Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - How to Get an Amazing Mentor

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

A dream mentorship is hard to come by - especially when you’re cold emailing someone who’s successful and in-demand. But one brilliant listener not only caught Nicole’s eye after slipping into her DMs asking about mentorship… she also got a YES. If you’ve ever had the urge to contact your heroes and ask for a slice of their time, use listener Andrea’s tactics to get an enthusiastic response… and never, under ANY circumstances, use the phrase ‘pick your brain’. 

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Well, it doesn't. Charge for wasting our time. I will take a check. Like an old school check. You recognize her from anchoring on CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg. The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. Nicole Lappin. No matter what step you're on in your money rehab journey, you can't exist in an echo chamber.

I'm feeling great about where I am on my own money rehab journey, but I didn't get to where I am today without a lot of help and advice. And even now, with all my certifications and bells and whistles and killer credit score, mind you, I don't let myself be siloed. I still have mentors who I look to for advice and inspiration. And now I'm also at a point in my career where people are reaching out to me asking me to be their mentor, which makes me so, so, so happy. I really love to be of service, which makes me so, so, so happy. I really love to

be of service. I love mentoring young women, but mentorship is an investment, right? I'm investing my time, my valuable time in someone else, and I want to make sure it's a serious startup, not, you know, a dogecoin, dogecoin situation. I had someone reach out to me recently, coin, doggie coin situation. I had someone reach out to me recently and I was so impressed with her that I asked her to come on the show and tell our listeners how she successfully slid into my DMs. And she is with us today. Andrea, welcome to Money Rehab. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. So stoked. And I am so stoked to have you here. Can you tell our listeners a little about yourself? Yeah, absolutely. My name is Andrea Mora. I am a viral marketer based in LA, originally from Venezuela. I am 23 years old. The last year in August, I decided to leave my

full-time job and just go solopreneur. So I have my own marketing agency as well as my coaching program. I get a lot of DMs, sister. You DMed me. You slipped into my DMs. This is how we know each other. Can you tell me a little bit about what was going through your mind when you were reaching out and how you crafted the outreach? So actually, I have structures for these two.

And I've learned that from your content, from other content. Like I just, I get it from all over the place. But I think that the main reason why a lot of people who are looking for mentors fail to really connect with them, it's because they don't offer value. They think that they're in a stage in their life where they don't have anything to offer because you're already so successful. So what could I possibly do for you? But even back in the days when I would reach out to people when I was in college and whatnot, what I would do is that I would literally offer my time. Like I'll be your assistant for a day. If you just let me shadow you and just see what you're doing,

or I'll pretend to be your personal assistant at a meeting. If you could just let me learn, how do you negotiate deals and whatnot? So the way that I always reach out is always think, you know, think about the other person that's on the other side. You are very busy. You have a lot going on. The least I could do for you besides asking you to like talk to me and whatnot is, you know, offer something in exchange for you. So the way that I structured that was specifically come on ground. It starts off with coming ground. So where I saw you, where I met you. So you would say, oh, this person, you know, knows me from wherever. And I don't even think you recall being in the same event that I was at. I used to work at that event. So that's immediate come on ground.

Therefore, it makes people more prone to open a DM if they're familiar with it, right? Right after that, obviously compliment. It's great to compliment people. It's great to tell them why you admire them and what you love about their content and their stuff. Right after it's followed by, I've been looking at your stuff

or I've been seeing your work about this particular project because then it lets you know that I'm, I'm actually being truthful to you, not just bullshitting you from something that I found online. Um, and then after that I offered value, which is, I would love to just volunteer my time to do your TikTok. So it wasn't like a cold sale, like here's my services. Like in no moment, I wanted to say, here's my services, pay me money. It's like, I know that you have so much to give. You probably 20 minutes of your time is so valuable considering how many businesses and incredible things you've done in the industry. So yeah, time is money and we are buying time. So I love everything about the formula you came

up with. It is even a step beyond what I've talked about when it comes to reaching out to a potential mentor. So I will read the DM. Hi, Nicole. We met very briefly at Patau Worlds a while ago. Common ground. I used to spearhead their socials. I wanted to reach out and offer to volunteer to help with your TikTok. I'm a viral marketer and focus on vertical video. I work with Tiesto, Amazon, and help brands and business owners create viral content on TikTok. I am a big fan of your work and tried looking for more of your content out there since TikTok content is a bit more digestible and saw you haven't posted in a while. Just wanted to put it out there, sending you light and love and all of these yummy warm fuzzies. Essentially, you approached me

