– Alright, first thing I want you to do is I want you to comment
below and let me know what you guys think is your
experience finding a mentor, what you think, in your
mind, is also the best way to do it right now. (upbeat music) So today we're gonna do a
Breakthroughs with Benson answering your specific
questions and I want to know what specific type of
insights that you guys have. You can comment below and let me know. – [Man] What is the best
way to find a mentor? – I'm gonna give you my own
experience finding mentors. And so, I think, let me
tell you a story, actually. The first mentor I ever had was when I was 17 or 18
years-old, around there, this is a long time ago, almost a decade. And that time was focused
on, he was introduced to me by a mutual friend and
he had a big 10,000 square feet home, this is in Steveson,
which is where I live in BC, and he had this big home, his mansion, his backyard had four full
court basketball courts, four, he had a huge soccer field and a football field and then he had two other mini-homes, like
normal homes, beside his thing.
And so, back then, I was enamored by the way that all the toys that he had, the fancy cars, and all this stuff, and I was like, what does he do? And later on, I found out that he had multiple different businesses. Basically, he sold a lot
of different products, specifically product-type businesses and he was very successful at what he did. But to me, back then, I was 17, 18, what do you know, right? You're just kind of enamored by a lot of the fancy stuff that he has. But what was truly priceless at that time, I didn't know he was my mentor because I was just friends
with his mutual friend, I was just paying
attention, kind of listening to his conversations and I remember one night when he started
sharing more about his story when he was traveling for a business trip, he was telling more about his mindset. Like he thought about things and I think that had a deep relation to me in the way that he started sharing from his real world experience
and what he applied.
And that left a very big
impression on me in business. And I was able to listen in on it. We weren't very close, I
was just a mutual friend. Sometimes once every few
months, we would go to his place and then just listen to all
this stuff that he was doing and it was very interesting, very thriving kind of stories. Now, the point I'm making
here is that really early on, if you have mutual friends, if you have people that you know about, you want to be able to
listen to the conversations that they have, you want to make sure that the person that you're going for, the qualifications of a mentor: someone is that what you want to be, it's someone that has an experience, it's someone that has gone through the trials and tribulations,
the challenges, made a ton of mistakes and also had a lot of successes as well,
that's able to share with you.
I've had mentors early on like that. The other mentor I have is Jay Abraham, which is more publicly known. So, he's a marketing legend,
business world legend, created 21.7 billion dollars of growth, mentors people like Tony
Robbins, Daymond John. And the way I started
that relationship with him was, I think, two years ago
when I basically invested $25,000 to have a two to
three day strategy meeting with him and before then I'd
studied a lot of his content. He's the person that really introduced me to strategy and the whole thing. So that's the second way. If you have the money
and you can afford it, you spend money to be able to meet that specific person if
they're publicly known. The third mentor, another mentor I have, is, if you want to
measure by his successes, probably the "most successful"
mentor that I know, that I talk with him once a month, and he's built companies
over $100 million, just a little bit under a billion dollars, and he's invested in the
portfolio of 100 plus companies in multiple different industries.
He's had ton of successes and he's also had a ton of failures. And those conversations that you have with him is priceless, right. So that was not something I could pay for, not something through a mutual connection, that was something that I
actually had to take years to be able to focus on and hone in and be able to get his attention. Because usually the people
that you want to reach out, they're very mega-successful and anybody that's worth over 100 million or even at a billion dollar level, they are extremely busy. They are not publicly known. Like if you saw the mentor that I had, the third one that I talked about, the really successful one on the street, you would not know he was
as successful as he is. He looks like the average
guy that's walking around. He doesn't drive fancy cars either, which I think also rubs off on me. I'm telling you this
story because each mentor that I have from Jay from
the one that was originally back there when I was
younger and even now, all of them have the way I contacted them, the way I got them,
was all different ways.
Cultivating that communication,
that relationship, I would say focus on three actual things. Focus on what specific industry, why do you want to have that mentor? What is the value that
makes the value to them? What value are you adding to their life? The third thing is what is the outcome, what is the result, and what types of mindsets do you want to get? What qualities do you want
to get from this mentor? Those are three important questions I want you to ask yourself going through all these different, and I also with different mentors too, I just use those three as a
way to give you reference.
Another way you can think about it is, not necessarily a mentor, but you have multiple different people in EO, Entrepreneur Organization,
which I'm a member of, YEC, an entrepreneur council, these other peer groups of entrepreneurs, that's also another way to be able to get a lot of mentors there, people that ended up more successful or in other industries
that you are not in, to be able to get the insights. A lot of those things
just start from there.
The mistakes that I would not make when it comes to getting a mentor, and I see this all the time, those people that you are watching this, and you know you made this
mistake and I've replied to you, is that you email and you're saying, "Can I have one hour of your time?" every single week, I've
even had a guy told me, "Hey, can I come to the office, just to be around you and help you clean or help you do some administrative stuff? Like, you don't even have to pay me." And again, I appreciate
those kinds of reaching out, there's a way to add value, but you got to think about value means to that specific person.
So never ask when you
want to have a mentor, never just directly ask for what you want. Find out what it is that they need, and then add value to them in that way. Whether that's working for them for free, whether that's working for them to be able to do something,
connecting them with someone, keep adding value, keep
adding value to them. And over time, as you
build that relationship, 'cause you want to think of it as, if you were to have a
relationship with a mentor for fifty years, how would you approach it versus if you had them
as a mentor for a month? You would approach it
very, very differently.
So I think you got to be
more strategic with it. Find out, basically the first step, find out who you want to go for, what industry you want to be in, what business you want to be in. Look for public sources, if
not, attend forums and meet-ups of different entrepreneur
groups, have conversations. Just start connecting with people. The third thing is, find
out what is the value that you can add to that person. Never ask directly because,
you've got to keep in mind, they're extremely busy, someone that you want to have as a mentor to you.
So you want to be able
to appreciate their time and respect that. So find out what value
you can add to them. So those are the three things
that I want to share with you. Comment below, let me know what
insights you got from this. What are your experiences with mentors and how do you approach mentors right now? And I'll be interested in hearing that.
So comment below, let me know. The second is make sure
you like this video. And the third thing is subscribe and hit that bell icon so
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I'll see you in the next one..
