Episode 11: Illuminating the Path: The Transformative Power of Mentorship in Shaping Our Lives

Growing up I learned more than just the value of hard work; I unearthed the transformative power of mentorship. My grandfathers guidance in my early writing endeavors was my first foray into understanding how critical a role mentors play in shaping our personal and professional selves. Let's travel down memory lane together as I share the poignant recollections of the mentors who've made a lasting impact on my life, from my grandfather's early influence to the pivotal professional networks introduced to me by Cassidy, my foster parent's son. Throughout this episode, you'll hear stories filled with patience, wisdom, empathy, and constructive criticism—qualities that define a true mentor.

As we navigate the world of mentorship, you'll discover that it's not a one-size-fits-all journey. The mentors you choose should not only align with your values but should also challenge and expand your horizons. The resonating message of this episode is the importance of having multiple mentors for various facets of your life, using them as sounding boards and embracing their diverse perspectives. Prepare to join me next time as we take a closer look at ethical leadership, highlighting the steadfastness and moral principles that I hold dear. This conversation is more than just lessons learned; it's about the continuous path of growth and the mentors who light the way.

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Full Circle with Sean. I'm your host, sean, and today we're talking about mentorship and really the importance of mentorship. So, whether you're a mentor or you have mentors, and really technically, even if you are a mentor, you probably have your own mentors and you should. It's like I was always told that the day you stop learning, I mean, what's the point? So you should always have a mentor.

Speaker 0: 0:24

And let's start with well, my first mentor that I can remember would have probably been my grandfather and I was just in foster care and I had written a book. So I hand wrote a book. So in high school we had this challenge to write a page a day and I wrote pages and pages and pages and pages ended up being like 200 pages handwritten. And my grandfather is, or was at the time he was a writer and he worked for the Rochester Institute of Technology, rit, in upstate New York, and I sent him my book and I said how'd I do? How cool am I? And he drove down from the mountains because he lived in the mountains, a cool little studio in the mountains. I didn't see him very much, but he actually drove down and gave me a typewriter and told me to type it and he talked to me about it and said you know he had read it. And he said my characters are too apologetic, there's not enough confrontation. And I guess that was where I was in life, right? So there was a lot of conflict in my life. I'd gone into foster care and I wanted everybody to be happy and so he talked to me about all of that. So he kind of mentored me on what I should and shouldn't do in a book. Now, I still didn't do very, very well at the end on that book, but it was an experience and moving forward from that, my second mentor that I remember who really started to change my perspective was Cassidy.

Speaker 0: 2:02

So Cassidy was my foster parent's son, biological son, and he was part of the emergency squad and he brought me in and that's when I became president of the emergency squad over time for the junior club not of the whole emergency squad and I learned a whole bunch of skills from that. And in fact funny story there was a bunch of people that didn't want, you know, juniors riding on the ambulance squad and we'd done all the work and we got our CFRs and everything, and there was a bunch of people that came in, a bunch of kids that came in to do it. And so one of the guys said okay, I'll tell you what. If you can go and find a sphygmometer on the ambulance, I will let you ride the ambulance. And so I went out and I'm like what the heck is a sphygmometer right? So I'm looking, I'm looking, and Cassidy shows up around the corner and says blood pressure cuff. And I went and looked at the blood pressure cuff and, yes, it said sphygmometer on it. So I brought it back in. Ah, you cheated, there's no way you figured that out. It says written right on it. And that was it.

Speaker 0: 3:02

I got to ride the ambulance from that and that really started to shape who I was. Right, I started to get around networks that were more professional, that were not in the networks that I was used to. So you know, if you listen to my foster care story, I was used to my sister's friends and friend groups that were, you know, druggies and all sorts of things going on with them. So it started to pull me out of that and Cassidy did a really good job of helping me with that. So, and then we keep moving on.

Speaker 0: 3:38

I mean, I had mentors in the military that would help me and I've had mentors here in business when I came to Australia and it's very important to continue growing your mentors, whether it's in an official capacity, maybe you go to a networking event, you look for a mentor, you reach out. I need a mentor for X, y and Z. You're trying to scale your business. You're looking for somebody that's scaled a business before and can give you tips and tricks. And sometimes it says consulting and you can find decent consultants. You can also find a lot of consultants probably 90% of consultants that are there for the paycheck and they've never done it or they've done it through somebody else and their advice is not really worth a lot.

Speaker 0: 4:24

So there comes a point, as I've said, with everything, that you as a person have to weigh this up. You can't be a sheep. Don't just blindly follow what people say. I mean, take it, weigh it, research it and figure it out for yourself, because at the end of the day you're the one that's going to benefit from your mentor or not benefit from your mentor. And when you're looking for a mentor, I guess you're looking for someone with a bit of patience and, normally, wisdom. You know, freely sharing that wisdom with you, empathy. They need to understand where you are, because where they're at isn't what you need to learn, it's the growth to get to where they're at, or the skill set you're looking for to get there.

