Get a Mentor. Then, Get Another One.

You’re getting close to the end of the book. So far, we’ve covered the importance of becoming a high-quality man (who knows power dynamics), acquiring the right mindsets, and following the networking rules and principles. You’ve also learned one of the many sound strategies for connecting with contacts who can best help you reach your goals.

So, why are we talking about mentors? As explained in Step Three, you need to be in charge of your circle of influence. Here’s what many don’t understand about mentors: the official definition of a mentor is, “An experienced and trusted advisor.”

When most people think of a mentor, they think about business, whether that be someone you trust helping you get better at that skill you’ve been trying to master, or someone who is one of the biggest names in mentor history (such as Benjamin Graham mentoring Warren Buffett, or Bill Campbell mentoring Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Jeff Bezos).

However, many tend to forget that the Starbucks barista who regularly gets you your “fix” is also your mentor. They have experience doing what they do, and they’re advising you to continue getting your fix from them.

People want to think of a mentor as a formal, contractual, professional relationship. They think it only “counts” as a mentorship if you meet with your mentor once every couple weeks. People especially view mentors this way in the world of business.

We think the scam artist seminar host flashing cheesy Powerpoint slides of their Lamborghini is just a guru. We don’t think that as we absorb the information they give out that they go from being a guru to being a mentor, but they do.

“A mentor is someone that you have access to (be that access online or in person) that you can watch and see how they do things while taking notes that you can implement into your own life”[1]. When we broaden the perspective of what a mentor is in this way, we realize that we have more mentors in our life than we originally thought. That’s why it’s important to make sure we approve of the people who act as our mentors.

We must be able to identify which of the mentors in our life are “good mentors” so we can evaluate them effectively moving forward (and follow the circle of influence rule to weed out the “bad mentors”). To do that, we must ask ourselves: what makes a good mentor?

Characteristics of a Good Mentor[2]¹⁹

1. They’re a guide

- They’re your guide, not your competitor. They shouldn’t be acting superior to you.

2. They’re humble and experienced

- They should be humble and experienced in the skill you’re looking to learn from them.

3. They help you help yourself

- A mentorship should not be an opportunity to get your mentor to do things for you. The high achievers of this world do not do things alone, but they do things themselves.

- A good mentor doesn’t pretend to have all the answers (or try to give you all the answers). Being a good mentor is more about asking good questions that help you figure things out for yourself.

4. They are open to questions

- They don’t just answer questions about how to develop a certain skill set you’re looking to improve, but will help you explore and learn more about your area of interest.

5. They help you with both the good and the bad aspects of a job

- There are highs and lows in both life and business. Ideally, your mentor should be someone who can help you extend the life of those highs for as long as possible and help you learn as much as possible from the lows, all while still keeping you grounded in reality. They should be able to show you that the good won’t last forever, and the bad isn’t nearly as bad as it could be.

6. They help you learn from their mistakes

- Your mentor should not be someone too egotistical or narcissistic to admit that they have made mistakes. A part of the added benefit of having a solid network is that you can cut your learning curve in half by learning from your mistakes as well as the mistakes of others. You lose a large part of that added benefit if your mentor is unwilling to share their past failures.

I feel that now is a great time to share the sheer beauty of tearing down the strict barriers society uses to constitute a “real mentor.” I’ll illustrate my point by sharing a mentor who is nontraditional but has still had a massive impact: Robert Kiyosaki, and his personal finance book, Rich Dad Poor Dad.

In that book, he uses his personal story of having two fathers, one rich and one poor, to guide you towards a deeper understanding of the importance of assets and the consequences that come with liabilities. He’s humble and tells about his own experiences on his journey to acquiring assets throughout the book. Due to the fact that he delivers his teachings through a book, he can empower you with the information you need to take action while still being unable to hold your hand (something a good mentor should not do). He creates a situation where he must help you help yourself. Last, he helps you learn from his mistakes by telling the mistakes that his poor dad made, which resulted in his missed opportunities for financial success.

In many ways, books could be considered mentors and, personally, viewing books this way helps to keep me motivated to read them. I especially love to read books written by authors who are clear experts in their field and who give action steps in their books, since it feels more like a class that way.

The reason why books are not widely considered mentors is because there is a lack of person-to-person interaction which, as you may have noticed, results in some of the characteristics of a good mentor to be missing. It’s hard for a book to help you with the good and bad aspects of your job, since everyone’s experience in a given job is different. Typically, to give advice like this would require the assessment of what is currently going well and what’s going poorly for you in your profession. It is possible for a book to provide you with that advice if it covered every possible negative and positive experience you’re able to have in a job, but it would also result in that book being exhaustingly long.

This is another reason why my book is about networking. By mastering the art of networking, you can create that business relationship with your desired mentor, who can then guide you the rest of the way toward success.

Before we can get to that point, we have to start at the beginning: finding a mentor. To illustrate this step-by-step process of finding and getting a mentor, I’ll use the example of a twenty-four-year-old, recent college graduate named Brian who is looking to eventually enter the world of entrepreneurship and CEOs.

Step 1: Map Out Your Ideal Career Path

Let’s say Brian has read this chapter with you and now he’s taking step one. He creates a rough map of his career path and uses it as an outline from where he is to where he wants to be. To save time, I recommend using the form at www.thecleverconnector.com/careermap.

Refer to the model worksheet as you complete the following steps.²⁰