Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 241 | How to Find Manly Mentors

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Ep. 241 | How to Find Manly Mentors · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  Ask them every month or two, like, can we go out to coffee? I got some specific questions. Can I pick your brain? I'm really excited about this or that.
• 0:12
  What's up, guys? Jeff and Jeremy here. Another episode of Five Minute Fatherhood. Fun question today, again, from Brian from our Facebook community, Five Minute Fatherhood. If you're not on there, you need to be on there. It's a blast. We just had a really fun discussion on college. That was a blast. And I love that stuff. I eat it up. It's really life-giving to me. And so thank you for anyone in the group who contributes. Really fun and sharpening and edifying for me and Jeremy. Brian asked, one topic that I'd love to hear expounded on is manly mentors.
• 0:37
  For someone like myself who grew up fatherless, this would be advice about finding mentors. So kind of like, how do you find mentors? Having or having multiple mentors, what a mentor relationship can look like. I also think advice about finding mentors for our children because ideally our children will have multiple paternal figures to look up to. Really good question.
• 0:54
  we'll kind of maybe tackle this from a lot of angles and it's hard to answer in five minutes. I know Jeremy has some really good stuff specifically on kind of how to engage your kids with mentors and kind of like expose them to different leaders, yourself, et cetera. But I'll even talk to us from, yeah, mine and Jeremy's relationship. I think one thing that's been prominent for, you know, us building such a strong relationship over seven, eight years now or something like that is,
• 1:16
  is the best way I can say is like, just don't make it weird and think about this really specific action items and all these different things. I think because the first mistake a lot of young people do is they, I think, engage with like too much of like a game plan, if that makes sense. Like it's got to be this, that and like, let's, you know, and I want to.
• 1:33
  kind of like they're almost trying to bring the finish line to the starting point. And then it just overwhelms everyone. It's too much. The best, literally, this is all I can say. The best thing to do is just like ask the person you're interested in learning from a bunch of questions. And that can be at a different settings. You can ask them to coffee. You can ask them to dinner. You can ask them to dinner.
• 1:48
  Maybe you're already in a setting where you're just over at their house at dinners a lot or in there or in the front yard or whatever it is, just like kind of just ask a bunch of questions. And I feel like that's how our relationship started in more of the mentoring ways. I just was always like, oh, tell me more about this. Tell me more about this. Tell me more about this. I won't even say it was like, hey, be my mentor. And then all of a sudden later, it was like, oh, it's kind of shaped up to be like that, where we just would call each other. I'd ask questions and email them and stuff like that. So I just ask questions and it tends to kind of just go on its own. And so I think that's the biggest one is just be very curious and
• 2:16
  ask a lot of questions, put yourself in settings where you're kind of taking the, the, the brunt of like the initiation, if that makes sense. Um, and so that's, that's one thing I would say, what would you say, Jeremy?
• 2:27
  Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think that oftentimes the first step into this is never to go to somebody and say, will you be my mentor? That's very intimidating for most guys unless unless there's a they have a program that they've got set up and they've got like they've talked about it very openly. That feels like a ton of pressure that you're trying to take from your shoulders and put on them. Yeah, I think the best way to get people to mentor you is to simply do it by accident. In other words, ask them.
• 2:53
  every month or two, like, can we go out to coffee? I got some specific questions. Can I pick your brain? I'm really like excited about this or that that I see in your life. And I just want to talk to you about it. Man, most people love to take that meeting. And you can do that over and over again. If you do that for six months, then that person is your mentor. Like you're talking to them, you're asking questions. And at some point, you know, you have sort of a conversation like, hey, can we do this once a month?
• 3:17
  after you've been doing it for a little while, I think that's fine. But I think that it's better to keep the onus on you as the student of this person and be constantly taking the initiative because you're really getting the benefit from this relationship. So it's important not to just throw all the responsibility onto the other person. And that's really fun for people to be able to share their wisdom.
• 3:41
  A lot of men, as they get older, this is what they're built to do, is that there's a whole stage in a man's life where he just kind of enters into this stage of the sage, is what it's kind of called. They just want to deliver the hard-won people
• 3:56
  pieces of wisdom that they've really lived out, they want to pass on to other people. But it's really difficult for them to figure out how to do that. So I'd really encourage you guys to pursue people that you respect, you like the value you see in their life, and simply ask to have a conversation with them and take them to coffee or lunch or something and get that relationship going. I would also say to you guys, as your kids get older, do the same thing for your kids. If you notice that somebody is,
• 4:24
  really, you know, someone your child could relate to, see if they would be able to spend some time with them. And this could be like, hey, would you do two or three meetings with my son or my daughter? And you can work with your son or daughter and make sure that there are some questions that they're asking. But man, we've seen this really benefit our kids. Jackson, for example, right now is hanging out with my friend Ryan.
• 4:47
  a lot once a week and it's been amazing for him they've worked together just want to shout out to him because he's on the five minute fatherhood Facebook group I know he's listening to these guys like Mark Treese and Brent White there's so many of my friends who've invested in my kids and powerful ways and so it's really important that your network continue to expand and a lot of times the people that you invest in are going to be very interested in investing in your kids right
• 5:12
  So this is a good reason to make sure that you're also going downstream with this conversation and pursuing people that you and make sure that you're opening yourself up to mentor others in who are downstream from you, knowing that some of those people probably turn around and mentor your kids. So that's been an amazing connection that we've made with a lot of people. And it's really bearing fruit at this point in our lives.
• 5:34
  Also, you guys, if you don't know, Homeroom is our mentorship community. I mean, I can't stress enough that I think it's for so many people. It's not just a replaceable asset for mentorship, but it's like filling the void 10 times over what they are trying to find but can't in their own community.
• 5:50
  if you have that, you can't replace it with something online. But if you don't have that, I think Homeroom is such a strong asset for people. And what that is, is our online mentorship program where we pick a topic a month, we journey together. And so it's kind of like a mentorship program. But instead of having just one person you're asking questions with, it's, you know, I think a thousand people or 2000 people on that community. So homeroomonline.com if you want to check it out and see when it opens next.