Speaker 0: 5:11

If they tell you, oh, yeah, do this and this is what I do, yeah, yeah, but this is where I am and we need to weigh up where I am in order to bridge that gap, I can't just jump there. It's the whole walk before you leap mentality. And they have to be able to provide constructive feedback, not just you know you screwed up or you should have done this. Yeah, I get that, but more constructive, like let's walk through the steps that led to that decision, let's find out where your conceptions were, that you thought that was the right decision to make, or you want to. Maybe it's just a conversation about I want to do this and this is how I'm going to do it. If they just tell you, okay, well, don't do it that way, do it this way, how does that really help you? How did you get to that point? And that's where. How did you get to that point? And that's where everything in a mentor is important. It's about changing the mindset, not just giving direction, because you'll never grow and you really need to find a mentor that shares your own beliefs I guess, not so much religious beliefs and everything but your own beliefs with.

Speaker 0: 6:24

This is how my ethics or my standards are for certain things. I mean, if I went and said, okay, I want to, I want my company to be huge, right, and I'm going to do it like Elon Musk, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to bring in somebody that can show me how to brute force and then let everybody go and and reap the rewards. And I got nothing against Musk. I actually respect him, especially as a business professional, but this is not how I would do it. And, yes, that means that I will go slower, and it's an unfortunate part of it is I will go slower but I'll do it in a way that I'm comfortable with the ethics behind what I'm doing and I won't be as public you know.

Speaker 0: 7:07

I sure I'm doing this podcast, but I only have LinkedIn. I don't. I don't tend to go on a lot of socials and I think I talked about that in another episode. But I have different, different ways of doing this. I need to find something that's more aligned with me with. Okay, I built a business, but I built it in steps and this is how I did it and this is how I took care of my people and so on and so forth.

Speaker 0: 7:29

So I think that is a really important aspect of finding somebody that aligns to your beliefs and, at the end of the day, you're the benefits that you have from having a proper mentor and same as hiring people you know, move them on. If they don't work for you, move them on. It doesn't mean you can't be friends still, and any professional or proper mentor will know that you're not aligned and would be happy to move on. So move them on until you find the ones that that work with you and not not just work with you because they're doing things the way you want to do it, but because you guys mix in the way that you have the same beliefs and they are actually teaching you how to have better decision-making skills and enhance confidence and accelerated learning and all the stuff that comes with the benefits of being properly mentored and it's really funny. It's funny to.

Speaker 0: 8:26

I know a lot of people that have gone through mentoring and some of them have done it where you actually get, you pay for a mentor and the improvement with the, with the right person, and I saw one. They went through three different mentors and on the last mentor that they had, they had them for a couple of years and that mentor changed that person and you could see the change and you could see the change in their company and they got bigger. He was under a lot less stress and I mean he went through some of the stuff that they worked with. It was amazing. It was organized, it was really really good. They set goals and she offered insights on her experiences. That really, really helped him to grow and that's what a mentor should do.

Speaker 0: 9:22

But I do know when he first started, people were saying you've been doing it so long and you know how to run your business. It's obviously running and you are making money. But what they didn't see is behind the scenes, pulling your hair out because you don't have that level yet of being able to absolutely organize everything or you're trying to get to that next level, but you're spending so much time on one thing. It really becomes the whole point of. I think he was more ready to work on the business instead of in the business, which is a big step for a business owner and if you look at him now, I mean he still has the business and it's run by his employees and, yeah, he works there, but not like he used to. It's a very well-polished machine, but that took him a lot of work.

Speaker 0: 10:13

So anybody that says all you have to do is this and this and everything will be good, those are the ones that you need to let go straight away, or ones that just agree with you on everything, right? I mean, that's the worst thing that can happen in business is when, when you have your opinions and you say this is, this is what I want, this is how I'm going to do it, and say you have, you're at a meeting with all your employees and and you say, this is what I have, this is what I'm going to do, this is what we're all going to do and this is how we're going to achieve that, and everybody says yay, but in reality, they're thinking, hmm, if we just did this and this, that would fix that problem. No-transcript, and that's not, that's not what you want. So where do we, where do we find these magical mentors? So mine were found, a lot of mine were found just in normal everyday talk business. I'd find somebody maybe it was a client, it was actually Justin was a client and his wealth of knowledge. I just picked his brain and I called him later and I said I've got this thing in business, what do you think? And we formed a relationship to where he became a real mentor to me and he still is. And Cassidy, he was just because I was there, but I had persistence and I had drive, that I wanted to do something more and he understood that and latched onto it and helped me.

Speaker 0: 11:54

So sometimes it's what we say to people and how we listen to people and taking the opportunity to advance our relationship with certain people. And this goes a lot into networking. So if you listen to the last episode that I did on networking, you might already have the perfect mentors for you through your network, through things you've already done. But you have to talk to them, you have to ask. People don't know what you need unless you open your mouth and tell them. I guess it's the same thing in sales, right? So you pitch, you throw this huge presentation up of why we're the best in the world and why you need our stuff, but at the end you always have to have a call to action. But now do this, now help me with this. Now you know, buy this, and it's the same with your network.

