LOOKING FOR A MENTOR AT BP? (Click ME)

[Jordan Thibodeau]

(Reading Time: 2 Minuts. Topic: Be Specific On Your Requests Of Random People's Time)

Now that I have your attention.

We all want things in life for free. For instance, I want a free sandwich, but unfortunately unless the magic sandwich fairy is going to make one materialize out of thin air, it aint happening (And no @Brandon Turner I'm not going to imagine food like in Hook, that doesn't work..unless you're on bath salts, but then you might be eating someone's face.)

Such as mentor requests. So many people post on these forums asking for mentors. 

First of all, do you know what a mentorship is? A mentorship is a commitment of time, a finite resource which is 1000X more valuable than any other virtually infinite resource on earth. People that don't have direction in life are awash with time or sadly people who don't know what they are doing are fighting so many fires they are wasting time, while RE pros (which I definitely am not and I'm a RE hobbyist) are so busy running their businesses, prioritizing their families, and trying to find some time for their rest and relaxation they don't have time to waste by committing to mentoring a random person. Think of it this way, before they decide to reply to you, they have to think to themselves "Is this worth taking away from my family time or XYZ to help this random person?" OR "Is this worth committing too knowing that I will have to spend less time with people I love and respect?"

So does one go about landing a mentorship? First of all the noobie commits to educating themselves on XYZ topic to the point where they KNOW what they don't know (Circa Donald Rumsfeld). So they can ask pointed questions to professionals who can lend them advice. If you ask, "How do you make money in RE?" it shows that. A, You don't actually take the time to read anything on this site. B. You're lazy.

Lets look at some examples:

Bad Request:

Good Request:

Now folks, please let me know, which post will get the first response?

Now lets say I'm trying to contact an elite REpro at BP. They probably receive 100s of these requests a month. Now if the REpro has precious time to devote to random questions, who do you think she will reply to first or if she could reply to one, which one would she commit to? The unspecific time hog? Or the in and out specific question?

Bingo the latter (The second one >.>). 

Now of course, nothing is fool proof in life, but I promise you will be much more successful in your requests of people's time if you are SPECIFIC in what you're looking for. Once you build a relationship with the person and you show them that you aren't a waste of time and that you ADD value, not take it away. This person will be more than willing to answer your questions.

Now if the person answers your question, go back to the market and actually PRACTICE WHAT THEY HAVE PREACHED. Once you have done that for a while, come back with another pointed question to show that you actually listened to the person, tried XYZ, and here are your results, adding some resources that maybe of value to this person with a follow up pointed question. That's how you build a relationship, and maybe, if you add value to this relationship, you might be able to turn this into a true relationship.

As always,

Happy Hunting