Do Something Remarkable Today...

Today was a great week for Mentor+me as I am so encouraged and thankful for all the positive comments coming in on what we are trying to build and create here.  We live in a world where so many people need to be given hope and help. Especially in regards to career, self-improvement and making good business decisions. But there are lots of theories out there on how to approach. The simple fact is we just need to get going, stop talking about it, stop theorizing about it, stop stalling - "Just Do It". On that note, I'm thrilled to welcome a new Mentor+ member - Gary C. Bizzo. Gary is strategic certified business counselor, mentored over 900 business startups and business writer. He has published a bunch of articles with Evan Carmichael in Toronto on his blog and writes for the Toronto Star as a feature writer on occasion. Gary has also accepted a role on our Board of Advisors for Mentor+me. I look forward to Gary's personal mentorship as we continue to rapid growth here. Gary has already posted some great blog articles on Mentor+me : Your Dream Team - Finding the Right Employees and Critical Issues for Business Coaching. Excellent information so check them out when you get a chance. I also like to thank Jamie McClelland, Derek Smith and Chris Willard for their ongoing support as advisors as well. Please connect with anyone of them as they are all here to help. Again, thanks so much for being a part of our launch and signing up. If you haven't, well get to it and visit Mentor+me too register and setup your profile. What are you waiting for?

Online Social Mentoring - connecting for a purpose

5 reasons to give and get great advice.

Today people and business startups are hustling to make connections and network on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but what we are discovering is even though it’s nice to have a great list of friends and colleagues to develop outposts, there is a better way to get the answers you need than these larger social networks are able to provide. 

Special-interest communities like Mentor+me attract members who know that being successful is more about quality than quantity. Users looking for solutions and resources seek out advice from others with answers which is often a great starting point in developing a longer term mentor relationship. This is the easiest and most efficient way to establish an informal relationship with someone who wants to really help. 

Here are 5 reasons to give and get great advice:

1. Connecting for a purpose 

Special interest-based social sites like Mentor+me give you all the networking tools that we know and love like publishing your profile. Your profile can be found in searches by typing in a word such as “startup advice”, “need help with a career change”, “should I get an MBA?”, “what do I need to do to become a manager?” Instead of connecting with people randomly, you connect with people on specific issues in a community whose sole purpose is to help its members. This is social networking for a specific social purpose. 

2. People are experts in their own life experiences 

People tend to want to speak to individuals they understand or who speak their own lingo. If people have had experiences like: having a great career in marketing; a career change; a personal crisis such as a health issue; or had success with a a startup business, then this gives people an opportunity to connect with the things that are important to them. 

3. Raise your personal stock 

Members are rewarded for engaging in the community, whether you are a Mentee earning a way to “Mentor” status based on your contributions to the community, or you are a Mentor who engages in online relationships and is recognized as a thought leader in your area of expertise. 

There are all kinds of benefits to this, some of which include: professional advancement, speaking opportunities, self-promotion or just plain bragging rights. Sometimes you might not get the respect you deserve in the workplace or your personal life, but among your Mentor+me peers you will be given the respect you appreciate. 

4. Personal and Professional Referrals 

Tapping into an online community like Mentor+me  is the most efficient and effective way to find peers who are similar, enabling a wealth of useful information to be shared. 

This type of support group can keep peers up-to-date on a news article or latest technique for accomplishing a task. Peer recommendations carry a lot more weight then a Google search result. 

5. Advice you can trust 

Face it, when making a decision we often seek out advice from people who have gone down the same path. Mentor+me focuses on the people you want to reach and engage. 

Mentor+me is online mentoring with a social purpose by helping you do what you do... only better!

Mentor+me Launches

Today marks the beginning of what we believe to be an evolution in your career, personal and business acceleration. Mentor+me is a new web & mobile application that leverages social networks to connect industry leader mentors with people who want personalized and actionable advice.

Although we've officially launched, the mission has only just begun. As with any beta, the feature set will evolve as the community grows. We are in the middle of recruiting a great selection of mentors who want to help. As we are just beginning to open the site to members, we will quickly grow the amount of participation. We need YOU to sign-up and help promote the site to all your colleagues and friends. Please register at mentorplus.me.

Here are only a few of the cool features the site offers:

• A featured set of mentors available for each special interest group.
• Search and request advice from an expert. 
• Exclusive collaboration tools such as email, chat messaging, video chat and scheduled live events with special speakers.
• The latest in Career, Personal Achievement, Business and Startup news.
• Free access to The #Mentor+ Daily -- Top curated mentoring, career, business and startup content from around the world.
• M+ Library of recommended reading materials brought to you by Amazon.com.
• Doing your own research? Create your own poll to get membership feedback.
• Earn reward points for every time you engage in activity on the site. You will be able to see "My Stats" in your own profile. These points will be used to change your ranking and achievement on the site. Ex. Mentee to Mentor.

