100: The Mentors Who Made Us – Best Mentorship Stories (Office Horus)

Danny Gavin (Host) : 00:05

Hello and welcome to episode 100 of the Digital Marketing Mentor. I’m your host, Danny Gavin, and I’m here to celebrate a huge milestone built on stories, guidance, and a shared commitment to learning. Three years ago, I started this podcast with a simple vision: mentorship as the backbone of purposeful marketing. Today we lift up that vision by sharing the very heart of mentorship, the real human connections that help us grow. This episode is a special compilation focused on the best of mentorship itself. We’ve gathered stories, reflections, and hard-won lessons from people who’ve mentored and been mentored along the way. It’s not about titles or ages. It’s about the willingness to grow, to give feedback that’s honest and constructive, and to invest in relationships that move both sides forward. What you’re about to hear centers on core themes. Number one, defining a mentor. What makes a mentor truly effective, from traits like honest feedback, truthfulness, and transparency to integrity and the courage to have tough conversations. Number two, the origins of mentors and how mentors can be parents and family, professors, peers and bosses, online communities, events, and come from surprising everyday places. Mentorship isn’t confined to a classroom or a formal program. It’s all around us. Three, the two-way street of mentorship, the reciprocal relationship where both people learn, regardless of age or title. It’s about constant learning, curiosity, and sometimes informal unplanned guidance because mentorship can happen anywhere. And finally, keys to mentoring others, like listening deeply, asking questions instead of handing out answers, leading by example, and creating opportunities that open doors for others. To set the stage, I want to acknowledge the mentors who’ve shaped this show and the countless voices who’ve shared their journeys with us. If you’re listening and you’ve ever offered guidance, feedback, or a kind word that’s geared someone toward a better path, this episode is for you and for the next generation of inbound marketers, brand builders, and human-centered strategists who are listening for the next lesson. As always, the digital marketing mentor isn’t just about the latest tactics, it’s about the people behind them, the conversations that humanize marketing and turn knowledge into action. Our goal remains clear to give you real actionable strategies you can test, plus the insight to ask better questions on your own path. So without further ado, let’s dive into the stories, the lessons, and the spirit of mentorship that has carried us all the way to episode 100. Here’s to mentors, to mentees, and to the ongoing journey of learning together.

 

Cory Henke: 02:56

I would define a mentor as somebody that’s willing to tell you the truth. Somebody that doesn’t necessarily, you know, need anything from you, but is willing to, you know, help you, give you their time. I think, you know, mold you. But I think the biggest thing that they can do is tell you the truth and earn your trust so that you believe them when they tell you things that are a little bit tougher to hear. One of my first mentors was one of my first bosses, Kat Chung. You know, if I could describe her in one word, it’d be ruthless. You know, I remember the first time I was training with her. It was like she kind of just, you know, went through things and she would check on me, like, yo, are you paying attention? Because I don’t want to repeat this again. So, like, you’re gonna take notes. You’re gonna go through this. And it really level set me in terms of just like, oh, okay, this is a serious thing. You know, like I can’t waste her time. And there was multiple times during that, during that like first year where she’s just, you know, slams the deck on my desk and goes, Hey, we’re all waiting for here for you to finish, you know? And it kind of puts things in perspective that this is a team, you’re a piece of it, and we need you to get your stuff done so all this thing can move. And I think that’s what you know, she definitely gave, you know, me was just that sense of urgency. This is serious, and you need to take it seriously because these are big brands. And, you know, she’s got a job to do, and her job is to make me, you know, as good as I can be. So I think she was big in the earliest, you know, part of my career. And now that you know, I manage a team of 10 and I have managers who manage new people that come on, I always let them know, and the person that they’re managing that like that’s the person. Like the person that turns you into like a a good, you know, office, you know, a good individual who’s there, adds value, you know, and sort of changes, you know, the way that you, you know, approach things, I think deserves, you know, a lot of credit, you know, in terms of that person’s career, because it’s tough in the beginning. It was very tough for me. You know, I felt a lot, and I’m and I’m glad I had amazing people around me to help.

 

Glenn Taylor: 04:54

We have to make that distinction between, well, what is a coach versus a mentor versus a consultant? These terms get muddled for people, I think. Given that, I have some pretty clear definitions, I guess, of those, those different things. A coach, in terms of how we we define it, a coach is somebody who doesn’t give you the answers but supports you to find your own answers. So they are a guide, a catalyst, play more of that facilitator role, ask you questions. So they draw out of you answers, resources, the potential that you’ve already have. Whereas I think a mentor usually is more telling-based. Like they’re they’re farther along in their career or in their life, and they’re sharing some insights, inspiration, telling you their story, maybe giving you some pointers. I do think mentor is a is more advice-oriented or more telling-oriented typically, whereas a coach is more like, well, let me help you solve your problem. I don’t have the answers. You have the answers. Let me help you uncover them.

 

Ashley Werhun: 05:59

A mentor is really someone that is guiding someone either on a peer basis or that is a little bit before them and using their lived experience to do so. It really goes beyond sort of an education model where you’re trying to teach someone skills or verbiage or lessons that you know or a textbook knows. You’re trying to take all of your experience that you’ve lived in real life in the context of that industry, in the context of your own experience, and pass that down. And it’s really to help the mentee to effectively not make the same mistakes you’ve made and also to be seen when a mentee’s going through someone and a mentor can simply say, I see that, I’ve experienced that too. And maybe it was what much worse. Um, so don’t worry as much. It’s a very powerful relationship. But that relationship to find and to maintain is actually quite abstract for people. And so we really wanted to dig into that topic in mentorly. Good mentors generally lean to have high levels of empathy and understanding or willingness to understand. And so they will listen and absorb information without passing judgment because you can never be in that mentee shoes and they’ve gone through indescribable things in their life, depending on their background, and you have to know that their experience is worth listening to and absorbing before you give any feedback.

 

Yehuda Cagen: 07:16

I think a mentor is is is anybody that you can learn from. So I’m a big fan of the where it says in Turkey of Ethics of our Fathers and you know, famous stages of Judaism that said it, you know, you can really learn something from ever from everyone. And so I I like to think that I I you know I take that verb pretty seriously. I mean, anytime you can learn something from someone, whether they’re someone with less experience, more experience, older, younger, I think, you know, there’s all these all your your entire journey is to is to keep learning. And so uh, you know, sometimes there’s a formal mentorship, and sometimes people are mentoring without even know they’re mentoring. Yeah, for me, it’s a more along the lines of you know, someone that can kind of guide you to where you want to be. But for me, I I’ve always had a lot of informal mentors, and I’m sure there’s some people that are that I think of as mentors that probably didn’t think of, you know, they didn’t think that of themselves.

 

Henry Adaso: 08:08

A mentor is a guide, someone who can show you the way to get to your goals, whatever those may be. If you think about a lot of uh professions that that we we get into, like marketing, part of why we’re able to do what we do is because people left trails, they left clues, they left ideas behind that allowed us to make that transition that we needed to make. So a mentor is someone who can guide that journey from I don’t know what I’m doing, to this looks like a great career, and I think I can thrive in this career.

 

Terri Hoffman: 08:41

Mentorship is about having someone who kind of has more knowledge and experience in in an area than you do, who you can, you know go to to seek advice and counseling and really have an ability to be vulnerable and transparent with that person, you know, also without a risk of feeling judged. And I think mentorship is also a place where you may receive some, you know, tough love or hear things that you need to hear, even though you may not be prepared to hear them or want to hear them. I think mentorship is about growing ultimately.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 09:18

Yeah, so it’s not always like butterflies and rainbows.

