The power of mentors: Alex Rodriguez, Angela Duckworth, and more

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/b6d6edc7b1a10d95

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A mentor is gonna tell you the truth.
gonna kick your ass.
And it's gonna want you to be the best version of yourself.
What makes a great mentor?
mentored really kind of teach me.
about how to win, how to avoid losing.
How to avoid some of the bumps they've come through.
How do you get a mentor?
How do you even become one?
When you listen to people talk about their mentors, it's like a thing that falls out of heaven, but they're not just falling out of heaven. You have to proactively make them.
You gotta have incredible talent at every position.
There are fires burning when you're going out. Such an idiot. And then you go back to this is totally gonna be amazing.
There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Ten years later, like, well that's just how you do it. We haven't made it. Just how you do it.
This
is masters of scale.
I'm your host.
Jeff Berman.
So many business leaders recognize the importance of mentorship in their journeys.
This is something we hear again and again in our interviews with exceptional founders and thought leaders.
behind every star solo player.
There's a strong coach.
Or
Several coaches.
I've certainly experienced the power of a great mentor more than once in my own career.
And I've seen their influence in nearly every organization I admire.
But these relationships often only appear as footnotes in the longer stories of successful companies.
So we're putting a spotlight on mentoring and its relationship to scaling an organization.
We dove into the pantheon of Masters of Scale, all star guests to do it.
There's always an opportunity to build or rekindle a relationship with a mentor who can have a life changing impact on you.
And your business.
And if you're interested in playing that role yourself, well
There's plenty here for you too.
Let's get into it.
Luke Skywalker.
Need Adobe-Wan, Kenobi, right?
The modern day Luke Skywerker for me is Diana Nyad.
Mm this is the
Amazing woman who swam from Cuba to the shores of Florida a feat that had never been done without a shark cage.
Angela Duckworth is a psychology professor at Penn and the Wharton School.
And the author of the bestseller, Grit.
On her last and successful attempt that she had made after decades of trying and failing to do this, she heaves herself onto shore and she says this, and I'm gonna quote you, I'm gonna read it to you so I don't get it wrong.
She says
I have three messages.
One is
We should never give up.
Two is
You're never too old.
To chase your dreams.
And three is
It looks like a solitary sport.
But it takes a team.
In our conversation, Angela emphasized mentorship while describing the missteps she's seen so many successful people make.
Including herself.
When I was growing up
So much of what I accomplished was really trying harder.
You know, like sitting there in my B C calculus class and I'm like, I know I know that Dar Shak got it faster and
you know, Chang Kim got it faster, but they can't outwork me. Like I am gonna learn V C calculus. Right. And I felt like that for I don't know, forty years. And even in my own marriage, um, I thought to myself, wow, you know, my husband is a real estate developer. Well, if you put two and two together, you realize he was a young real estate developer.
in two thousand eight.
It was a very, very stressful time. He was working.
Some weeks a hundred hours a week. I was on tenure track at an Ivy League institution. We had two young children who had to be taken care of. Like
There was so much stress, and the only trick I knew was try harder. The only trick I knew was grit. I was like
You know, I'm gonna wake up earlier, I'm gonna stay up later. I am gonna use every ounce of my will to make the life that I need to make for my children and my husband and my career.
And I'll tell you that that led to a a real crisis. It almost broke our marriage. There were just um an unbelievable number of therapy hours that we logged um trying to rescue ourselves from the precipice.
And what has
you know, struck me now and what I'm writing about is that grid is not enough.
We needed to reach out to our friends and actually be vulnerable and not just have small talk, but actually tell them that we were in crisis. He needed to change his work situation. He has an advisory board now of mentors who
you know, kind of help him prioritize in ways that he would never be able to do on his own. I reached out to mentors to, you know, help me figure out my research program and help me accomplish it in in more effective ways. And so to me, you know, Grit is great.
But grit's not enough.
And you absolutely need to make your situation your ally if you're ever going to, you know, run the marathon of success.
But I think one of the mistakes that I see founders make is because they've had this trick that has gotten them really far in life, like try harder and be independent, right? You know, to no not be a slacker, right? To not like whine and get other people to solve your problems. I think the the double edged sword of that is they don't ask for help.
When I look back at the mistakes that I've made in advising young leaders, it was to not tell them that first. I'm like, oh wait, who are you talking to? Like what's your AA group, essentially, right? If you don't have one,
You need to get one right now.
What I would say is a number one action step is like you should be in a formal community of other founders, right? I think this is why I'm a big fan of incubators, especially the ones that are, you know, well well designed, like Y Combinator. Like they're
There's a power in the solidarity, the accountability, and the peer learning of a group. You know, you want to be in a flotilla, not like off sailing on your own. So that's number one. And the second one is related, which is I think you need to make mentors.
When you listen to people talk about their mentors, it's like a a a a thing that falls out of heaven, you know, like I'm so grateful that this person came into my life and you know, they put me on the straight and narrow. Right, but they're not just falling out of heaven. You have to proactively make them. It's a relationship and you need to start at the beginning and
cultivate and and and so forth. And I think if we are honest with ourselves, when we think about our most meaningful mentorships, we did have a role in in holding up our end of the relationship and even in initiating the relationship. So those would be my two pieces of advice to founders, you know, go find another founder. It
Doesn't have to be your co founder for your
For your startup, it could be somebody who's doing something totally different.