For now, take time to explore the network, share your thoughts on the IDEAS page, evaluate and join the groups and forums available. Your feedback is very important, so we will do our best to make improvements on a regular basis.

Please join us in our mission to impact one billion people, worldwide, in a positive way, over the next 10 years (2022). So let the journey begin... Don't go it alone -- EXPLORE, DREAM and DISCOVER. Again, go to mentorplus.me and accept your personal invitation.

See you soon.

"There is no passion to be found playing small." --- Mandela

3 KEYS TO NOT LIVING YOUR LIFE WITH REGRET

During my personal and professional life journey, I have experienced the news of  my two son’s chronic diseases, the tragedy of a failed marriage, the loss of a job and home and the death of a parent to cancer. Along the way, I had the experience to be influenced by some great Giants(mentors) in my life. These people shaped and to continue to re-shape me to the person I am today. The common theme that has come out of their advice is do things that help discover your passion. Although I find myself at times doing things the hard way I follow their advice and ...

SO I EXPLORE...

I have done a lot of crazy things in my life but the past year for me I have journeyed into one of the riskiest decisions of my adulthood... I decided to become an entrepreneur. Over the past few years, as I came to a turning point in a number of personal and career situations I realized that my passion has always been to serve people. I love to see individuals excel and be successful especially when they come out of their own trials and tribulations. I believe adversity makes us stronger.

If you really think about it our lives are like running our own enterprise. We balance what we do between two major departments - Personal and career. The success in one department determines the success of the other. If you want to take it to another level... how profitable the personal determines how profitable our career department or vice versa.

AND DREAM...

I discovered in others and my life journey that people sometime live their life with so much regret. They are not happy with their career and thus personal life suffers. People are just looking for so much hope today. Maybe why so much success of all the reality TV shows?

I want to be a part of the solution now and know there are others that want to do the same. I believe that as the baby-boomer generation gets older that there is and will be a ton of help from people willing to share their professional and personal life experience. I want to bring these individuals of diverse generational groups together in way that makes it easy and simple to get personal and actionable advice. Hence, the reason for Mentor+me. This will be unlike any other social or professional network as it will provide the  successful advice you need in your career and personal life.

The career, job training and self-improvement market is a Multi-billion dollar industry world-wide and close to 200 Million people would be willing to enter into a mentoring relationship. Imagine if these people were able take 5 people and mentor them. That would be 1 billion people that would be impacted.

Mentor+me is a social networking site that connects industry leader mentors with people who want personalized and actionable advice.

THEN DISCOVER.

Mentor+me  is a dedicated community that will ensure that you Don’t go it alone. For mentees, if you are looking to improve your job performance and career growth, expand you personal network or just see what others are doing to become successful then we are here for you.

As a mentor, this will enable you to be recognized thought leader. If you are a person that has something to say or add-value and have the ability reply to calls for help then this platform is for you.  Mentor+me will help you grow your personal network from a diverse community group.

So now Facebook has connected you with your family and friends… LinkedIn has connected your with your collegues…  Mentor+me  now helps people become a mentor(s) and/or a mentee(s) and helps both to achieve their highest potentials.

Please join me as we begin to help you make your life the best ever and help us impact a billion people by 2022. Let's do this!
Sign up today at thementorplusproject.com.

The Future is Ours

Lately, I have been inspired by so many great videos. Let this one encourage, inspire and give you hope. Move towards making this your best life now! 

Created to inspire by Michael Marantz: michaelmarantz.com - twitter.com/michaelmarantz

The future excites me so much, that is why I made this video. We need to be inspired by the immense possibilities of the future and work extremely hard to achieve them. We can do it, we just have to commit.

Help inspire others by sharing this video and tagging any interesting content on twitter with #TheFutureIsOurs

Produced by Already Alive alreadyalive.com

The Future is Ours from Michael Marantz on Vimeo.

Get the Mentoring Equation Right

Thanks to Whitney Johnson for the below guest blog post. A very important perspective for all entrepreneurs, leaders, coaches and mentees!

This post was co-authored with Bob Moesta. While it's written from my perspective, he was central to the development of the idea. Bob is the Managing Partner of The Re-Wired Group in Detroit, an innovation incubator and consultancy specializing in demand-side innovation. An engineer, designer, serial entrepreneur, investor, and researcher, he has developed 1,000+ products/services and has collaborated with Clay Christensen at HBS for more than 15 years. 

I used to be able to say "yes" to pretty much anyone who reached out to me for mentoring. As requests increase, however, and wonderfully so, I fear that I am going to overlook those with promise who don't quite know how to package themselves. Worse yet is the thought that I may inadvertently rebuff someone simply because I haven't managed my time well, neglecting to give them the courtesy of a proper no.

My quandary has led to a considered, lengthy discussion with Bob Moesta, a demand-side innovation expert, about how to decide whom to mentor.

