Latest / The Career Mentor Podcast with Fexingo: Finding Mentors, Sponsors, and Career Advisors / How to Find a Mentor When You Are Just Starting Out
Transcript
- Lucas: Let me start with a number that always stops me. A LinkedIn survey from a couple years ago found that nearly 80 percent of professionals say mentorship is critical to career growth, but only about 20 percent of people under thirty actually have a mentor. Luna: That gap is massive. And I think it's because a lot of early-career people don't know how to start. The classic advice is 'go ask someone to be your mentor,' but that feels like asking someone to marry you on the first date. Lucas: Exactly. So today I want to talk about a different approach — something I call the three-touch strategy. It's a way to build a mentoring relationship without ever having to say the words 'will you be my mentor.' Luna: I love that. Because the word 'mentor' can feel so formal. It puts pressure on both people. Lucas: Right. The idea is simple. You don't ask for a mentor. You create a series of low-stakes interactions that naturally lead to a mentoring dynamic. There are three touches. Touch one: you ask for a very specific piece of advice — something that takes less than five minutes to answer. Luna: Like what? Give me an example. Lucas: Sure. Let's say you're a junior marketing analyst and you want to learn from a senior director in your company. You don't email them saying 'I'd love to pick your brain.' Instead, you say something like: 'Hi, I saw your presentation on customer segmentation last quarter. I'm working on a similar project and I'm stuck on how to choose the right variables. Could you share the one resource that helped you most?' Luna: That's specific, it's respectful of their time, and it gives them an easy way to help. I can see why that works better than a vague request. Lucas: Then touch two happens after they respond. You follow up a week or two later — not to ask for more, but to share what you did with their advice. You say 'I used that resource you recommended and it helped me reframe the whole analysis. Thank you again.' Luna: That's the key move — showing you actually applied their input. People love seeing their advice have impact. Lucas: Exactly. And then touch three is the natural next step. A few weeks after that, you can ask a slightly bigger question — like 'I'm considering a project in X area, do you have any thoughts on how I should approach it?' By then, you've already established a pattern: you ask for help, you use it, you say thanks. They know you're worth investing in. Luna: And that's when the relationship starts to feel like mentoring, even though you've never used the word. Lucas: If something clicked for you just now, the way these episodes stay ad-free is through listener support. You can head to buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo and chip in whatever feels right. It's what keeps this show going without corporate interruptions. Luna: And we really appreciate it. Every contribution helps us keep creating content that's useful for real career situations like this one. Lucas: So back to the three-touch strategy. The beauty of this approach is it works whether the person is in your company or outside it — even on LinkedIn. Luna: Let's talk about that. How do you adapt it for LinkedIn? Lucas: Same structure, but the first touch might be a thoughtful comment on one of their posts. Not just 'great post,' but something that shows you engaged with their idea. Then a few days later, you send a direct message referencing that comment and asking a specific question related to their expertise. Luna: So the three touches can be spread across different platforms — a comment, a message, then maybe a phone call. Lucas: Right. The point is to build familiarity gradually. Let me give you a real example. A friend of mine, Sarah, was a junior data analyst at a retail company. She wanted to learn from the VP of analytics, but he was incredibly busy. Instead of asking for formal mentorship, she used the three-touch strategy. Luna: What did she do for touch one? Lucas: She noticed the VP had posted about a new forecasting method on LinkedIn. She commented with a question about how it handled seasonality. He replied with a short answer. That was touch one. Touch two came a week later — she sent him a LinkedIn message saying she had tested his method on her team's data and it improved their forecast accuracy by 15 percent. He responded with a 'that's great to hear.' Luna: Now she's on his radar as someone who actually implements advice. Lucas: Exactly. Then touch three: a month later, she asked if he had 15 minutes to talk about a career decision she was facing. He said yes. That call turned into a recurring monthly check-in. She never called him her mentor, but that's exactly what he became. Luna: That's a perfect case study. And I think the reason it works is it respects the other person's autonomy. They're never put on the spot to make a big commitment. Lucas: Exactly. And there's another layer to this — finding informal mentors who don't even know they're your mentor. These are people you observe from a distance. You read their work, follow their career, and learn from their decisions without ever interacting. Luna: Like a mentor in your head. I've done that — I had a former boss whose strategic thinking I studied. Years later, I told her, and she was flattered. Lucas: That's a form of mentorship too. But the three-touch strategy is specifically for building a two-way relationship. Let me break down a few more tactical details. The first touch should be a question that is answerable in one or two sentences. Never a question that requires a paragraph or a link to a document. Luna: So the bar is low for them to help. That's crucial. Lucas: Yes. And the second touch — the follow-up — is where most people drop the ball. They get the advice, they say thank you, and then they disappear. That's a missed opportunity. The follow-up is what separates a one-time interaction from the beginning of a relationship. Luna: So what if they don't respond to the first touch? Do you try again? Lucas: If they don't respond within a week, you can send a brief nudge — something like 'I know you're busy, just bumping this in case it got lost.' But if they still don't respond, let it go. Not everyone is open to this. And that's fine. Move on to another person. Luna: Good advice. And what about when you're just starting your career and you don't have much to offer in return? I think that holds a lot of people back. Lucas: It's a common worry, but I think it's overblown. What you're offering is the satisfaction of having helped someone who actually acts on the advice. That's surprisingly valuable to most senior people. They see a lot of people who ask for help and never do anything with it. Luna: So being a good mentee — someone who follows through — is actually your contribution to the relationship. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why the three-touch strategy works. It proves you're that kind of person before you ever ask for a real commitment. Let me also address a scenario where you're trying to find a mentor outside your company, maybe in a completely different industry. Luna: That's harder because you don't have the same context. How do you establish credibility? Lucas: You lean on what you do know about their work. If you're a junior in accounting but you want to learn from a product manager at a tech company, you need to do your homework. Read their blog, listen to their podcast appearances, find a specific point of connection. Then your first touch is about that specific thing — not about 'I want to switch careers.' Luna: So the ask is about their expertise, not about your situation. Lucas: Right. Later, after you've built some rapport, you can bring in your own context. But the initial touch is about them. That's respectful and it's more likely to get a response. Luna: I want to go back to something you said earlier — about informal mentors you never talk to. Do you think that's a valid form of mentorship, or is it just admiration? Lucas: I think it's a valid starting point. You can learn a tremendous amount by studying someone's career trajectory, the decisions they made, the risks they took. But it's a one-way street. For real growth, you eventually need two-way interaction — someone who can give you feedback on your specific situation. Luna: So the informal mentor can be a role model, but the three-touch strategy is how you turn admiration into actual guidance. Lucas: Exactly. And I want to emphasize that this strategy is not manipulative. It's not about tricking someone into mentoring you. It's about building a relationship naturally, the way most good relationships form — through small, positive interactions over time. Luna: I think that's the key message. Start small, be consistent, and show that you value their input. The mentor title can come later, or never. The relationship is what matters. Lucas: One last practical tip: keep a simple spreadsheet or note of people you'd like to learn from. For each person, jot down a potential first touch topic. That way, when you see something relevant — a post, an article, a project — you have a reason to reach out. Luna: That's a great system. It turns mentorship from a vague goal into an actionable habit. Lucas: So the takeaway for anyone just starting out: don't worry about finding a mentor. Focus on creating three small touches. Do that with three people over the next three months, and you'll likely have at least one relationship that turns into real mentoring. Luna: And if you're listening and you've tried this — or if you have questions about adapting it to your situation — let us know. We'd love to hear from you. Lucas: That's it for this episode. Next time we'll talk about something we get asked a lot: how to be a good mentee once you actually have a mentor. See you then.