 

Terri Hoffman: 09:21

Right. I think if it’s working well, it it can’t always be about those things. Yeah. Sometimes you may need encouragement, but sometimes you may need to hear the harsh reality of something that you need to improve on or an action you need to take that won’t be comfortable.

 

Eric Vardon: 09:35

I look at it from both angles, I guess, but a mentor ultimately is someone who sees something in you that you probably don’t see within yourself. I I think it’s almost always a recognition of maybe things that they see within themselves that they would love to do or change again. But I think it’s it usually comes with a some sort of energy, you know, magnetism or or you know, hitting an off right away. There’s there’s usually something there that sparks of, hey, I like this person and I want to help them, or I like this person and I need help from them, and I think that they can really help me. And that could come usually to me, it always comes right away. There’s some sort of you know, significant, you know, connection. And I think that’s it is like the mentorship on both sides or mentee is a connection to each other in some way that you don’t quite know what it is, and hopefully, you know, you figure it out soon. And I think the people that are open to that type of feeling often work out very well together. It could be business partners, it you know, it could be husband, wife, partners, whatever. But to me, that’s how I would define it.

 

Bo Bothe: 10:34

I work best with drill sergeants. If I’m looking for a mentor, I’m looking for someone to tell me what they think I should do. And I’m enough of a contrarian to then choose not to do what they say, but because I know who I am. But I think a good mentor is a guide. And one of the things that I’ve learned in my EO experiences and and my group learning experiences has been the idea of gestalt. A good mentor can bring experiences to the table and not really tell you what you have to do, but can give you kind of in these situations, this thing happened. It sounds a lot like what’s going on with you, or just somebody that can give you some context. I’d put them in that kind of guide, whether spiritual or emotional kind of side of things or business standpoint, those are the kind of mentors that I do really well with. There are ones that are kind of want to run alongside you or walk behind you and let you kind of lead.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 11:24

But how does that balance with that drill sergeant? Because you mentioned at the beginning, like I like someone who’s a drill sergeant. How does that match with someone who’s a guide, lead a leader? Do you feel like you can find someone who has both?

 

Bo Bothe: 11:34

Yeah, I think so. I think that there’s a point where when I’m working with a mentor and my I think my mentor style, you know, there’s a point where the mentee is typically trying to get over a hurdle. They’re usually trying to get over a hump. Like I use the MBA to get me over a hump in my confidence. The decision’s not really that hard. Someone like mentoring someone like me who can overthink, overthink, overthink, there is a point where somebody’s going to need to stand up and say, look, this is not that big a deal. Make a decision. The drill sergeant kind of mentor works with me because that level of confidence really kind of has that has an impact on me, where someone more like super contrarian would not like that kind of role. And so when you think about a mentor, I think there’s that guide piece, and then there are these different personalities of those. There was a an old Harvard Business Review, I think, or Wall Street Journal article, I can’t remember which, that kind of broke it, broke mentors up into these kind of four categories is the wide sage, there’s the drill sergeant, there’s the spiritual guide that’s, you know, and then there’s the psychologist, you know, the one that gets like, what do you think about that? You know, I never will give you an answer. I think when people are working with mentors, you know, you may need a different one at different times.

 

Andrea Cruz: 12:45

For me, a mentor is someone that will open you like a book. That’s someone that can actually find some of the real hearing gems with Dreamview that can get personal with you so you can really open up and show you the path of not what worked for them, but based on their experience, what can actually work for you as a human. In my own experience, you go through different mentors in life because you will find a mentor that is very good for your professional career. Well, there’s another one that is very good for your own personal development and growth. But if I had to put it in my own words, I would say that it’s someone that can open you like a book and can tell you, look, this is the path you gotta follow based on these traits I see in you that I’ve not seen you are displaying very well and can show you that path forward.

 

Bo Bothe: 13:38

I lucked or stumbled into a logic class. I thought I was gonna take a philosophy class that was all about, you know, the earth is some molecule in your hand. I thought that was gonna be that thing. And it ends up being, you know, theorems and like if-then statements. And it was a basically a thinking class, you know, about building good arguments. And it was one of the best experiences I ever had, on top of learning how to be a designer and communicate with visuals and elements and all that kind of stuff, and then spin that into a career and then into rice. I was just Dwayne Windsor was just mentioned on LinkedIn this week. Uh, it was one of my professors, leadership in ethics. One of the most formative conversations I had with my classmates was he walked in the room and he’s like, we were watching 12 o’clock high, I think it was the name of the movie. And you know, you’re trying to get somebody to go bomb Japan and you’re not gonna nobody’s gonna come back. And can you get anybody to come do it? And Dwayne walks in and he goes, leaders manipulate, go. And it was just it was one of the most incredible conversations about just getting people to move and inspiring people to for good and bad. And how do you use things? And so those are those are some seminal kind of things that have happened in my education, on top of just technical learning that really kind of stuck with me communication and leadership and and kind of making things go in the world and in your life.

 

Terri Hoffman: 15:01

My first mentor was Brenda Tinnen. I worked for the Houston Rockets, and she was kind of that person who traveled across the country and helped to open new arenas or, you know, fix situations that didn’t have good systems in place. She would, she would get hired and they would move her across the country to really put a good framework in place. I would say a big takeaway that I got from her was patience. I was not a patient person. That that’s something that is I have to be very intentional about. I’m a go, go, go. What’s my checklist? Let me go check it off. I’m a, you know, a very driven person that I think a lot of entrepreneurs are. And so she taught me to be more, more patient and mindful and just kind of taking information in and slowing down before you take action so that you’re just not reacting and you’re really making sure that you thought through different possibilities before you take action.

 

Yehuda Cagen: 15:52

Peter Eblent, I’m talking about. One of the things that was great about him was that he really made, I mean, talk about, I mean, you segue very nicely into without even knowing, perhaps, maybe you did. It makes you a, you know, it makes you the podcast genius that you are. He really made you feel comfortable, right? He made you feel that, you know, I could, I mean, and I would, you know, there were times where I was he was saying, well, here’s the case. And I would say, well, why is why is that the case? And I think there were times that he was, you know, my pestering of questions were extremely frustrating to him. He would joke that there’s literally like a line in the in the carpet for me coming to his office constantly asking him questions. And I and I’m sure, and sometimes I I thought that he was really annoyed by it, and I apologized, you know, I had to apologize constantly for it. But I, you know, afterwards he told me that I it really helped him. He really helped me help him by making me feel really comfortable. And uh, the the funny thing is there was a story that the the first time that I started, the first day I started at TF Central, he said, uh, you know, you you you know this area well, and it was a good commute from where I lived, about 45 minutes at minimum. And so he said, Oh, here, come on, let’s let’s hop in the car. So I hopped into his car and he just drove me around the neighborhood showing me things. And that that really, again, that brought that whole barrier down, that perceived barrier, and it really helped me, you know, feel comfortable there from the get-go. And I I just I think like it’s interesting. Like we when you’re always kind of looking behind your back, kind of thing, okay, what is someone gonna think? What is someone gonna think? It’s almost as if like you’re you’re running, you know, on the second floor without a guardrail, you know. Whereas, you know, when you’re comfortable with the you know, the person that you have to re uh directly report to, it’s almost like I can I can run across on this second floor, not having any fear that I’m gonna fall because that guardrail is there, and that guardrail being the you know, your your supervisor, your boss. So he was one of those people that really from the get-go just made me feel comfortable.

