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08.07
Why Do I
Want a Mentor?
By Mark W.
Wingate
The title of this piece comes
from a
question I hear time and time again from
would-be entrepreneurs. The truth is you don’t
want a mentor, you need mentors to
survive and become a successful entrepreneur.
You read that right, not just one mentor — it will take many.
It’s a jungle out there. How many times have you
heard that? How many potential entrepreneurs has
this statement run off? Well, a mentor's help is like having a GPS and a
protective force field in that jungle. And
better yet, it confirms that the best things in
life — mentors being one of them — are free.
Recently I broke bread with the
first of my many mentors, whom I had not seen in
ten years. When I first met him twenty years
ago, he was a seasoned entrepreneur who had
taken a few companies public, while I was trying
to launch my third company. We were discussing
how the company I launched all those many moons
ago had become a success.
He made a statement that startled me, but as I
thought about it, I knew it to be true. He said,
“When I sat and listened to you guys twenty
years ago, I said to myself, these guys don’t
know what they're doing.” What struck me about
the remark was that
even though the corporation is very successful
today, we still don’t know
what we're doing!
The truth is, if people had an
easy formula for how to be
a successful entrepreneur, everyone would be
doing it. It would be instructed in institutions
of higher education, or better yet, in high schools.
But no a cookie cutter curriculum has been
discovered in
academia for developing entrepreneurs the same
way that we develop, say, CPAs or attorneys.
Because the number
one ingredient for a successful entrepreneur — perseverance
— can't be taught.
Another of my mentors, during a discussion
on the success (or lack of, at the time) of a
venture, made a comment to me 17 years ago that
still haunts me today. He asked me, "What are
you scared of?" I found that simple
question absolutely galling at the time, because
I wasn't scared. But in retrospect, it
was his challenge that kept me looking and
learning. Over the years, I wrote him many letters
explaining how unafraid I was and why, but I never sent
any of them. Writing the letters, like writing a
business plan, was an exercise in identifying my strengths as well
as my weaknesses. It was, and is to this day, an invaluable
lesson.
Over the years, I have assumed
the mantle of mentor,
and advised literally hundreds on how to make
their businesses successful. Some listen, some
don’t. Some of the advice I have provided has
proven to be spot on, while other advice has been
completely worthless.
It's been said that
entrepreneurs are wired differently than non-entrepreneurs. I'm
skeptical. However, one commonality that I do
see in entrepreneurs that sets them apart is
their
perseverance. An entrepreneur without
perseverance will
rarely succeed.
So, where does perseverance come
from? Where do you buy it? What does it cost?
Perseverance comes from within. If you don’t
have the passion to persevere — to endure
periods of doubt, failure and possible hardship
— don’t become an entrepreneur. But if you do —
if you're not afraid — then find yourself some
mentors, roll up your sleeves, and get busy.
Quit worrying about failure and focus on the
success.
Every
entrepreneur I talk to I ask the
typical Entrepreneur 101 question: do you have a
business plan? The answer is always the same:
“no" or "not yet.” It seems that every successful
entrepreneur eventually gets around to writing
one, but rarely in the beginning. A business
plan is important, but it pales in comparison to
perseverance.
One thing you hear whenever a
venture fails is, "Well, it just wasn’t a good idea.”
Two entrepreneurial examples would be the pet
rock and the solar shingle. The pet rock was
obviously a harebrained idea, but it made millions
in profits; while the solar shingle is an
excellent idea, which people have tried
repeatedly to make work, but no
one has yet had the perseverance to see through.
Who Makes a Good Mentor?
The ideal mentor for a would-be
entrepreneur is
an entrepreneur who has successfully started
companies. CEOs of large companies can be
valuable contacts, but don't necessarily make
good mentors for entrepreneurs, for the simple
reason that few CEOs
have started their own companies from scratch.
Many people confuse mentors with consultants. Mentors, in general,
are not in it for personal gain; they are in it
to give back
what they received.
