How to Be a Mentor, Part I
- Jun 11, 2014
- 3 min read
By Jamie Damato Migdal, CEO and Pet Industry Entrepreneur
Ever since my daughter was born, I feel like I have been running nonstop, all day, every day. When I added FetchFind into the mix, I started running even more, and a lot of things that I used to do fell by the wayside. I feel like the basic equation of my life these days is:
Mother + Entrepreneur = 5 Hours of Sleep/Night x Many Gallons of Coffee.
But one of the things that I always make time to do is be a mentor to people who ask for help. It may take a while to get a meeting on the calendar, but I feel that it’s very important to offer support and encouragement to other pet industry professionals, and entrepreneurs in general. Sometimes the mentoring may take the form of reviewing a resume and suggesting possible career options; sometimes it involves a critical, ongoing look at the next steps in someone’s education.
Here’s the surprise element: It’s not a purely altruistic activity on my part (and in any case I don’t really believe that any action is purely altruistic, but that’s a philosophical discussion for another day). For every person that I mentor, I enter into another relationship. From that relationship, I may get a half-dozen referrals to CanineLink, and from that a few students who then go on to tell their doggy daycare supervisors about FetchFind. In a very real sense, being a mentor is largely transactional: I do something good for you, and you may return the favor some day.
With that having been said, I don’t mentor because of the expectation of future gain. I mentor because I love to experience how other minds work. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever had a single mentoring relationship where I did not come away with new ideas, or new processes, or new ways to solve a problem. That feeling of mental expansion to accommodate new ideas never gets old, and the importance of staying open to other ways of thinking cannot be overestimated. The mentoring relationship is one in which everybody benefits.
You may be saying to yourself right about now - yes, that’s all very lofty and high-minded, but how can I be a mentor if I don’t have experience as a business owner/entrepreneur/educator?
That is a valid question, and luckily there is a pretty simple answer: help someone out with the small things. If you don’t have the skill set to help someone lay out a business plan, then pass along your knowledge on best practices for walking multiple dogs or writing basic code. If a friend needs help setting up an eBay account, then walk her through the steps so she’ll know how to do it next time, and can pass that knowledge along to someone else. Mentoring does not have to be a formal, long-term arrangement; it can be as basic as spending five minutes explaining to a new volunteer how to use the digital camera for photographing shelter dogs. Don’t hoard your knowledge or expertise; when you share, everybody wins.
I have several mentees right now, each following her own amazing vision. Throughout my next several blogs, you will hear a little about these folks, what they are accomplishing, and the small ways in which I am able to lend support.
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