showing that you've actually looked into things that I've done. And yes, you're early on in your career, but everyone has something they can offer. So you approached me from a place of service, which is what I tell everyone to do when they are reaching out to anyone, especially a potential mentor. I want to help people, but I want to help only people who actually approach me in the way that I have also advocated. Like, it is out there. I literally write, here is how you should reach out to anyone, especially me. And it is so, so refreshing that you internalized what that was and you put it into action. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I feel like there's so many resources out there. I feel like it's disrespectful when you reach out to someone and clearly the answer, it's either Googleable or it's in the resources that they've already put out there, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. A thousand times yes. That is absolutely right. And you also dug into where I needed help. Legit. I hadn't posted in TikTok in a while. And

that is a super valuable thing. You were so impressive in the way you approached me. And so, of course, like all I want to do is help you hang out with you, get to know you more, put you on my show because it was that impressive. And then you even went further and you sent me a super, super specific note with links, calendar invite. You recapped everything so beautifully. You have made me believe in our next generation that we are in good hands. Representing Gen Z. Yes. You were so prepared. You had an agenda of what we were going to talk about, like swoon after my own boss bitch heart. I started riffing about some of the things I basically don't know about TikTok, but I was thinking about this one video, and you knew exactly what I was talking about. You filled in the blank.

You basically finished my sentence, so you showed me you were so knowledgeable already about this space, but you took it very seriously. It wasn't like you were just playing around with videos on TikTok. Like you looked at this as a business, which was so impressive. You said that you were going to follow up with a very detailed email, which you did. And a whole, I think it was a Google spreadsheet. I love a good spreadsheet in my life. So you look in my life. So you

look through my content. You showed me how you could break those specifically down into tips. You basically did all of this work for me. It's a symbiotic relationship, right? And that's how I built a network, by the way. Yes, you can reach out to anybody, but you have to do it in the right way. Yeah. A hundred percent. And being authentic too, like imagine, oh my gosh, I've had this happen before to one of my mentors. She told me that one day someone came up to her and said, Hey, I watched your speech at this conference and whatnot. And I loved it. I love what you said about this and this and this. And she said, actually, I got sick and I couldn't go. And it was this awkward moment of, that relationship is completely ruined because how do you start something with this honesty?

Totally. That's happened to me too. So I'm a mentor for Rebecca Minkoff's women's group, the Female Founder Collective. And they set me up on a boot camp, basically, of calls helping female entrepreneurs. And one woman started the conversation saying, oh my gosh, I loved your book. And I said, which one? And she said, oh, I have it right here. And I stopped her and I said, listen to me, sister, do not ever, ever do that again. Like, fine, it can fly with me, but do your research. Give a specific example. If you said to me, hey, I loved this part in Boss Bitch where you gave a template to reach out to people or to negotiate. I use that in my life. You know, if you could be as specific as possible,

that is awesome. But like, no, there is no lying here to try and be impressive because I think people will call you out. But of course, like, how could I not be helpful to you? So you've created this environment that just makes me want to help you all day, every day and twice on Sunday. Thank you. I appreciate that. So what is one tip you can give our listeners who are currently working toward getting a mentor or working with people they admire that haven't quite nailed it yet?

Absolutely. One of them is offer value. Literally going in and organizing their office even. Like I've done that. I've done it so many times where I just want your time, but I'm never going to ask it for free. Like do not ever DM someone and say, pick their brain. Please, if you want to pick their brain,

either pay them or offer to do something. I've paid a lot of mentors too for their time. Whenever I can't see, they can't DM them and I just see a link to their consultations. I just book it and whatnot, because it's something that's going to come back. It has an ROI there. Money Rehab is a production of iHeartMedia. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Our producers are Morgan Lavoie and Catherine Law. Money Rehab is edited and engineered by Brandon Dickert with

help from Josh Fisher. Executive producers are Mangesh Hatikadur and Will Pearson. Huge thanks to the OG Money Rehab supervising producer, Michelle Lanz, for her pre-production and development work. And as always, thanks to you for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all.