 

AJ Wilcox: 17:50

I was actually really good friends with my boss and my boss’s boss, and they were good friends with him. And so over time, it wasn’t actually at that same company, but after we all kind of moved on and and went other places, he and I we connected over this love of hiking. I live in Utah where I have within a 20-minute drive, I have about 20 different hiking trails we go on. And and I knew Alex was kind of an outdoorsy kind of guy. And so I just said, Hey, you want to go hiking on a Saturday morning? And he said, Yes. So we we went and it turned into something where, like it’s a tradition, every Saturday morning we went. And over the course of the next like year and a half, he and I going, we got to know each other really well. And we got really invested in each other’s careers. How do we help each other? And he would give me so much good advice. And then, you know, it it came winter and he went, hey, our hikes kind of have to stop unless we do snowshoes. And so we we went out and got snowshoes and then and kept it going so we could hike all year round. And what was so much fun about this is I understood the value of what I was getting out of that mentorship, of me learning from him, that I started inviting all of these younger digital marketing guys who were in the area. Hey, every Saturday morning we hike, come with us. And then I got the opportunity to pass on exactly what Alex gave to me, and I could help them in their careers. And they’re all now like fabulously more successful than I’ll ever be. And I get to claim a little part of that. I’m really happy for them.

 

Bo Bothe: 19:24

There are things that I’ve historically thought, oh, well, I need this or I need that to kind of be my shield of armor. And the MBA was one of those. You know, I was I was really able to kind of lean in and learn a language and think of things differently. The other side of that, the network that I got, the great friends that I got out of it, the technical learning was outstanding. The professors were amazing, the Rice Network, much like any great business school, is incredible. But at the end of the day, you know, I was trying to build some confidence. I ended up with a an incredible network of very thoughtful people that will be with me for my lifetime. And so the investment beyond the education piece, because if it were just the the education, you’re getting the full-time MBA and you’re just learning how to do a spreadsheet, that turns into kind of a technical trade it up into a job that pays me more. That wasn’t what I was looking to do. And this executive MBA having 10 years of experience and then getting into it was just phenomenal. So I think, you know, for your listeners, if they’re considering an MBA, I’d get a little bit of professional experience to have context into how you want to apply that business knowledge. But an MBA is a great, also a great way to change the game career-wise.

 

Terri Hoffman: 20:33

They were an interesting first mentor in that they were also my client and they taught me an extremely valuable lesson. So, as I mentioned, I learned accountability playing college basketball, but that was self-accountability. What I hadn’t learned until I got them as clients was how to hold your team accountable and how to make sure that as a group and as a company, the accountability was consistent and coming through. And Tim told me something that I still use all the time with my kids and with employees, which is, you know, one of the main keys to being effective in the business world is just doing what you have told someone you’re going to do. He said, I know that sounds very minimum and bare and doesn’t really sound like it would add a lot of value. But, you know, if you at a minimum, just do what you told somebody you’re going to do, that is going to build trust. It’s going to show that you have integrity. And ultimately people will know that they can, they can count on you when they need work done. I think it also bled into me understanding how to set expectations with clients and how to manage expectations because it connects directly together with that. You know, you instead of saying what you think you could personally do, you have to think through like, okay, I have a team, we have schedules, we have multiple clients, there’s a lot operating here, and I want to make sure I’m setting reasonable expectations about what this client can achieve with us so that we’re being accountable to them and they’re getting good value and the money that they’re paying our agency. So they taught me that because I made a mistake. And they, I mean, honestly, they were kind enough in my eyes to have that conversation with me and mentor me in that moment because they wanted me to be successful and they wanted my company to be successful. So they took the time to have that conversation and really give me tough love and give me an opportunity to rectify it. But they probably could have moved on at that point and I would never have gotten the value of learning that lesson.

 

Glenn Taylor: 22:31

Let me start with Pat Flynn. I was thinking about this because I’m like, can I have a mentor that I don’t personally know? And I was even letting my thoughts go out on that and thinking, well, what about people that I view as heroes or inspiration who are more public figures or pop culture icons? You know, I would even consider some of them mentors. But Pat Flynn kind of sits in between that because he’s not a celebrity per se. We never actually met or talked or anything. And this was after I left and left the symphony and was building my my business. I found Pat online through his company Smart Passive Income. And he is like a master content creator and digital content guy, built his own business as a as an entrepreneur, as a coach, more as a as a business coach and mentor, and created a ton of content through his his company that was just really inspirational for me. I mean, he was doing videos and ebooks and podcasts and all of that before, before a ton of people, before as many people were doing those things now. He was doing them in the late 2000s after he got laid off from a job at, I believe, an engineering company, and then decided to follow his passion to build an online business and help other people do it. So he’s just been really inspirational in my journey, especially within the digital marketing and content development space. There would be a lot of days where I would listen to one of his podcasts or watch one of his videos, and it would really inspire me to keep keep going and to do something new and to try something new. So in that way, I think I view him as a mentor because of his teaching, because of the resources he provided and the inspiration. I think that he is to a lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs.

 

Susan Yen: 24:16

I need to get out of my comfort zone. And I remember, yeah, now I reached out just like that looking for speakers for this event. And the whole time, I was like, even honestly, throughout the whole entire process until that day. So I think my first speaking engagement was SMSMX in Oregon. That whole from November from the time that I found out that I was speaking to the time I was done speaking, I was scared. I’d I like it was just a whole different, but it did take a bit, quite a bit.

 

Dan Briscoe: 24:48

I’ve got a mentor now that’s a marriage coach. He can kind of dig in and see see issues and help that, hey, I’m learning all this stuff, but it would take me a couple of years and 10 books where I can just ask really good questions and and they can ask really good questions. You can just move faster.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 25:05

I know that there was a an important man in your life, a guy called Brian Grodner. And how about we talk him a little bit? I I know he’s not necessarily a professional mentor, but because I know he had a big impact on your life, love to know like why was he a special guy?

 

Yehuda Cagen: 25:17

Yeah, now you’re getting me emotional. And when I get emotional, I start to think silly things. Yeah, he was really special. I mean, I I’ll tell you the first time I met him. So I was at a a birthday party in the Texas Medical Center area. You know, everyone, most of the people that were familiar to me, some were not, and I presume they were patients, you know, you know, getting treatment at the medical center. And there was one gentleman that sat next to the the birthday boy, if you will, and he just had a smile like beaming from ear to ear. But you could tell that he had gone through some pretty rough treatment, either chemo or you know, whatever it may be. It might have been a combination of multiple multiple treatments, but he looked like he was clearly in pain, and he had a smile from ear to ear, and that turned out to be Brian. He actually moved into the neighborhood, and I knew he was having a bad day when I asked him how he was doing, and he would say, I’m doing good, I’m doing good. So that that meant that today was pretty bad. Right. So I I there was never a bad word, I should say, coming out of his mouth, which was just so impressive to me. And I said, you know, I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna do my best to kind of you know follow that type of attitude. And I and I I I’ll say I I failed miserably on the at that, but but every so often I I think of I I think of Brian for sure. When I when I when I’m when I’m moaning about the weather, you know, rising above 78 degrees, I think I, you know, Brian probably wouldn’t have an issue with the 79 degrees. So I’ll probably I’ll probably let it go this time.

