#thinkdiffrent

Richard Branson's Guide to Finding a Mentor

No matter how smart you are, or how brilliant or disruptive your business concept might be, every entrepreneur needs a good mentor. Someone, somewhere, has already been through what you are experiencing right now, and he has come out the other side armed with invaluable insights.

In fact, the difference between a budding entrepreneur who merely shows promise and one who is already enjoying some success often comes down to mentoring. Good advice can be just as crucial as funding in the early stages of an enterprise.

The need for a mentor is obvious, yet seeking one out can be quite difficult and daunting. How do you find the right person?

There are many different routes, some which I have described in previous columns. Often, you have to do some research. Try going to industry events like lunches, seminars, talks and conferences. Join community groups -- your local chamber of commerce is a great place to start. Chambers of commerce often host networking events and meetings that bring beginning entrepreneurs and successful businesspeople together. Talk to people, listen to their stories and pursue further meetings with those whom you can learn from.

Another great place to find a potential mentor’s name is online. Look for sector-- or industry-specific events and groups on Facebook; subscribe to useful newsletters; follow interesting or relevant individuals from your region on Twitter or LinkedIn; then get in touch and ask questions -- just like you can with me.

Be sure that you choose someone who has experience and connections within your area and level of business. If you’re a budding entrepreneur in, say, the building and home repair industry, you shouldn’t waste your time trying to court a senior executive at a multinational engineering company. Focus on finding someone who has started a venture that’s similar to yours, and who understands the trials and tribulations of building a business in that area.

Keep in mind that an adviser who offers his time in return for compensation is not the same thing as a mentor. While advisers and consultants can be very helpful, true mentors are effective partly because they are only interested in helping others succeed.

If you don’t yet have someone in mind who might fit the bill, make a list of successful people in your community. Is there someone on that list whom you admire and respect? Ask her to lunch, to coffee, or simply ask for 30 minutes of her time to chat.

When you do decide to approach someone, make sure that you don’t go in blind - know what you want to ask. Explain what excites you about your service or product, be honest about your fears, and ask for feedback.

It is rarely a good idea to make a hard and formal request for mentoring upfront, like “Will you be my mentor?” Such relationships blossom on their own. A mentor-mentee relationship takes time to grow, so start by asking for simple advice on one project or problem, and move on from there.

When you do locate a good mentor, he will serve as an example, a sounding board and, ultimately, a friend. Done well, mentorship is rewarding for both of you. It’s important to nurture the relationship, so find fun ways to meet regularly, even without a business agenda.

Mentoring has had such a profound impact on my life and Virgin’s success that I feel it’s paramount to any promising businessperson’s journey. As I have written before, I attribute much of the success of Virgin Atlantic to my relationship with my own mentor, Sir Freddie Laker, the founder of Laker Airways. I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere in the airline industry without Freddie’s down-to-earth wisdom. He was actually the one who told me to make myself the face of the company - a piece of advice that has influenced my entire approach to business.

If you are in a position to share the skills you have learned, you should give back by becoming a mentor yourself. Finding success is hard work, and entrepreneurs could use a little help along the way.

Here are seven ways successful and fulfilled people think differently:

1. They pursue curiosity, not passion. The most popular life advice—follow your passion. It’s prevalent because it is wise. The only problem, it’s easier said than done. And we spend much of life on a frantic goose-chase. In order to follow your passion, you need to find it. That’s where most of us need help—try make soufflé without a recipe.

Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert gave many an “Aha moment” recently—forget about passion, follow your curiosity: “Passion is rare; passion is a one-night-stand. Passion is hot, it burns. Every day, you can’t access that…but every single day in my life there’s something that I’m curious about—follow it, it’s a clue, and it might lead you to your passion.”

Her advice comes with good company, echoing Einstein who remarked, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” The late Steve Jobs, in his commencement speech reflected on his success: “Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.”

Curiosity is the vehicle that takes us from finding, to living our passion; it builds the bridge.

2. They make friends with stress. Stress is seen as a negative, and appropriately so. Plenty of research shows that stress causes neurological damage and increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.

But what if stress is the enemy only because we perceived it to be? For 10 years, health psychologist Kelly McGonical taught on the damaging effects of stress but now seeks to undo that whole decade after coming across new research.

In a survey, 30,000 people were asked how much stress they experienced in the last year, and whether they believed stress was harmful for their health. Those with high degrees of stress indeed had severely affected health, not least being a 43 percent increased risk of dying. However, that was only the case among those who also believed stress was harmful for their health. Those who experienced a high level of stress, but didn’t view stress as harmful, had the lowest risk of dying, even beyond those who indicated little stress.

Typically in stressful situations, our blood vessels constrict and heart rate shoots-up. But the science has shown, when you change your mind about stress, you change your body’s response to stress.

Another study comes from Matthew Nock of Harvard University and Wendy Berry Mendes of the University of California. Participants were given three minutes to prepare, then deliver, a speech before critical and negative judges. They were divided into two groups, with half of all participants having a history of social anxiety.

