Ejovi Nuwere

There is more to be said about mentoring. What is a mentor? To me a mentor is first a role model. Literally someone who I model and try to replicate. The fastest route to success is to copy someone else who is successful. Or to copy a proven business model.

When I decide on a mentor I’m really saying “I want to be like this person” or I want to replicate something about them. I have a friend that is extremely personable. He gets along with almost anyone. Doesn’t allow the small issues that come up in relationships to bother him. I admire that about him. I found two definitions in the dictionary for mentor:

1. a wise and trusted counselor or teacher.
2. an influential senior sponsor or supporter.

I don’t consider my friend to be influential or senior to me. But I consider him a trusted counselor when it comes to being sociable. When interacting with people, I find myself questioning “how would X react to this?” more often than not I just call him and say “I had this situation, this is how I reacted, how would you have handled it?” He is mentoring me on being sociable.

I have entrepreneurs as mentors. I like to watch how they interact with employees, with friends and how they handle their family. I try to replicate how they speak, how they interact with investors. I’m trying to get into my mentors head, to think like him and to replicate the things I find attractive. Yes its cheating. But I spent all of my teens and early adulthood running against the grain. The reality is, people only want others around them who seem similar.

That means successful people want to be around successful people. And the easiest way to get into that crowd is to act successful. That’s something my mentors show me.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 1:41 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.