 

Natara Branch: 26:41

And it doesn’t have to be in business, it doesn’t have to be in school, but it can be in life. And so that’s why I always tell people about my board of directors. So I have a board of personal board of directors that are full of mentors, and they’re mentors in different aspects, whether it’s it’s spiritual, whether it’s business, whether it’s family. I have a lot of family mentors right now because we have a five-month-old, whether it’s family, I have mentors in every segment of my life on this board of directors, and those are the people who are really gonna call me to the carpet if I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing and really pat me on the back if I need to be patted on the back. But separate from sponsorship, because they’re not necessarily, they sometimes can act as sponsors because they can speak on your behalf or something, but most of the most of the time they’re really the ones who are really trying to hone you and polish you and get you up to speed. For me in my career, I mean, I was so super unpolished. I I was awful when I started my career. I remember I started at Exxon and I was super excited to just go on the interview because they said they were sending a limo for me, and I was like, cool, like if they’re in a limo. That’s how like so unprofessional that was. And I was a side, probably a size six or eight at the time, and wearing my cousin’s suits that were she, and she was a size 14. So oh, but you just imagine this super unpolished person, and and I had no idea what to do. As I said, my family’s military, that’s extremely regimented. That’s it, you know what you have to do to get to the next level in corporate America, it’s totally different. And so I don’t even know what a mentor was at the time. Um, but Exxon actually assigned you mentors, and and that’s where the journey began. Now I have had some really bad mentors along the way, and I think that’s actually fueled me as well because I feel like the difference for me in my career has really been phenomenal mentorship.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 28:32

Who were some of the mentors in your life that were like, ah, those are the guys who really helped me?

 

Louis Gavin: 28:37

Names aren’t really the pointer. It’s a creative endeavor, you know, being in the ad business. And you do look at the industry greats. The there was the the burn bugs of the world. And you looked at greater ads. And you just like a musician would try and emulate good musicians, musicians that they respect and music that they love, and try to copy the technique and the style of a musician. It was very similar in the ad industry. You would find a style of advertising, especially as a writer. I think from day one, the people who are more senior, they were always the heroes in an agency, the guys who were doing the great work or the women who were doing the great work and who were winning the awards, and you would naturally be drawn to them, and some would it’s it’s a pretty ego-centered business. You’d have to, you know, work out your approach and your spin to get people to notice you. So it’s also a very competitive business. You know, inevitably you would find people who there’s a chemistry with good chemistry. They would be people more senior, and if they were more true creative people, they would sense that you would want some sort of guidance and help. And they would be the kind of people you could turn to. That’s really where it started. And it it was a matter of I think what one tries to do in the ad industry is get into the best agencies possible. Possible. If you were a person who had creative ambitions, you are you aimed to be in the agency that was m winning the most awards. And when you were in that agency, you would try and befriend the people who are most successful. So and and it was it was a very competitive environment, very competitive.

 

Noah Frydberg: 30:22

During COVID, when I came back home from school out of town, I was here for, you know, like a normal high school student on Zoom, just clicking away, waiting for the day to end pretty much every day. And I could hear my dad in the same room taking calls, you know, doing sales calls, like managing his team. And I started to kind of get a grasp for how to communicate effectively, how to do sales, which is a really hard process, the process of calling, cold calling and calling people, trying to get them to finally say yes, you know, it’s a numbers game. And that really inspired me personally to try to build a business. And it was over a year and a half before I actually had a real service-based business and an actual offer to sell. But I would credit my success in sales and, you know, in selling like six close to seven figures over the phone. I would I would credit all of that to my dad and that learning. I was recently working with a very successful athlete, former NBA player, turned like social media influencer and really impressive guy. You know, anybody who a guy like this talks to is instantly impressed by their background, by his insane height, like all these cool things about him. And we were trying to put together a brand deal for a company, for a large like fitness company. They basically said, you know, we’ve talked to this guy in the past. We didn’t like the way he talked to us. And the CEO personally said no. And like this was really confusing to me. I was kind of surprised. I was like, wow, I didn’t, I don’t know what he did. And I realized like in his communication with them, it was nothing short. It was like childish. It was just really bad. And so I’ve been very grateful. People usually tell me that I come off as older, and I would definitely credit that to like my regret, my greatest mentor, which would be my dad, is I’ve basically learned how to get like a business education like in real life for the past few years. So I’m very grateful for that.

 

Bo Bothe: 32:15

My father grew up incredibly poor. He recreated himself, lied his way in the Marine Corps when he was 17, found my mom at an embassy in Tokyo, Japan. She’s from Pittsburgh, he’s from Texas City, decided that he was thinking about my mom and the family that he was going to create with her in the foxhole while getting shot at. So decided he didn’t want to be in the military anymore, got into the carpet business, recreated that whole thing, grew the business, bought it from my uncle, and then lost the business in the 80s, late 80s, went bankrupt, restarted in you know, selling insurance and got into financial planning, and then started a prison ministry and then had a spiritual life as a deacon. And I mean, there was just a constant, I can always do it with him. And there was a constant positive outlook in the world. When we when we would get up in the morning, he would just be yelling in the how, I feel terrific, I feel outstanding, it’s gonna be a great day. And it it a little bit of it was he was trying to convince himself that it was gonna be a great day. Um, because you can imagine all the stuff he’s had to deal with in his life. He was relentless, he just never stopped. He never stopped being positive, he never stopped believing and being strong in his faith. He was always there for us from a family standpoint. He was always there, just committed to my mother. They still put each other’s wedding rings on every time they take them off to work in the yard or whatever. They put them back on each other’s fingers. From a business standpoint, from a life standpoint, from a spiritual standpoint, he was just unconventional, but rock solid. I get down and I get up, but I I never and I kind of have high highs and low lows. The Italian in me lets it go sometimes. But there’s never something I can’t overcome. And I think that’s that was something he taught me as my kind of mentor in life. Um and he picked graphic design. We were driving up to tech, and he was like, I don’t think you want to do advertising. I think this design thing is what you want to do. Because he’s looking through the book. He was just really thoughtful and listen, like Marines are super personal. I mean, it’s like a family kind of thing. Um, and he just was man, he had vision and insightful and not like kind of normal dad’s story. You could do anything, you know, but just watching that experience through my life and thinking about his life, you know, where he came from and what he did.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 34:32

Incredible. Forrest Gump. That’s what he sounds like. Like I get goosebumps, just you know, you talking about him. What a remarkable man. Really.

 

Bo Bothe: 34:40

Yeah, I was very blessed and very lucky to have had him in my life. I the Jesuit, there’s a Jesuit prayer that you can do, which is more of just a meditation. And one of the things is, you know, like thank whatever, you know, the metaphysical God or whatever it is you believe in, just give thanks. And every time I think, man, thank God for my dad and my mom. Because I just I I hit the freaking jackpot.