One group was primed beforehand to perceive their stress as helpful, that  their pounding heart was gearing them up for action, while their increased breathing was bringing more oxygen to the brain. As a result, those who viewed stress as helpful were less anxious and more confident. Physiologically, their blood vessels stayed relaxed and cardiovascular response mirrored that of joy and courage.

Nobody is immune to stress. It’s not whether we experience stress, it’s how we respond. Understanding stress as your body bringing in reinforcements to defeat a challenge, rather than being defeated, isn’t just motivational fluff, it’s a biological shift. You’ll literally live longer, and feel better.

3. They see chain reactions. It only takes one falling domino to knock over the rest. Successful people rarely make isolated decisions but join the dots between actions and the outcomes.

To take the company to the next level, Paul O’Neill, former CEO of aluminum manufacturing giant Alcoa didn’t focus on advertising and marketing, or research and development. He focused on safety, reducing days lost to workplace injury by 90 percent. Within a year the company’s profits hit a record high. When O’Neill retired, profits were five times higher.

O’Neill says, “I knew I had to transform Alcoa. But you can’t order people to change. So I decided I was going to start by focusing on one thing. If I could start disrupting the habits around one thing, it would spread throughout the entire company.”

On the surface, they’re unrelated: profit margins and workplace safety. But successful people have the ability to see the relationship between the ‘unrelated.’

Our thinking is often compartmentalized. That keeps things neat, linear and logical but builds walls we cannot see through. Successful people always look for connections and relationships. Their thinking is not just linear, but holistic. They don’t just study parts, but see the whole. They’ve learned to put Humpty-Dumpty together again.

4. They ask more questions than give answers. Our egos paralyze us the moment we’re about to ask a question. That fear of judgment is crippling. Rather than asking and gaining new knowledge, we protect our image and remain mired in our lack of knowledge.

Indeed, ignorance is bliss. Successful people are ignorant of judgment and protecting their ego. They prefer growth in asking questions. The inability to ask inhibits our personal growth. Jim Collins and Morten Hansen note in Great by Choice, top leaders of “10x companies” (those who beat their industry indexes by ten times or more) were continually asking “What if?” as a means to improve.

The simple act of asking questions revolutionized and characterized the Toyota Motor Corporation. The famous 5-Whys developed by Sakichi Toyoda became the benchmark of their production system. It was a simple but highly effective strategy for getting to the root cause of any problem and has been adopted by organizations all over the world.

5. They contribute before gain. Doing something for nothing is a shock to the system. It goes against the grain of our capitalistic culture in which there is service only with exchange. But contribution without expectation or strings attached is a trademark of many successful and fulfilled people.

Princess Diana is remembered for that quality, encouraging people to “carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.”

Dr. Adam Grant, organizational psychologist, studies pro-social behaviors in business and leadership. His New York Times Bestseller, Give and Take presents a compelling case that you don’t need to be ruthless to get ahead Techniques such as doing “five-minute favors” for others and reconnecting with erstwhile acquaintances can reap long-term career rewards.

Grant explains that pro-social behaviors have a profound effect on our depth and the breadth of relationships, “and so you end up with a wider set of relationships and a richer, more meaningful set of connections.” Indeed, we all know the power and importance in networking.

There is a paradoxical boomerang effect from focusing on the success and wellbeing of others that results in our own success and wellbeing. Zig Ziglar said, ”You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.”

It’s motivation to sow in someone else’s field rather than just our own.

6. They schedule time for nothing. Success is synonymous with hard work. David Bly said it perfectly, “Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted.” But hard work often turns into hectic work. Taking-action becomes 24/7.

However, some of the most accomplished people highlight a counterintuitive habit. Their hectic schedule includes allotted times for absolutely nothing. Of course, the times of nothing are far from nothing. Although physically unproductive, these times allow information they’ve been exposed to mix, mingle, and marinate, then produce new ideas and insights.

Creativity experts and psychologists call it the Incubation period. Creativity is often defined as the synthesis of disparate information. Consciously, we only catch a drop of the ocean that our mind is exposed to. Professor Timothy Wilson highlights the power of our unconscious mind in his book, Strangers to Ourselves. Our conscious mind processes about 40 bits of information per second, whereas the unconscious processes eleven million bits per second. Incubation allows for absorption and interaction between the two..

Successful people regularly schedule time for ‘nothing’ when incubation can take place. They go for a stroll, eat lunch alone, sit in a park. It worked for Einstein: “Although I have a regular work schedule, I take time to go for long walks on the beach so that I can listen to what is going on inside my head. If my work isn’t going well, I lie down in the middle of a workday and gaze at the ceiling while I listen and visualize what goes on in my imagination.”

Someone worth learning from.

7. They value experiences over objects. There’s very few material possessions we can place a “priceless” tag on. But plenty experiences for which that’s possible: the new car will be outlasted by the work ethic you cultivated to purchase it; the new house will need renovations, but its the talent you’ve acquired that pays for the renovations.

What we gain materially will always come as a byproduct of who we become intellectually, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. It’s not what you get, but who you become.