Quote:
Originally Posted by Antiventurecapital  It's next to impossible to find a complete stranger to serve as your mentor for free. Why? People are just too busy to continuosly slow down and explain things to a rookie. |
I think that's rubbish.
There are many people out there who love to teach and who gain a lot of satisfaction in sharing their knowledge with others - and often these are people who have become quite successful and desire to 'give back' to the community. Let me give you one such example from my own life. Until now I had not made the mental link that this relationship was actually one of mentor to mentee, but I realise this now and I'll share the quick story of it for anyone still reading this thread.
A few years ago, I entered into a mentor-mentee relationship with my taekwondo instructor. He had retired from instructing to focus on his studies (he was trying to get into the police force) and didn't have the time to hold classes as well as handle all of the overhead of running a business. About a year after he stopped teaching I approached him about private lessons and he agreed, saying that he had found it difficult to be motivated to train when it was just him by himself.
Initially he charged me about 4 times the standard full-class lesson fee, since it was one-on-one tuition, and we trained twice-weekly for an hour. But as time went on, he gradually reduced the fee, eventually eliminating it entirely, and we upped our training to 2-hour sessions 3 times per week.
This was because I was able to demonstrate to him my commitment to learning all that he had to teach, and I was quickly able to challenge him enough to make training for him more worthwhile. Also, we were able to discuss different ideas and techniques that I had read about or thought of myself. He also invited me to use his training room whenever I wanted.
He was accepted into the force after 18 months or so, and with his unpredictable work hours, we had to ramp down and eventually discontinue our training sessions.
This relationship fulfilled the three requirements I previously posted (answer specific questions, be a sounding board, and be encouraging) and then some.
It seems most people here (other than dalante) are against the idea of being mentored in a particular discipline, but I think that comes from a misunderstanding of the mentor-mentee dynamic. You are not required to unthinkingly obey your mentor's advice - you are still you, and you should analyse every new idea before internalising it - but working closely with someone of superior experience than yourself is incredibly useful in the quest for growth in a particular discipline.