 

Jeremiah Andrick: 35:02

Being an imperfect person in an imperfect world, but trying to deliver your best for your family and for yourself was something he was very good at. When his one of his brothers died, he took care of his kids for a very long time, even though he had a large family himself. Yeah, you know, family of nine, and he helped take care of his brother’s kids. There were six of them, making sure that they had clothes and food and things they needed. These are values that I knew as a kid going into my adulthood that I wanted to emulate, that I wanted to invest in others and invest in my community and invest in my business and to also invest in the people that I hire and the people that I work with. Like, how can I help make them better? He taught me a lot. And the fact that I can do the trim in my house or do certain kinds of things around here that require physical labor, even though I don’t want to. Boy, I’ll tell you, that’s a weird mental thing you have to do. It’s like, I know I can do this, so I should probably go fix this thing. But I also am busy and it’s probably not the best use of my time to like go and redo all the trim in the house right now. That doesn’t mean I haven’t done stuff like that, but it’s I am my grandfather’s grandson in that way. I love spending time doing things with my hands and investing in it, and it feels good as a person to do those things. So yeah, he was he was a great example type mentor of things. And he cared a lot about his grandsons. He wanted us to be the best versions of ourselves. And we were often told when we were young, you know, we have this, it was the immigrant thing in a way. It’s like you, your family came here and they worked hard, so you need to go work hard too. We put it, we invested a ton, so you could go to your fancy schools and you could go work on computers and play with your toys, you know. So it’s definitely a different mindset for sure.

 

AJ Wilcox: 36:44

Ever since a young age, my dad has been my best friend. And it was so funny. I I think back to to high school, all of my friends thought that my dad was a better friend to them than I was. Like, I specifically remember coming home from a date and having all of my friends just hanging out with my dad. And I was like, hey, you guys like you’re waiting for me? And they’re like, no, we’re here hanging out with your dad. Thanks for coming. So maybe it’s a statement about like how cool I was in high school, but another, like, how awesome my dad was and how much he cared about me as a son and about our group of friends. And he did his entire career in in finance. He worked in banks, which is not what I wanted to do. I think I would probably go insane, but he’s my confidant. Every time I go to make a big decision, I run it by him. And for instance, when I created this company, B2Linked, I went to him and said, Hey, I’ve been running the largest LinkedIn ads account in the world for two and a half years. I know more about this platform than anyone. I think I might be able to start like a consultancy or an agency where I could do this for other companies. And his answer was, being an entrepreneur, that’s really risky. Like you probably shouldn’t do it. And I didn’t take his advice. I obviously went and created the company. But someone who’s a mentor, it doesn’t mean you have to always take their advice, but it does mean you have to care enough to say, I want to hear both sides of the story. Like, let’s have a conversation about whether or not this is a good idea.

 

Brian Gavin: 38:15

My father was an interesting guy. He was an amazing jazz musician. He was an electrician by trade, but was a diamond cutter for a living purpose. What my father taught me, and when I look back, I mean, I remember times where he we added a room to the house and he did all the electrical work. And I think what was was what I sort of recall from that moment in time when I think about it is how this man was adept to doing many things. And whatever he did, he did very well. It showed me that if you want to do something, you can really do it. You just have to put your mind to it and you have to open up yourself to doing things. And which I think that was a fundamental lesson from my father. But I’ve I looked up to my grandfather in a, I think, in a very he always set good examples. He was always well, well dressed. His haircut was perfect, you know, his nails were carefully manicured, and he was always so presentable, even though he was a man who was working with his hands, of course, with his mind too, but it was you know that hand labor of cutting and polishing. So those things really sort of sink deep inside of me. You know, of course, always his his comments, not that I can think of anything really specific at this moment, but he he always had a a witty crack for me. So I just think the overall when I look and think about him, his overall presence was very commanding in that sense and very powerful for me. And of course, my father taught me a lot. I spent a lot of time, and I was to your grandfather, I was very close to him, many, many interactions, positive, negative, like anybody else. But it it’s you know, I think he left a sort of indelible mark of perfection on me. I’ll never forget when he put the face plate of a light switch on, and I saw how carefully when he finished screwing the plate back on, he lined all the the screw heads in the same direction. And I said to him, Dad, why why are you doing that? He says, because that’s the way you finish a job with perfection. And that has always remained with me. That at the end of the day, it’s how you finish the job. You can work your way through something, but at the end of the day, is it’s the end result that everybody sees. It’s the end part that people will look at and internalize. It’s a very important lesson, and I think that you can apply that to anything in life, whether it’s computers, whether it’s software, whatever it is, is how do you finish off what you’re doing, and what mark does it leave for the next one?

 

Pinny Gniwisch: 41:08

So my father is a Holocaust survivor, he he is uh he grew up as an orphan, came to America, had nothing. I I love this story which which I tell over all the time, where when he was dating my mom, my mother, he came to the date with a shirt that had an insignia on it, initials that were engraved in the shirt. And my mom was super impressed with the fact that he had a shirt. But when she looked closely, she saw that it wasn’t his initials. So she questioned him. And you know, in his boldness and and his humility, he said, Well, I’m so poor that I have no clothing. So when one of my jobs I do is I work, I clean dead bodies after it’s a little morbid, but I clean the bodies, and the the wives of the of the people that have passed away, they they leave the shirts of the clothing as a donation to the yeshiva. So I I get first dibs. So therefore, I’m wearing somebody else’s shirt, and all my shirts are that. So I think that humility that my father had, having come from such poverty into the success that he has, and to stay grounded in his humility and wisdom, that I think is the greatest quality that I try to instill in myself, where you know, whatever successes that I have had or will have, that I try to stay grounded and remind myself of my father’s growth and where he is today. And and and I remember that Passover last year, we were sitting together at the Seder with the whole family, and he just started to cry. And he was just sitting there looking at the table. And I’m like, Ta, what’s going on? Why are you crying? And he says, This is not tears of sadness, this is tears of joy. He says, I came to this country, I remember walking on the plank to go on the boat, and I thought I was, you know, I was the most lonely person, the only person in the world, no one, no one there, I had nobody. And I was coming to a new world. And look at what I’ve created, you know, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren all surrounding me at the Seder. And for me, that was like a moment. It was a moment to see true, deep joy that led, you know, led to the crying, the tears of joy. So for me, he is the greatest person in the world. He’s humble, smart, he has a great sense of humor, and he’s always, always learning.

 

Raphael Gavin: 43:39

But mentorship comes from anybody and anything. Number one, you know, so this might sound a bit uh cheesy and but it it it is it holds dear to me. Number one is is is my wife. She’s she’s dedicated like her life to show us how things need to be done, organized, put in place, things like that. She’s she’s helped find who you are, drawed out, obviously from myself, and allow someone to be them. So this isn’t a shout out to her. What I’m saying is, you know, I think you can find mentorship from anybody.

 

Andrea Cruz: 44:16

I had very intense parents. When I was little, my parents told me you’re gonna learn English. There was no ifs and buts. When I was in my bachelor’s degree, my dad came to me once with the newspaper because I ended up with the physical newspaper. He’s like, in your university, and they are giving classes of Mandarin. Some, you know, 16, 17-year-old me went online. Oh, it’s the most spoken language in the world, and the third one was commercial. Yeah, I’m gonna sign up for it. I signed up for it, I opened the book, and it’s like, what did I sign up for? After a month in, I got a scholarship to study French for free. So I would give my bachelor, my English, my French class at night, and on the weekends, I would do it Chinese. It was very intense. And that’s how I did it all together. Um English is obviously the language I I use on a daily basis. I have transparently, it has not led to a lot of opportunities to speak in the other languages in my career. French is probably the one that I’ve used the most after I graduated as well and started in the corporate way.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 45:21

Do you feel like with a brain that’s very like open to languages, has it given you advantage from a digital marketing perspective, from an analysis perspective?

