Personal Mentor

Do you want to start getting great mentorship right in this minute?

Then just follow the steps Iay out in my article about getting instant mentorship.

There, you learn how to use book authors and other high-value publishers as your personal mentors.

In this article, you will learn how to find and engage a high-value mentor to help you achieve the dream outcomes you aspire.

I will show you a simple clear cut method.

But beware, it's simple, not easy.

Let's start right off.

Here's the strategy:

Step 1: Understand what makes a great mentor

Step 2: Understand what a great mentor wants

Step 3: Find and approach great potential mentors

Step 4: Ensure to give that mentor what she or he wants

Take these steps correctly, and you will have found a highly valuable mentor who can be a huge help in propelling your faster and better towards your desired outcome.

Now let us take a look at each step.

Step 1: Understand what makes a great mentor

To help you get from A to B, with B being your desired goal, you don't want random advice.

You want advice from someone who is in the best possible position to help you.

This is critical because once you have decided on a mentor, and start folling the advice, you are put on a track. Better ensure that this track has the best potential to lead you to your dream goal.

In other terms, be sure to find a good mentor.

What makes a good mentor in your case?

Relevant: She or he has walked the walk you want to take. The more closely, the better.

Believable: She or he has documented, better, repeated success on that path.

Available: She or he will be available sufficiently to guide you.

If all these criteria are met, you have found someone in a position to guide you, with the best chances that the guidance is valuable, and you can truly access this guidance.

There are quite some people out there meeting these criteria.

But unfortunately, these people do not sit and wait for you to be mentored.

At least not directly.

This follows just the natural law of supply and demand.

The more successful and thus exposed the situation of a potential mentor is, the higher the damand for his mentoring.

This puts our poor potential mentor into a time problem.

He only has so much time.

Besides, chances are that he only became so successful in the first place because he guarded his valuable time like a hawk.

So how do you solve this dilemma?

How do you get access to the person you want, even though it gets more and more difficult the more desirable this person is?

You do this by applying the laws of Marketing and Positioning, that's how you do it.

A basic law of marketing is that there is supply and demand.

A basic law of positioning is that you need to position yourself favorably in the perception of your desired target group.

Putting both together means that you have to learn what your dream mentor wants and then signal that you can give it to her or him.

Which brings us to the next question:

What does a mentor want?

First, she or he wants to recognize potential.

Secondly, she or he wishes to see resourcefulness and action.

Thirdly, she or he would like to see mentoring as an option, not a chore.

Fourthly, as every human, also mentors look for meaningful interaction (don't underestimate that one).

The basic motivation for a mentor is to contribute, to pass on, and to derive a good feeling based on the contribution.

Now let's put all of that together in a practical example.

If I am highly seasoned in something and have the desire to pass some experiences on to feel better about myself, I want to maximize my chances to really do so.

Therefore, when sizing up a potential mentee, I first ask, "Do I sense that this person has potential?".

I do this because if I come to a "no" answer, my natural conclusion would be, "Let's better look for someone else so that I can maximize my chances of seeing some growth and making my time investment worth it."

This may sound harsh.

Wouldn't the ones in most dire need be the ones who should be mentored first?

Well, we run into the constraints of a mentor here, again.

If as a mentor I only have so much time, I want this time to have some effect.

And we run into supply and demand.

Who of the countless souls with little or no potential will I try to help? - The first, the first three, all of them?

As soon as we have constraints, we have some sort of selection. How could it be different?

If you are on the receiving end, you need to understand this reality.

Now, having understood what a great mentor in my case is and what she or he wants, it's time to look out for such a person.

Step 3: Find and approach potential mentors

Same as in dating and any other high-stakes endeavor, it's clever to have options.

Because not needing to bet everything on one card gives you and me two great advantages.

First, we increase our chances for success just by numbers.

Second, we are much less needy and therefore act in a much more appealing manner.

Third, we have more different instances to learn.

Putting this together I would advice to not look out for ONE mentor but to start looking for a set of potential mentors out of which one mentor can materialize.

Same as I do not advise for many reasons to have two partners in parallel, I also don't advice to have two mentors in parallel at a time.

Sequential is fine, parallel is confusing and troublesome.

So how do I get this set of potential mentors?

Step 1: I start to set up a list

Step 2: I put my criteria on this list

Step 3: I start looking for potential mentors

Where do I look? - There where they hang around.

This can be my company, certain events, linkedin, websites where they publish and on and on.

You just ask yourself, were do people who meet my criteria congregate.

Make a list of 3 to five and you are ready to move to the next stepl

Step 4: Approach potential mentors

Same as with a cat you want to pet, you don't want to scare off a potential mentor right from the start.

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