Bob sees mentoring as the balance of two worlds that overlap for a period of time and a certain amount of effort. Since he tends to think of the world in mathematical terms, we devised this equation as a starting point:

The mentee side of the equation describes: How badly does the mentee want to advance his/her career and how much ground do they feel they need to cover to get there?

Drive = How motivated is the mentee?
Distance = Where is the mentee in terms of experience vs. where they need/want to be?

The mentor side asks: Can I help and how much effort will it require?

Gap = The amount of experience the mentor has compared with the mentee.
Relevance = The distance between the mentor's expertise and the mentee's goal.
Effort = How much work it will take to bridge any gaps of experience or relevance.

To assess both the Drive and Distance of an aspiring protege, we'd ask two questions: What is it that you would like to learn? What experience do I have, in particular, that can be helpful to you?

To date, I have gauged drive simply by whether someone shows up and asks. This is, at best, a shoddy criterion. Some people easily ask for help, but may or may not be motivated to go the distance, while others struggle with the ask, but are intensely driven. My own experience as a prospective mentee bears out the importance of knowing what specific advice you want from a mentor. As a sell-side analyst at Merrill Lynch, I approached a senior executive at Merrill hoping he might support my ambition to get on a track toward senior management. If I'd been able to clearly articulate what I wanted from this executive perhaps he would have responded more positively. What if I'd said, for example: "Here's what I know today, here's what I know you know how to do, and here's what I'd like to learn from you so that in 3-5 years I can be in senior management." (For some ideas on approaching a potential mentor, take a look at young up-and-comer Jill Felska's "The Advice I'm Using to Connect with a Potential Mentor ").

If a mentee can clear the initial hurdle of having the necessary drive, and knowing what he or she wants to gain from your experience, I'd recommend one more test before saying "yes" — assign a task, such as: "Here are five papers that I'd like you to read," and based on what you've read, "How would you reframe what you want to know?" Giving such an assignment tells a potential mentee that if he really wants help, he must do the work necessary to achieve his desired outcome. Reading on a particular topic also gives you a common language to tackle the issues at hand.

To assess mentor suitability — the other side of the equation — ask: Do I have the relevant experience and time to make this relationship successful?

First, estimate the level of experience of your prospective mentee versus your own (Gap). The bigger the gap (assuming a basic threshold of experience), the less effort required on your part. It may seem counterintuitive, but assuming a basic threshold of understanding, a large initial gap means that your new mentee will not push you to the brink of your experience. You have a lot more to teach someone 10 years behind you than someone two years behind you.

Now look at what your mentee wants to know (Relevance). If your realm of understanding is a bit distant from the school of experience  the mentee is seeking, the relationship may not be a good fit, and you're probably better off referring him elsewhere and/or recognizing that it will involve more of your time.

Finally, assess the level of time you're willing to put into developing this person. Making sure you have sufficient time to give to a potential mentee is critical to a positive mentoring experience. If you know far more than the mentee, and the expertise he is looking for is in your sweet spot, very little energy may be required. Kristy Williams, for example, approached me through my Dare to Dream blog. She was clear about what she wanted to know and what I could teach her. In guest blogging, and asking me to push back on her ideas, she hit on a dream that she's now off pursuing. Kristy achieved her goal, the effort on my part was minimal; the mentee side of the equation was easily greater than or equal to the mentor side.

Famed founder of Intel Andy Grove recently wrote , "Whenever I hear the words mentor and mentee, I get nauseous." Grove's point is that the ideal mentoring relationship is more complex than a simple equation of "A helps B." Mentoring can be give and take — both A and B teach each other and everyone benefits. Looking at it from a "jobs-to-be-done " perspective, a prospective mentee is usually trying to get the functional job done of advancing his career. For a mentor, there's the possibility that you may end up with a network of successful former mentees who are grateful and eager to reciprocate, but the job that typically gets done, and tends to be the most important, is the emotional payback and satisfaction of sharing and seeing your experience valued.

When I asked Bob why he mentors, he said, "Largely for the pure joy of knowing that because we crossed paths, that person accomplished something they didn't know they could." This is also true for me. When I spend time on a candidate with intense drive, one who knows what they want to know and why they want to learn it from me, it's like investing in a guaranteed asset. Because while I truly enjoy investing in stocks for a living, when I can invest in people and their dreams, it's a payback like no other.

This blog post originally appeared in the Harvard Business Review.

More blog posts by Whitney Johnson 

More on: Coaching , Informal leadership 

WHITNEY JOHNSON

Whitney Johnson is a founding partner of Rose Park Advisors, Clayton M.
Christensen's investment firm, and is the author of Dare-Dream-Do:Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream 

The ones who are crazy enough...

Enough said... GIT ER DONE!

By Richard Branson

By Richard Branson. Founder Virgin Group.