 

Andrea Cruz: 45:28

I think it has given me in a way that I cannot explain and put myself in the shoes of different people. I believe learning a new language is a great opportunity to understand how other cultures think, how they see the world, how they function as a society. So that’s what I would give credit between the languages and how it helps me from the marketing perspective better understand how people might take ad-copy, creative messaging landing pages, you name it.

 

Jeremiah Andrick: 45:59

Scriptures talk about iron sharpening iron. And I think most religious traditions have this idea. And I think if you look at other religions that are sort of outside of the Judeo-Christian worldview, I think there’s similar ideas. I even have a young Islamic guy on my team right now, and him and I spend, we’ve spent hours talking about the way the world works and from our different viewpoints. Not to disagree with each other, but actually to further sharpen our own viewpoints, I think, in many ways. You get a you get a stronger sense of of your own view when they are challenged. And a good mentor, I mean, some of the mentors in my life have had to put up with me when I was younger, coming into the room and going, like, you are wrong, and like me yelling at them. And I, especially when I was younger, I had very I was not a very pleasant person always. I would just come in and be like, This is the way things need to be, and this is how we need to move, and why is it taking so long? And let’s go. You know, you get a little older and a little wiser, and you go, like, oh, there’s things you don’t see, and but you need to be able to, I think, sharpen against each other. You need to have that friction. Friction creates heat, I guess, and the heat creates a spark, hopefully, to create better ideas. And, you know, maybe it is one of those things that we miss now in this digital space where we have to meet like this rather than in person as much post-COVID. We don’t have that across the table from each other as much as we used to in some ways. There’s a lot of value in that, and it’s very special, I think, as an experience for us to be able to do that.

 

Jyll Saskin Gales: 47:32

My job these days is as a Google Ads coach. So I think being a coach is absolutely part of mentorship. But I think another really important part of mentorship is kind of being a mirror, being able to reflect back to people what they already know, you know, being that sounding board, kind of the way some of my friends in business school were for me. Um, so I think is really important. A mentor isn’t someone who tells you what to do. There’s someone who might help show you the way, but almost more importantly, help you realize you already know the way. You just need a bit of a nudge to get onto that path.

 

Raphael Gavin: 48:03

Mentorship, I think, is is a is a tricky one because I don’t think you can sum it up in a singular word. I think mentorship is as much as give as is with take. There’s always something to learn from someone, you know, and there’s always something to give to someone. But I think there’s like three pivotal sort of elements which I think is is important with with mentorship. One of them, I think, is communication. Communication goes obviously both ways. There’s no point of banding about sort of uh discussions or doing anything like that. It’s about clear, concise communication both ways, from who you’re mentoring or who the who the mentee is. Because, like I said, there’s there’s ways of learning from everybody. Everyone’s had experiences, everyone’s had paths, past. So communication is is key. Mutual trust, I think, is also is also very important. Without trust, I don’t think people can employ a resource or a person to do something. Basically, what you’re doing is you’re micromanaging. And I don’t think that’s ever appealed to anybody who you’ve either mentored or asked someone to do something in in some sort of business respect. And then lastly, I think it’s tailored guidance. Like I said, I didn’t go to university, college, but the guidance I received was paramount to the things that I’ve learned, what I’ve done, where I’ve where I’ve you know landed up and ultimately sort of who I am at the moment. So if you sum it up in those three pillars, I think that’s what’s quite important.

 

Dan Briscoe: 49:29

To me, a mentor is somebody that’s kind of been there, done that, that’s 10, 20 years ahead of you, is has a bunch of experience and is willing to share those. You know, it’s there’s a you know the saying, like smart person learns from their mistakes and a wise person learns from other people’s mistakes. So I I butchered that, but I really like mentors. We use a lot of mentors in in our company now. Just I could probably get really smart on this topic in the next year, or I could just reach out to this person and leverage their expertise. A lot of times they’re willing to help, which is you know, the funny part. A lot of times you can pay them, but it’s a fraction of the cost of what you would have to build on your own. And so I I love mentors from that, both informal, formal. You know, I’ve had them in my personal life. I’ve helped mentor people. Uh, when I joined HESS, they one of the smart things they did was assign you a mentor and went to lunch and kind of learned the ropes of how to succeed in the company, even at the executive level that I was. That they gave me a good mentor.

 

Adam Canton: 50:31

So a mentor to me is not constrained to what job you’re talking about or what it’s it is basically someone who is making sure that you are going down the right path based on your skills, your strengths, playing up those strengths, minimizing the weaknesses or helping you overcome those weaknesses in the most selfless and positive way possible.

 

AJ Wilcox: 50:59

I don’t think a mentor has to be something that is like an official relationship where you’ve both agreed. I would follow people in my career and just I really cared about their thought processes and how they taught and how they thought. And my goal was just to learn as much as I possibly could from them. A lot of times this is just someone that you call a friend, or mentorship is just paying really close attention to what someone that you idolize is doing.

 

Eric Vardon: 51:26

I see it as more of a friendship and a partnership than you know, sort of I’m up here, they’re down here, I’m a mentor. Like it, though the word to me is definitely more inclusive than anything. But and I can go on and on about other relationships that I have with some of the passion, you know, opponents that I put my time and effort into from a community perspective. But our Event Connect team, man, it’s just, you know, we’re small, we’re mighty, we communicate well. I think we’ll always continue to communicate together, but we’re all going through a journey of in a new business with uh an industry that is changing very rapidly. It reminds me very much of the early 2000s with what was going on in the internet. So much fragmentation, a lot of you know, private equity, a lot of money moving into the space, which means we have to really be accountable to communicate with each other on what we’re hearing, just as much of what it is that we’re saying and what it is that we’re doing. So from that side, and I think the one variable too is that one of my team members is in, you know, in Florida, and I’m I’m not. I hope to be more so, especially in the winter months. But you know, there’s now a connection there that has to be managed through this format. And from a mentorship perspective, I wasn’t sure how that would work. And definitely we see each other, you know, from time to time in person and so on and so forth. And I think that helps extend it, extend it. I just I don’t think it’s a barrier. I just think it’s you know another hurdle that we have to figure out. But you know, I I love engaging in new conversations. And it’s also, you know, from a marketing and a sales perspective, and also leading a new brand that has to fit itself into an ever-changing, you know, world again. I’m used to that, and so it’s very comfortable for me. So I think whereas they probably have much more industry knowledge, much more uh information at their fingertips in terms of you know best practices within our world of sports and within our world of technology, all the things that we’re going through I’ve done before. So I think that’s a natural, you know, uh, relationship that makes it work very well for us.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 53:23

How did you deal with criticism? Because I imagine there’s people around you, you know, especially in your early days, and you know, they might have looked at something like, oh, this is horrible.

