy and are on a high protein diet to gain muscle and a person tells you to start eating more junk calories, you can quickly cross them off the list for advice (notice you already have the basics down as you’ve hit a plateau due to failure). Similarly, if a guy tells you his best opening line is “Hi” then you can be certain he is either a 9/10 or a troll, both are a waste of your time.
3. Mentors Are Congruent and Content: Once filters one and two have gone by, you want to find someone who is consistently helpful and does not sway. Humans are naturally emotional, however a clear character should be present. Even if the person isn’t perfect in all aspects of life, you can find a few mentors to create the person you hope to become. The last step is crucial as a person who sways on a personality basis and seems upset or unhappy is likely harboring feelings of self loathing. The ideal mentor has lost his ego a long time ago, this does not mean a loss of confidence, but an acceptance of his past failures.
Not many people will pass the filter above which may cause you to search for professional advice, but once you find one you can move on with your mentoring process.
Don’t Waste Their Time: This is the most important piece of the process, establish trust with your mentor. If you are asking for lifting advice and continue to stay with the same routine, don’t be surprised if they quit on you. If you’re using the same lines and wearing the same clothes when an expert is telling you otherwise… You’re disrespecting their opinion. Instead listen to their advice to the T and they will be more than happy to guide you as they see errors in the process. Instead of attempting something once, when a mentor guides you he will likely trouble shoot your issues, this will often lead to exponential improvement.
Pay It Back: Once you’ve established a strong relationship, you should attempt to help your mentor and also pay the information back to a younger generation. While mentors are likely firing on all cylinders, giving small tokens of appreciation back should suffice. Now you have a strong bond to work with and you’ll cultivate a relationship in the other direction by paying the information back to a younger man.
Concluding Remarks: Now that you have a guide to finding mentors, the more important question to ask is… Do you deserve help? You must pay the price first and it is always the same. Pain and failure.
Another solid post, and very true, especially #1. That and “search when you want to quit.” When being approached by people asking for help, what I’ve found is that 9/10 times what people want to say after listening to me is, “That’ll never work, because . . . ” This is a waste of both our time, what they are really looking for is someone to validate their excuses to fail and stay mediocre. When I meet one of these people I say “You’re right it’s a lost cause you should give up now” and that usually knocks some sense into their heads.
Filtering is the most important part of this process. Having a poor mentor is worse than going it alone.
Yup — having the right mentor makes all the difference. Too much misinformation out there from losers who like to put on a front.
how does one lose their ego and accept their past failures? can you please explain what this means and elaborate a bit on it?
does it come through achievement in areas of life which one is insecure about? eg. growing up poor –> becoming rich
Thanks
Yes… The more you have overcome the less things bother you.
If you had cancer/were homeless but still somehow made it, you’re not going to have any insecurities.
Got a meeting with a top business guy in my field. How do you recommend I try to turn that into a mentoring relationship? I obviously value his time very much and am doing lots of research to ask only key questions but I also know his time is very valuable so I don’t wanna assume he’s just gonna give me more of it in the future. I.e. What’s in it for him when I’m the one learning And he’s super busy
If you don’t have anything to add to his life you shouldn’t have set up the meeting.
If you do have something to add then it’s going to be a cake walk!
Fair enough but then how would someone inexperienced ever get a mentor? Other than showing real appreciation for that person’s time and advice. Isn’t part of it being able to return the favor in the future after you’re successful?
Note: he knows that the purpose of the meeting is to give advice and he agreed to the meeting
Easy… You find a way to help him even at the 0.0001% level.
If you can prove you would be competent at the most basic tasks to help him. You are not wasting time. If you show up and just say “help me because!!”
You are being rude because you are wasting his time.
Prove that you can do the *most* basic tasks for his field.
Again don’t expect a hand out or you’ll receive a back hand.
Even at the age of 18 you should never do that, even at 18 you can come up with a spin if you are bright.
Wasting his time = damaging your own reputation.
Met all my mentors in the last 3-4 years as I went through the process of doing a tech startup, raising funding, really struggling and nearly failing to make it work and eventually having a successful exit. All the people I met of note were during this time period.
Now that life is under cruise control, I am just leveraging the foundation built during this period. And I used this exact filter you describe (albeit subconsciously) – when I was really struggling, the people who had really “been there and done that”, were those who were very calm and composed when they saw me struggle, and were really able to put me at ease and give me solid actionable advice.
These are also some of the relationships I cherish the most now.