AP 0987: Can I Convince People to Have a Mentor If I Don’t Have One?

AskPat 987 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to, first of all, November, but also Episode 987 of AskPat.

Fun fact about the number 987 is, in numerals that spells Pat—987—and I know this because we had pagers in high school and I thought I was cool, and nobody paged me . . . but anyway, Episode 987, thank you so much for joining me today. We have a question coming into today from Borja, but before we get to that I just want to thank you for, first of all, listening in, and also thank today's sponsor, which is DesignCrowd. DesignCrowd is a website you can use to crowdsource custom graphics from over a half million designers worldwide. If you're stuck on how to develop your logo, for example, or maybe some business cards of yours, or an entire website, it doesn't really matter, you can utilize DesignCrowd to get crowdsourced custom graphics. It can be done perfectly every time, or you get your money back, and here's where you go: You go to DesignCrowd.com/askpat and download a free guide there to crowdsourcing and get $100 off your next design when you enter the promo code, “AskPat.” Alright, now let's get to Borja's question. Here we go.

Borja Giron: Hi Pat, this is Borja Giron from Seo Para Bloggers podcast. I know you don't have any mentor, at least an official mentor; me neither. How can I convince people that it's very powerful, since I don't have it? Do you think if someone wants to hire a mentor, has to be more successful that him? And also, are you mentoring some people? How do you deal with that? Thanks a lot, see you.

Pat Flynn: Hey Borja, thank you so much for the question today. I really appreciate it. Let's see if we can go through these questions one by one. Is it hypocritical? Can you convince people to have a mentor if you don't even have one of your own? Yes, because it's not very easy to get a mentor. I recommend people get a mentor all the time. I don't have one of my own. I wish I had one, and I wish I had somebody who was there to kind of follow me along the whole way, but I've had virtual mentors along the way, people I look up to who I've had some conversations with but don't really consider to be true mentors in terms of just their thinking about me pretty often to help further my career and my life, and that kind of thing. But no, it's not hypocritical at all.

Does a mentor have to be more successful than a person to become a mentor? No, I don't think so, because I think a mentor has to have some skill or knowledge and talent. Think of, for example, Rocky and his coach. His coach was an older man and he just had this amazing skill and was able to train Rocky, but Rocky was obviously the skilled boxer. Think of, let's say for example, professional golfers. I'm seeing professional golfers all the time working with swing coaches who have never been in the PGA or a famous golfer, but they know how to train somebody with their swing, so they're mentoring them on that game, or their putting game. I've seen basketball players go on Instagram and they go to the gym and they learn from this person I've never heard of before, but this person is a shooting coach. There's one guy I follow, his name is LethalShooter3, I think is his Instagram, and he's just amazing, and he could very well be in the NBA but there are players that are much better than him, but people go to him to learn how to shoot more accurately. So yeah, I think the question about being more successful, it kind of depends on what your definition of that means. I think maybe these people are more successful trainers, so that's why they are mentors.

To your final question, I am mentoring a few people. I have some people who I check in with and who check in with me from time to time, and it's mainly just people I love and people who I really want to help out, and I wish I could do that for everybody. It is something I'm exploring in terms of how to do it on a more scalable level, how could I help people in a one-to-one capacity without burning myself out, because I definitely don't want to do that, because then I'm not serving anybody, including my family.

But yeah, mentorship is really important. How wonderful would it be if schools promoted more of that kind of relationship between students and people who are in that career that they were interested in already? I think I went on one job shadow and that was it, and I didn't even get a feel for what the real world was like until after college. Mentorship can be extremely important and life-changing on both sides. So yeah, this is great question. Borja, I encourage you to try and find a mentor of your own and mentor people who could use your skill sets as well.

Thank you so much for the question. We'll hook you up . . . I think you may have asked a question before, and if so we'll see who we might be able to give this teeshirt to, but if not, we'll definitely send it over your way, and for anybody else listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.

Thanks so much for listening in everybody, I appreciate it. Here's a quote today from Mark Twain, and that is, “Never put off 'til tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.” Just kidding. I mean, that is a quote, but this is just a funny quote that you shouldn't follow because you should get things done. Get things done that you know are going to move the needle, that are going to be that first domino in that domino effect—the one thing. Alright guys, thanks Mark Twain, thanks to all of you for listening in, I appreciate it, and I wish you all the best. I'll see you soon, bye.