But you should be meeting regularly, trading stories, crying on each other's shoulders, and then you should go and um very proactively cultivate mentoring relationships.
Лайкан сей.
It's important to be proactive in seeking out a mentor.
But sometimes
An opportunity presents itself and the right mentor chooses you.
That's what happened to Jimmy Ivy.
Renowned founder of Interscope Records.
Before he produced albums for icons like Bruce Springsteen, Patty Smith, Eminem, and Dr. Dre.
He worked as an assistant in recording studio.
He did the dirty work so many of us have done.
Mopping floors literally on his way to the top.
Jimmy was waiting for a moment to be invited into the studio.
To learn the trade.
And when that moment arrived.
It came with one of the biggest names in music history.
Basically I walk into the studio
And there's
My boss Roy Sakala.
And John Lennon.
And
Obviously before that moment Roy decided he was going to teach me and take me inside and
He asked me to come in
With the intention of me working with John.
And
Roy.
Through
Me.
Why working through me.
Taught me how to engineer records.
I had a mentor.
And he thought
I was strong enough to go in there.
And deal with it.
And it was the greatest two years.
I could ever
Everything.
possibly want.
Roy was very, very stern, a very tough guy.
But he loved teaching.
And he gave me a safe place to be in there.
Now if I screwed up, he'd be the first to
To crack me over the head.
But
He was incredible at teaching young people how to become engineers, which makes the idea of a mentor so important that to make yourself useful and to be of service to
to that mentor.
In order for you to get somewhere and not think that you actually belong there.
You don't belong there.
But somebody can help you feel like you belong there.
My first mentor was my father.
Who was a longshoreman?
And a very, very
Modest guy.
But he told me f growing up, he said, You know
You're a special kid.
Every room you go into will be better just because you're there.
Now
Was that true?
I don't know.
But I love my dad.
If someone believes in you, and if you could be of use.
In that room.
That's a very, very important thing.
It's do not breathe your own exhaust, no matter what room you get to go into. Stay humble.
and keep focused and drive.
Jimmy's boss, who had produced a score of platinum records, by the way.
Open the door to a life changing hands-on experience.
It was mentorship with apprenticeship built in.
But not all mentorship appears so overtly supportive at first.
Mentors can give brutally honest advice.
That was true for Allison Kluger.
She's a Stanford business professor and former media executive whose broadcast career includes stints at Good Morning America and The View.
Алсон семь.
Mentors take you by surprise.
My first mentor was the woman who I was most frightened of.
She was the mentor I didn't know was going to be my mentor.
And the reason she became my mentor is that she
gave me some radical candor about something that she felt was going to
influence my career.
I was
twenty one and I was at Good Morning America.
And
Basically I was crying one day at work. I was
New to the job.
And I wasn't crying about something that had to do with work, it was personal.
And she said Alison
I don't want to ever see you crying again.
Do you know why?
And I intuitively knew why, but she told me anyway, she said, You're young, you're female.
You're attractive.
No one is going to believe you can do your job.
No one is gonna trust you, no one is gonna think you're reliable.
If someone says to you, How's your day? you say, I'm having a great day.
And if you want to come cry somewhere, you come in my office and close the door.
And so
She said, Do you understand? And I said, I I do and she then kicked me out of her office and all I wanted to do was cry.
I was so mortified.
One that I had been caught crying, and two that I didn't figure out.
That it wasn't the right thing to do.
But what she did for me is she made me realize the kind of leader that I wanted to be.
And I decided that I want to be reliable.
I want people to give me work, I want people to trust me.
And so
The evolution of my personality
Started then.
I was the person everyone went to for help.
I got along with everybody. I was unflapable.
You know, if something bad happened I'd go hide in a corridor and just
get all the stress out and then I'd go back to solving the problem.
And then she gradually became my mentor.
And the fact that she was so honest with me.
And was willing
To tell me something that was hard to hear.
That was really the start of me understanding the power of a mentor. And a mentor isn't someone who's going to flatter you
And make it easy for you.
A mentor's gonna tell you the truth.
It's gonna kick your ass.
And it's gonna want you to be the best version of yourself.
I spent nearly five years in my first job out of school before I was hired to be chief counsel to a member of the Senate leadership.
Before I took the job, I went to one of my mentors, uh man named Robert Rabin.
He is as brilliant, as he is kind, as he is wise, and Robert had also worked on Capitol Hill.
He told me that most Fridays my boss would head back to his state and that most of my colleagues would probably take a light day to catch up, socialize, do whatever.
And that I could do that if I wanted to, but that by virtue of the Senator's name on the door
I could reach out to almost anyone in America and they would want to talk.
Robert Aspie
Do you know what most people like to talk about more than anything else? And before I could answer, he smiled with sort of a a Yoda like smile, which you would recognize if you knew Robert, and he answered his own question.
He said themselves.