Successful entrepreneurs will
have numerous mentors over the span of their
careers. And I think it's an
unwritten law that when you become a
success, you
become a mentor to keep the tradition going. I
believe that mentors are the single-most
important outside influence in starting and growing a
successful business.
Let's Do Lunch
Where do brain storming sessions
with mentors take place? How do I
make them happen? An old adage that seems to be
getting lost is “the best blueprints of good
ideas come off of a napkin." Whether a cocktail
or a coffee napkin, ideas happen here. Why?
Good mentors are busy. If you ask if you can go
by their office and visit, you will probably get
a no. If you do get a yes, your mentor's creative mind
time may be switched off if you meet in his
or her
office. If you are in your office, you may find
yourself distracted.
Everyone has to eat, so why not
make it a lunch meeting? While food
is being prepared, the mind needs something to
do.
The stimulation of good ideas begins here. From
that point, e-mail, phone conversations,
vacations, brain storms, and many other forms of
a mentoring relationship can begin. It just takes
that first spark to make it happen.
Where Do I Find Mentors?
You
already have many mentors, maybe you just haven't
realized it yet. My first mentor that I recall
was a friend of my father who happened to be a successful entrepreneur. I met him when I was eighteen and
he saw me as an over-energetic,
over-enthusiastic young man. He asked me what I
wanted out of life, and I told him I wanted to be a
millionaire by the time I was twenty-five. He
advised me that that was a "bad goal.” He went on to
explain that money was nice to have (as
we flew to Albuquerque in his private jet for
lunch), but that there was never enough. Quality
of life, he explained, is how riches should be measured.
At the time, I thought
he was crazy, that after a
million dollars, there was a billion dollars. Three decades later, I
can tell you that he was right. There’s always
more money to be made, but life, and how you
live it, becomes the most important thing in
business.
I later acquired a
very inspirational mentor through a friend. I had
just started a small electronics manufacturing
company, and a friend who was a financial
consultant introduced me to the President of
Texas Instruments. Yes, it was over lunch. He
not only became instrumental in the success of
my budding corporation, but Texas Instruments became an
invaluable customer as well.
I have found mentors from my
children’s friend's parents; through civic and
professional groups such as the
Boy Scouts, Kiwanis, and the IEEE; as well as
from customers and vendors. My parents, my wife
and my children have all been good mentors — as
well as sources of other mentors.
Use your resources, take an
interest in what others are doing, and they will want to know
what you are doing — forging the inception of mentorship.
The concept of mentorship has become so entangled with
me that I have mentors that I mentor. Over time,
it tends
to develop into a give-and-take kind of
relationship.
Try to learn from everyone you come into contact
with. Ask people whose small business ventures
failed about their experiences and mistakes, learn from it, and use it. He or she
just became a mentor. In Sam Walton’s book, his
wife said that he would go into a failing
competitor’s store and look around for hours.
She asked him why he was studying a failure. His
response was that his competitor wasn’t a failure at
everything, that there had to be something he did
right, or else he wouldn't have been able to
be a competitor in the first place. He was searching for what they did
right, so that he could replicate it.
Probably the most valuable
mentor is the one that you keep going to time
and time again. We so often lose site of what
made us successful to begin with. Long-term
Mentors who become friends will also provide a
reality check. One of my mentors once told me,
“It’s not getting the customers and the success
that's hard, it’s keeping it.”
In summary, I hope that this
piece will spark some ideas in you
on how to recognize and find mentors. They are
all around you, just open your eyes and press
the flesh. Use them, and
expect to give nothing in return. When you
become a success, and you will if you have
enough mentors, then expect to become a mentor
yourself. It’s that simple. Do you have the
perseverance to do it? What are you scared of?
Are you an entrepreneur, or just someone with an
idea? Ideas are a dime a dozen, but successful
entrepreneurs are an endangered species. If you
are an entrepreneur, go for it. Some day in the future,
you will be glad you did.
Resources
Mark W. Wingate is a member
of IEEE-USA's Entrepreneurial Activities
Committee.
Comments may
be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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