 

Louis Gavin: 53:31

That is a really good question because it goes to the heart of everything. I think it was the head of Chayat Day, Jay Chiat, the late Chiat, but he was one of the leaders of the creative industry. And he said, when a client rejects your work, they’re rejecting you. And what he’s saying is, you know, at the end of the day, you can control your ego, but it is all ego. So how do you how do you take criticism? Look, you have to you have to learn to listen. You don’t always have to agree, but it usually pays to agree with people who are more senior and cleverer than you, or who have achieved more. So you have to know who to listen to and who not to listen to. That’s one of one of the answers. But you need to know how to listen and to to consider that criticism closely and to look at the work and to go away and use that input. That is one of the most difficult things because there, you know, as the saying goes, there are many ways to skin a cat. And one way, you know, their way might be right. It’s not necessarily the only way. And I think one of the tests in in that kind of environment is also having confidence in your own solutions and that your creative solution might also be right. And I think a good mentor or a good creative director, and the same thing really, will give you that leeway. And I know from having been, you know, a creative director for many years and chief creative officer and so on, is the key I learned is that sometimes people show you something and there’s your way, which might be completely different, and there’s their way, and it’s to see what’s good about what they’re doing, to see what’s right about what they’re doing, to see what has potential in what they’re doing, even though it might not be the way I would do it or the way you would do it, and to guide them to get to do what they’re doing to the best of their ability, and to get the best idea out of their idea as opposed to out of your idea. I think a bad creative director and a bad mentor is going to say, nah, nah, I don’t like that. That’s not good. Try this. And that’s the quickest way to kill people or to get people to leave, to resign and move on, or find, you know, or to create enemies in that kind of environment. Best idea out of their idea.

 

Glenn Taylor: 55:51

That’s been part of the work for me is developing that mindset that welcomes feedback. If I get defensive about feedback, then there’s something for me to look at. There’s something there for me to understand about myself. Like, why am I getting defensive? What’s the insecurity there, or what’s what’s causing that? And so that’s what I would I would recommend for people to kind of think about is like how do you view feed critical feedback currently and and what’s where’s that coming from? You know, what’s under the surface? I think sometimes it can help, at least in the coaching context, to first have people take an assessment of some sort that’s people view as more objective, right? Like a like a survey, either a personality assessment or skills-based assessment. And that can tell them things that is more data-based. It’s not somebody’s opinion. And then they can see, like, oh, this assessment is telling me I have some gaps. So there’s some things I might want to look at. I need to figure out how to work on that. So to figure out how to work on that, I probably need some feedback to understand more about that or more whether people see that or not. So that that can be a a way into it is try to find like a data-based approach for someone to see something, learn about themselves, and then fold feedback in as part of the process. But I think, you know, a lot of my client companies, I encourage them to try to create a feedback culture, which is to really normal normalize feedback and say, hey, it’s one of our values, it’s something about our our culture. It’s not just something that’s gonna happen once a year. We’re gonna give feedback all the time. And it’s a positive feed, you know, appreciative feedback, positive feedback, and developmental feedback. And that’s a term that I’ve that I think is it’s it’s a more friendly term for critical feedback is developmental feedback because we all need to develop. We gotta keep developing or improvement-based feedback. I think some of these things around mindset, normalizing it, using other tools as well, changing the language to try to dump the baggage that we have around feedback, you know, can help it be hopefully more of a a friendly or welcome thing for people.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 57:55

You’ve got three keys to success when mentoring other people. So what are the keys to success?

 

Jay Steinfield: 57:60

It definitely should be structured. And when you ask uh what are the keys to success, I mean you can you can look at how do you know whether it’s been successful? And you can you can look at things like does the person prepare in advance and give you the agenda in advance? Or is it the day they’re going, oh, I know I haven’t gotten that agenda yet? Well, that means it’s not a priority for them. And if it’s not a priority, that means you’re not doing a very good job mentoring. So you you know whether it’s working by how much the person wants to do it and how prepared they are to do it, and whether they are then taking those same skills that they’re doing and mentoring their people. That’s how you know it’s working, not whether sales are up or any metrics like that. You’re looking at how engaged are they now. In terms of if you’re asking the question more like how do you mentor effectively, you’re not giving them the answers. That’s the most important thing. Help people learn how to think. And what that also does, it helps you understand how they think. And if the person’s working for you, and most of the people you’re going to be mentoring are direct reports of yours, how are you possibly going to increase your own effectiveness and your own uh elevation within the organization or in some other organization, unless you get people to do the work that you’re doing now? And how are you going to delegate that work to people until you unless you know they’re capable or know that it’s a propensity that they could be capable if given the chance? You do it by mentoring and understanding how people think. And when you learn how people think, you know where they can go. So mentoring is just asking a lot of questions and really uh getting to the root causes of things that they don’t even realize was what they were actually asking. You can call it first principles or root causes or the five whys or whatever it is, but that’s that’s what you need to do as a mentor. Not feed them answers.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 01:00:02

You put down that you mentor your sisters, Samantha and Seth. So we’d love to know, yeah, how how does that mentoring relationship work?

 

Susan Yen: 01:00:10

It’s a little bit different. I mean, I have like four younger sisters, so I’ve always felt more like a mentor than anything. Because so uh we’re I’m not from this country, so I was born in South South or South Sudan. And then so we all kind of came here, and I think it’s always doing the things or making the decisions that you would look back and be proud. Not every there are gonna be some decisions that you’re gonna make that you’re not so proud of. But I think being able to talk to my siblings, especially because there’s again, there’s there’s five of us, so there’s different stages that each of them have kind of gone through. And I think what our conversations are either it’s you know, I’ve gone through these different things, and there’s you’re not going to learn everything from school, which is frustrating. It is what it is. Sometimes life experiences. So it’s always good to be able to sit down and talk to them. And you know, college decisions was a big one. How do I apply for these things? My guidance counsel is saying these, but these people are saying that. Like, what should I do? Loans, taxes. Okay, now it’s time to get a job. Or like, what do how do I have these interviews? What does my resume look like? What do I want to do? Especially with it when it comes to family members. It’s easy to want to be protective and to kind of create a bubble around them and just say, yeah, that sounds like a good idea, but maybe not. But it’s it’s usually like, hey, I’m gonna be here. Um, if if that’s what you really want to do, I’m here and as a support system, and I’m a call away if you need to. Happy to look at anything you need to look at, happy to look at any negotiations that you might need to do in regards to like your salary or anything like that, but never trying, never trying to push them too much one direction or the other because I hated that. Then the time of friends, if you push me too hard on something, I probably will go the other direction. So just doing that for you know, my my siblings has always been something that I’m passionate about. And I think they also push me to just be a better person in my career and then just as an individual.

 

Henry Adaso: 01:01:57

It’s really important to understand what people’s goals are because everyone has a different idea of what success means. And so I think it’s important to listen, be open, understand their goals, because when we understand what it is they’re seeking, that’s when we have the best chance to guide and help and coach them towards attaining that goal. So I would say listening is the most important attribute of mentorship.

 

Andrew Foxwell : 01:02:31

I think in anything and any interaction that you have, there’s a lot of uh professionally or personally. One of the things that’s common that takes place is especially if you’re in a mentoring capacity, you you talk a lot. You want to be the person that’s you your ego is like, well, here’s the here’s the things that I want to impart upon you, oh oh little one type. You know, your ego’s like wanting to do that. The best thing that we can do is listen and breathe and well breathe first and take breath and just understand what listen and then be able to be with that person authentically and take care of them that way. A lot of times it doesn’t have to be anything that you’re even saying. It’s conclusions that that person can come to by speaking about it outwardly as well. I guess what I’m saying is I’m a talker. And so um I could talk to a wall. My thing is how do I be quieter in order to be uh a leader or uh a mentor that helps the helps truly listen.

 

Ashley Werhun: 01:03:40

And the other part is I think, you know, when you’re mentoring, you’re fundamentally optimistic, right? You see potential in people, you see that challenges can become overcome. You want to wait until the end to give feedback, and then you also know that it’s gonna go through the filter that it may be taken and it may not be, and that’s okay. And you have to kind of let it go, right? You’re not their boss, you’re not necessarily their manager, and we’ll get into why that maybe matters not to be directly mentored by your manager, but you’re there to support their journey. And so I think most mentors have kind of a quality of selflessness also in there is that they just want to be helpful and it’s really not about them in that moment.