And it was obvious once he said it, and Robert told me that my my new job was coming with something of a cheat code.
And that if I used it, I would have access to
The world's treasure trove of knowledge and insights and ideas.
And that advice has really helped shape what I think would generously be called a nonlinear career, um, jumping from industry to industry and role to roll.
It's been a journey that
I've really loved and that I continue to love. And that one bit of mentorship from Robert has really helped shape the past
Two plus decades of my life.

After the break.
How to be a great Mentee.
and how to build a network of mentors among your peers.

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Mm-hmm.
Welcome back to Masters of Scale.
We're exploring our favorite lessons on mentorship from the legendary leaders who've told us their stories.
One field where mentorship is key to top performance.
is sports.
We had major league baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez on Master of Scale to share insights on how his all star baseball career relates to his successful business ventures.
And he told us he counts one of America's true sports luminaries.
Among his long list of mentors.
Magic Johnson.
started mentoring me about twenty, twenty five years ago when I was a really young player in the league.
And I thought, wow, if Magic can play for the Lakers and win championships
And he can also be a hall of fame
businessman in the boardroom, I said, Well, I can do it too.
And he's got brown skin like me. If he can do it, I can do it.
If that was a start of it and I saw how powerful that was.
When I transferred to business, I've had some of the greats
not only be my friends, but mentors and really kind of teach me
about the ins and outs, how to win, how to avoid losing
How to avo avoid some of the bumps they've come through. You know, from Barry Sternlid to Mark Mastro from who started Twenty Four Hour Fitness.
to Mark Lori from Jet.
And the big one, Warren Buffett.
And I saw how powerful mentorship was in my life. As a mentee, I benefited from that. Now as a mentor
I have so many young athletes reaching out
Saying I want to get involved in investing. How do I do it? How do I do it?
And uh
I
It's hard to
to pick em all, but you know, I have at least a dozen
That I'm constantly talking to
And saying maybe think about it this way, maybe
Think about it that way.
The very best are the one that asked the most questions. They're they're enthused.
They lean in.
They're very inquisitive. Don't think of mentorship as a transaction.
Think of it as a relationship and building bridges.
One of the things I've applied to my life is the ten touch roll.
I would try to touch tent bases ten times.
before asking for any single thing, whether it's to be my investor or my partner.
I wanted to build real credibility.
And how you do that is by going narrow and deep.
And figuring out creative ways
of can I send an article? How do I celebrate? How can I give credit? How can I make a connection?
Everybody can be helped in some way.
And is your job as a Mention
To create that and just be humble, grateful, and appreciative for their time.
Humility and gratitude.
Both are important qualities to bring to your relationship with a mentor.
to be sure they feel how valuable they are to you.
And sometimes mentors become more than that.
With the foundation of mutual interests, respect, and admiration, a mentorship can become an active partnership.
That's what happened with Alexa von Tobel.
She's the founder and CEO of the personal finance platform LearnFest.
Literally all of my closest friends.
R
Fabulous humans.
Many of them big entrepreneurs.
And we always not only rooted for each other, but
Really in the moments that mattered were red phones.
Saying how how on earth do you find engineers when the only engineers here work for Goldman Sachs and Bank of America?
How do we get them to come learn this new way of the internet? Um, you know, really building very honest, close friendships.
And people always are like, How do you approach networking, Alexa? And I'm like I don't
Think I network.
At all.
I build friends and then I try to
Do two favors for somebody else before they can do something for me so that I can just be helpful.
But
That's how I've always approached it.
Penny, my business partner, was my mentor and now she's my business partner and Lucy Deland, my
Best friend of twenty years, who I met undergrad at Harvard. She was a co founder of Paperless Post. And I don't think mentors is like
you know, older people to younger people, it's it's dual.
Some of my
eighty year old mentors would tell you I'm mentoring them. And I'm like, a twenty year old who's my mentor teaching me about what the next generation cares about.
And so
Yeah.
I just approach it as friendship and I
I'm happier because of it.
Alex's point is an important one.
That there's no single template for mentorship.
Learning can happen across industries, across generations, and across geography.
And our return to our first insights from Angela Duckworth.
About how these beautiful relationships only become possible when you first acknowledge that you're stronger with help.
Instead of putting it all on your back and trying to go up the mountain alone.
Mentor relationships showcase generosity, and they offer us great capacity for change.
They're clearly worth celebrating.
If you've a mentor
This is the moment to reach out to them.
And if you're looking for mentorship in your life.
We hope this episode inspires you to continue that quest.
With some practical ways to go about doing it.
Oh, and if you have a mentor you'd like to shout out.
We'd love to hear about them.
You can email us at hello at mastersofscale dot com or the rest of our contact info is in the show notes.
Masters of Scales await what original.
Our executive producer is Eve Tro. Our senior producer is Trisha Bobida.
The production team includes Tucker Legurski, Masha Makatanina, Brandon Klein, and Timothy Lou Lee.
Additional production by Juliette Luini.
Our senior talent executive is Stephanie Stern.
Mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastanelli and Brian Pew.
Original music by Ryan Holiday.
Our head of podcasts is the tall Melod.
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