Speaker 0: 12:43

So you're talking to your networks and you might be asking some questions and then you say, look at, can you help me further with this, can you guide me with this? You know you don't have to say, will you be my mentor, but you can say, can you help me, can you give me some advice? In fact, that's how I usually say it is I'm looking for advice on things and most people will give you advice. So it's just a normal human trait, right? We like to say that we know things, and so that's how you need to work it out. Now you can go to professional agencies. They can match you with mentors. You can do that as well for startups. You know your VCs can mentor you and I'm going to have a whole thing on startups as well, because you do need to be cautious on a lot of those things and how they mentor you and the things that they say, because they're talking in their perspective to make money out of you.

Speaker 0: 13:40

It's not always with your benefit in mind. So always, always, reflect on the conversations. I always reflect on the conversations I have with everybody and that will help you reflect on were you being an active listener? Were they being an active listener? What was said? Did you miss something? And yeah, it helps you to grow as a person. And I'm not saying, you know, stress about what you said or you know I definitely could have done better and feel bad about that. I'm saying reflect on it, learn from it and continue to grow, because you shouldn't be scared to challenge yourself in what you said or what you say or how you act. You should be able to challenge yourself and that's how we grow and that's how a mentor will do it with you. They will challenge you and Some people get upset.

Speaker 0: 14:34

Oh, they told me I shouldn't be doing this and I need to focus on this, but I don't see the importance of that. Well then, you need to have that conversation with them and you need to be open with them and say I don't understand, and that's not what I want to do, and try to understand that because, at the end of the day, they shouldn't, like I said, they shouldn't agree with you with everything anyways. And I guess the last point I want to make is that your mentor is not going to mentor you on everything. Okay. So you might have personal challenges. You might have a mentor that helps with some of those, another mentor that helps with some other of those and they might not be the right person to talk about some of the other things those and they might not be the right person to talk about some of the other things. So you can have a whole slew of mentors that help you in all different areas of your life your professional, your personal and that's okay.

Speaker 0: 15:26

It is not a one-size-fits-all and I guess so not the last thing I want to talk about, but one more thing bad mentors, right? So I have had bad mentors and I've had people that I looked up to and I you know that big businesses. They were where I wanted to be and I latched on and I started asking questions and getting advice and they would spend time with me and I remember one time I'm in a car and and they were saying some really off-the-cuff things about some people and I was just thinking this is not my values, this is not where I want to be when I get bigger. I don't want to have that mentality. So then I started questioning everything else and you look for those little warning signs, because those little warning signs and you'll feel it and you know it and don't second guess yourself. You know, look into that and yeah, you need to kick them. If they're like that, you need to kick them, and I did. It took me a bit because I was embedded a bit, but I did kick them and my life was better for it.

Speaker 0: 16:35

So I guess the point of this whole conversation is mentors are good. There shouldn't be a feeling that you know that by opening up to somebody and telling them your frustrations or your pain is a bad thing. It's a show of strength, it's a show of knowing yourself, and only when we start to understand ourselves can we grow and understand where we need help, can we grow. And sometimes we can't be the ones to tell ourselves where we need to focus on or where our shortcomings are. We need somebody that we trust. We need somebody that has the knowledge or has the experience, and I use my mentors as a sounding board a lot of times.

Speaker 0: 17:22

So I'll throw up what I want to do, what I think is going on in a certain situation, and I'll run it by a mentor or two mentors or three mentors if I need to, and then I'll make my decisions from there. But it helps me understand and one of the good things so one of my mentors, one of the good things he always does when I ask this is he proposes different scenarios based on what I'm trying to do, and not always in the same context. And what would you do about this, and how do you feel about this? And what if it was like this? Or what if it was somebody else? And that really helps me open up and think more.

Speaker 0: 18:01

If I haven't already done it and I do it a lot in my own life now because he's taught me that but I still need that sounding board to open up, because there are times where I really have a feeling that I'm going in the right direction or I've made the right decision, feeling that I'm going in the right direction or I've made the right decision and sometimes I haven't thought of all the aspects and you never will. You never will. So you always need somebody or a group of people that you can lean on to help you with that. And finding those people. It takes time. It will take time, but you will find them. If that's what you want and you are persistent, then you will find them.

Speaker 0: 18:41

So, yep, that's the end of today's episode and thank you so much for listening. And on the next episode we will be talking about ethics and integrity in leadership, and I know that I have done one on leadership, I've done a podcast on leadership, and I really want to dive into some of the ethics and integrity that I think are necessary, not just in business, but in your personal life. So join me if you're interested in that, and I'll look forward to chatting in the next podcast. Thanks again for joining me at Full Circle with Sean.