EverydaySpy Podcast - How to Win the Perfect Mentor

Episode Date: April 5, 2022

Mentorship is one of the most important elements to your long-term success. But finding a good mentor willing to spend their time with you is not easy. In this episode, Andrew gives you the secret to find and win a great mentor. And even more important, he tells you what the wrong kind of mentor looks like, and why you may be working with the wrong mentor right now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Andrew Bustamante, and this is everyday espionage. I recently got a direct message on my LinkedIn message board from somebody who was reaching out and asking me to be a mentor to them. Now, if you've ever reached out to me on any of my social media platforms, whether it's Instagram or Facebook or Reddit or Twitter, I read everything. I don't have some gatekeeper. I read everything, but I don't get a chance to respond to everything. And in this case, I did not respond to this direct message either. And that's what I wanted to share with you. I wanted to tell you why I didn't respond.

And what massive lesson came from this message that I felt you had to know today. Now, the person who reached out to me, like I said, reached out on LinkedIn via direct message. They identified it as someone who's been listening to the podcast, and they said very kind things, and I really appreciated their message. Here's what happened. They were asking me to make time in my life to mentor them in their own professional ambitions for intelligence. Now, I have no problem with anybody who wants to be a professional intelligence officer or a professional intelligence officer on the public side or the private side or any side. But what I do have a problem with is when people come to me asking me for something without being willing to also tell me what they're willing to offer me in return.

And I'm not necessarily talking about money. I'm saying if you've ever been on the receiving end of a request, especially a request for your time or your insights or your network, you know exactly what I'm talking about. When people come to you asking for something, the first natural question that pops up to your mind is, is this worth my time and my effort and my network? And that's especially relevant when it comes to mentoring. Now, LinkedIn and blog posts and corporate training programs, they all talk about how important it is for you to find a mentor. But you know, as well as I do, that when the time comes that you ask someone to mentor you, you often get responses that are not helpful or not responsive or even just not interested. And the truth is that mentors

are not being rude and mentors are not hard to find. People out there want to be mentors, but the truth is that good mentors are busy and they frankly don't know if you will be successful underneath their mentorship or not and because they don't know if you're going to be successful or not that means that they don't know if you are worth their time their effort or risking their reputation look true mentors are out there and they are looking for someone who can immediately offer them something of return value real mentors they're looking for new skills, new perspectives, personal encouragement, new networks, new connections, etc. from the people they take on as mentees. That's not selfish. That's human nature.

If you are looking for a mentor, thinking that your mentor is going to give you everything and ask for nothing in return, that's not a real mentor. Now, you might find someone like that. You might find someone who's willing to work out of the kindness of their heart, but I'm telling you right now, that is not the kind of mentor that you want. Because 99% of mentors who are out there volunteering themselves out of kindness, these are people who are too busy filling their time being a mentor and not busy enough using their time to create new, innovative, high-impact, market-disrupting activities.

You know it. Look, nobody wants to say that. Nobody wants to say that in a news article or a LinkedIn. training program because what they all want is for you to think that being a mentor is something that you do out of grace, something you do out of philanthropic desire to contribute to the next generation. But that simply isn't true. That is a lie. The idea that mentors want to spend their time with you, that mentors want to be discovered and that all you have to do is ask, that's total fiction. Nobody, nobody, including you, wants some stranger to tap you on the shoulder and ask you

to give them your time and your network and your insights on how they can make their career better without offering you anything in return. Now, for those of you out there who have a mentor right now, and especially for those of you who have a mentor who is graciously giving you their time and asking for nothing in return. I want to warn you that the person that is mentoring you right now is not the kind of person you want to learn from. Just look at them. Do you want to be like them in your future? My guess is that they work exceptionally hard. They work long hours. They probably deserve a promotion that they haven't gotten in a while. My guess is they're overweight. My guess is that they're stressed. My guess is that they look older than they really are.

Is that what you want to be when you are their age? Is that the ambition that you have is to replicate the success that your mentor has had, I would challenge that the answer is no. Because these mentors who are offering themselves, sacrificing themselves out of the goodness of their heart, these are people who have always made decisions with their heart. They make decisions with their spirit instead of their head. And that means that they themselves are probably not good leaders. They're probably not the best innovators. And I can almost guarantee you they are not the cutting edge entrepreneur that you want to be. Now, I know what I'm saying is harsh. I know what I'm saying is going to, it's going to step on people's toes. But look, if you're listening right now and you are that mentor, if you are the

person who is sacrificing your time, giving your time to junior mentees, multiple mentees who are giving you nothing in return, let me ask you something, right? If, if you were to stop being a mentor today and take all of that time, all of that energy, all of that risk away from the sacrifice that you take on, the risks that you take on of missing a deadline, losing another night's sleep, sacrificing another workout because you're giving yourself to a mentee. If you were to stop all the mentees, how much more successful would you be? How much more successful would you be if you didn't have to commit? So much time and so much energy to encouraging and teaching multiple men's,

mentees that do not contribute back to you. How much more successful would you be if every mentee that you chose to help was also helping you in some small way to learn, grow, or innovate? This goes both ways. If you're a mentee looking for a mentor or if you're a mentor and you have a mentee, you're both being asked the same question. I'm challenging you both the same way. What is the return? What is the quid pro quo that you have? as the mentee or the mentor to mutually help each other grow, help each other succeed. Because I'm telling you right now, if you don't have a mutual benefit to each other, you're going to eventually just separate.

You're going to see the mentor stop responding. You're going to see the mentee, stop asking. And then eventually there's going to be no relationship at all. Zero relationship at all except for some kind of negative experience that you both go to share yourselves and to share with others, which is going to drive others to not ask for mentors and is going to drive other mentors to not accept mentees. Now, there's a better way to do mentorship. There's the real way to do mentorship. And that's what I want to give you. I want to give you this simple actionable understanding, the simple lesson for how you make mentorship work.

Whether you're a new entrepreneur, whether you're a corporate business person, whether you're in HR or whether you're in finance or whatever you're trying to do. If you're looking for help, if you're looking for knowledge from another person, recognize that that person is a potential mentor. And if you yourself are looking to connect to a younger generation, a fresher, newer set of eyes, you're looking for an opportunity to take on a mentee that's going to help you disrupt the status quo, the existing way of doing things. Now, I have a mentee myself. And when my mentee first approached me, I had to make a choice. Do I tell this boy, this person, the truth, or do I just flat out turn him away? Now, I opted to tell him the truth, the same truth that I just told you.

And I was shocked because his response to me wasn't anger or frustration or sadness. Instead, he looked at me and he said that he wanted to prove to me that he was worth my time. and he wanted to prove that to me in a way that would immediately contribute to everyday spy. So I got him on the phone. We spent 30 minutes talking about an area of my business that I wanted to improve, where I needed fresh eyes, new insight, and some youthful vigor, right? He went away and he spent a few days coming up with a measurable suggestion, a few measurable recommendations that he would lead that would help me innovate through the problems I was having.

30 days after that, we met again on the phone, and he had exceeded the goals that we set together by more than 200%. That showed me in a moment that this guy was worth my time. And since then, I've gone on to help him open his own business and I've helped him hire. I'm one of his first clients hiring his business, which is just a small company, him and his wife, to help me continue tackling and overcoming my biggest growth challenges in everyday spy. And if you've been following everyday spy for a while, you know we've had 200% growth in the last three years. We've had two years of 200% growth. And last year we grew 300%. And my goal for this year is to grow another 300%. This gentleman, this person, this mentee is one of the key components to why I keep having

that kind of growth year over year and why I have perfect confidence I'm going to grow by my target growth again this year. My mentee benefits from unfettered access to me, to my wife, to my entire network, and he gets a monthly paycheck from me for the work that he's doing, not to mention the recommendations I've given him that have helped him secure other clients. And then I benefit from him by getting new young creative perspectives on my business, on my marketing messages, on the brainstorming that comes when I put him and me and Ji and anybody else in our team in the same room when we go to create something new. Now before you think that this one mentorship relationship is just a fluke, let me tell you that we did the exact same thing with another mentee. Almost the exact same thing,

only this time she was female. We didn't mentor her out of kindness or goodness. We mentored her because we had a business need and she had the courage to try to fix that business need. Now, this young female had just awesome ambition and she made a promise early on that she wanted to prove her value before we invested our time mentoring her. And again, just like our first mentor, our first mentees, she delivered and exceeded the value that she promised to give and I hired her on the spot. We did the same thing. Now this second mentee works not only with our first mentee, but she works directly with our company all the time to reap the benefits of working with me, working with my wife, working with our network, gaining a monthly paycheck from us, and then she gets access to all of our closest business partners in the private intel side and the private business side. This is real mentorship. Now, I get that some people out there are going to say, oh, no, Andy, these are just employees. What you're talking about,

our employees, what you're talking about are people you hired to work for you. Nothing could be more wrong. I hired people. Yes, I'm paying them. Yes. I'm paying them because they are worth every penny of what I'm paying them and they're worth every second, every minute, every introduction, every hour that I pour into them as a mentor. Now, if you believe what LinkedIn articles and corporate training teach you, right? Then you would think that these people are just returning the value that I'm paying in a paycheck. But the truth is that this relationship that I'm sharing with you, this is what effective mentoring looks like. And effective mentoring results look like their business growing, my business growing, and we continue to learn from each other. There's nobody in any of

my mentee relationships that's relying on kindness alone to keep the relationship. relationship alive, and you shouldn't either. If you are not delivering value to your mentor right now, what makes you think they would deliver maximum value back to you? If anything, if you're not delivering value to them, how do you know that you're not seen as a distraction by them? Even if you have a genuine friendship with the person you call your mentor, friendship isn't the thing that drives innovation and growth. Friendship is the thing that drives patience and tolerance. Now, real, mentoring, the kind of mentoring you are looking for to break out of your current corporate position, the kind of mentoring you're looking for to level up your business, the kind of mentoring

that you're looking for to get to the next level, that doesn't happen unless you're learning from someone who's equally invested in you as you are in yourself. And no worthwhile mentor is going to invest in you if you don't return on their investment of time and insight and reputation. When you realize that your professional growth must first contribute to your mentor's professional success, then you can have your choice of any mentor you want. Think about that. We're all stuck in a world where we're being told to just ask, ask someone to be your

mentor. Maybe they say yes, maybe they say no. That means you have no control over who your ultimate mentor is. But when you stop to realize that you can keep. contribute to their growth, when you contribute to their growth, their success first, you have all the control in the world to pick any mentor you want. Just like my two mentees picked me and I picked them. You have all the control when you put value up front. Now as soon as the business benefits of your current mentoring relationship reach their natural end, that means your mentorship is also

most likely to end. But your friendship with the person, the person that you contributed so much value to, the person that contributed so much value to you, this person who you grew with side by side as a mentee and a mentor, when that mentorship relationship ends, the friendship still continues. And your individual professional legacies

will be stronger because of the time that you spent together. And that is everyday espionage. Everyday espionage is dedicated to one thing, educating everyday people. I know that not everyone will listen, but those who listen will learn. If you learn something new today, click subscribe, review, and share the podcast with a friend. Find me on social media at Everyday Spy or on my website, Everydayspy.com. If you are up for a special challenge, visit Everydayspy.com forward slash operations and join me for an authentic spy training mission. And above all else, remember that knowledge is freedom.