 

Jay Steinfield: 01:04:17

A mentor is anybody who systematically helps somebody else not figure out what they should do, but how they should think. That means everyone who has somebody working for them is a mentor. It is part of your job description. It is not a program. Well, it can be a program where they say, you know, you’re going to uh mentor Danny in marketing. Okay, and then once a month or whatever the time frame is, you get together and you have this little format and you do that. But you should be doing that with everybody that works for you. Because if you want to move up in the organization, then you’ve got to make the people who are working for you be capable of taking on the job that you’re doing so that you can move up to the next level or just become a different sponge. And the only way you can do that is by helping people learn how to think. You can’t just give them information and expect them to get better. When you think of yourself as a leader or as a mentor, then your job is to help other people get better than even they think they’re capable of becoming. And that’s what a mentor is. And if if you’re the mentee, well, every experience you have in life, you’re being mentored in some way. And you need to be conscious of the fact that you are being mentored, whether that person believes they’re a mentor or not.

 

Pinny Gniwisch: 01:05:43

The key metric, as I mentioned before, is for them to have their own realization, not to give them the answers because the work is important, and that them realizing the direction they need to go or the decision they need to make needs to come from them. I think that’s number one in mentoring. It’s the art of the pause. There’s a book out there on coaching. I can’t remember the name now, but it’s a fantastic book where the whole book is based on the pause. It’s not jumping to the answer, but allowing them to find the answer. Another thing is trying to give them examples of my own life. I think a lot of times mentors use stories from other people, and that’s super important. But I’ve had many experiences in life, and and and those experiences have given me the ability to wade through you know dark times and and and and difficult decisions. And using my own experiences to guide them is super important because they can relate to the it’s not a story, it’s not one step removed. It’s for me. So I always try to find something in my own life that that they can relate to that has happened to me. And I’m always thinking when things are happening, how I can use that in my mentoring sessions.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 01:07:00

You mentioned three keys to mentoring success. I’m not going to take the the credit. Number one, lead by example. Two, always make the time. And three, hold frame and accountability. I think those are awesome. Anything you want to expound on those three points?

 

Cory Henke: 01:07:15

No. I think the biggest one for me is just leading by example. I do not like to ask people to do things that I can’t do myself. I think, you know, when you do that as a manager, you put yourself at such a risk. Don’t ask people to do things you can’t do, right? I’ve now changed that as things have grown and as things have like, you know, gotten bigger. To don’t ask people to do things you are not willing to do. Because there’s gonna be a lot of things you don’t know how to do. You can’t know everything. But are you willing to get in there and do that?

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 01:07:46

Did you try to set up kind of like a mentorship structure or program in the hybrid remote sense?

 

Bo Bothe: 01:07:52

Yeah, it that was it it actually been about six months in the making and we’re rolling it out now. But we were doing it informally with uh we use EOS, so there was a lot of that, there are a lot of check-ins, a lot of talkings, but it was it was all mentorship within groups, and it was all kind of the formal check-ins, monthly check-ins with key people that really helped us. But there are some people here that want to grow, but they’re not as visible all the time because they’re out of the office or they’re doing something. And, you know, so I’ve got two formal mentors now. We’ve got a worksheet and this whole system that Cynthia set up that that we’re gonna do. That should have happened two years ago, you know, where we dropped the ball. That should have happened too three years ago. We should have seen that. That’s what one of the, again, drivers for this article was that we saw that in our EOS platform. We made it a rock. It’s been a six-month kind of, okay, define a program that works right. What’s the burden? How many people, all that kind of stuff. And that mentorship beyond a check-in is really focused on helping people grow in their careers. And some of them are kind of family questions too, that they’re asking.

 

Yehuda Cagen: 01:08:57

But it’s interesting. Like when you’re always kind of looking behind your back, kind of saying, okay, what is someone gonna think? What is someone gonna think? It’s almost as if like you’re you’re running, you know, on the second floor without a guardrail. You know, when you’re comfortable with the you know, the person that you have to reach uh directly report to, it’s almost like I can I can run across on this second floor, not having any fear that I’m gonna fall because that guardrail is there, and that guardrail being the you know, your your supervisor, your boss. So he was one of those people that really from the get-go just made me feel comfortable.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 01:09:27

It’s so fascinating because sometimes people have the hard job of being a boss, but then also giving you room to be a friend in a way, right? Or like an equal. Sounds like he he he was able to kind of balance that relationship quite well.

 

Yehuda Cagen: 01:09:41

He did it very well, very well. And I and almost see the same for Grant as well. One of the things that actually attracted me to Estendio was the fact that they they took that so seriously. I mean, they’re kind of a people, people first type of company. I mean, they take that approach to security, shameless plug, but but but they also they take that seriously in terms of how they deal with their with their employees. And that’s kind of and Grant built that culture. You know, he was very conscious about you know building that into the culture. And he, as a matter of fact, he speaks to every single individual who’s hired on the team to kind of portray that to him, under let them understand his vision and and how everyone has to kind of work together, and then the individual is very much appreciated, and you know, their contributions are key to the success of the company. And so, you know, him building that culture, and I I haven’t had the time, you know, as much time with Grant that I had with Peter. I mean, I had, you know, whatever, six, seven years with Peter, but you know, he’s built that into the company culture, which is just fabulous.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 01:10:37

Your husband and you have a special nonprofit that’s focused on mentoring student athletes. Why student athletes? How did that come about?

 

Natara Branch : 01:10:44

So my husband actually started it with his mentor. They too had not a lot in common from the if you look at straight background, but what they did have in common was sports. And what happens in youth athletics and and and for student athletes is some people forget that they’re student athletes and they only focus on the athlete side. So when I um my husband and mate had already had this uh organization, my experience with it was that they were former student athletes that were mentoring current student athletes because if you’re a student athlete, you understand the journey of people want you to perform, they want you to win. They and you do too. You want to win. And so a lot of your day is not only being a student, but it’s also being an athlete, which then you miss out on a lot of the student activities. And so, what we provide to those students are life skills. That’s the biggest thing. Mentorship from people who’ve been there. How do you transition from being the high school star athlete to just being a student in in college? Or how do you, how are you like the big man or big woman on campus in high school? And then you might be at a D3 school, not necessarily saying anything bad about that, but it’s just it’s just different. And so there’s mental things that you have to prepare yourself for, there’s family things that you have to prepare your for yourself for. Now, even if you’re, you know, the top of your game going into college, there’s NIL that you have to prepare yourself for. People are pushing these young people through, and oftentimes pushing them through the system because of their athletic prowess, but forgetting that the student part. And so we try to bring and reconcile that student part of the student athlete and making sure that they understand they’re a student first and what does that mean? Because I was telling, specifically having worked for the NFL for 18 and a half years, I had a longer tenure at the NFL than most athletes do. Um, and so it’s it’s one of those things where that is going to be a point in time in your career. That’s not going to be your entire career. So, what happens after that? And you can’t start to prepare once you get hurt or once you feel like the retirement is coming. And then you have young men in the NFL specifically that are retiring at 27 years old. Then what do you do? How do you know how to invest? How do you know how to buy a business? How do you know how to go get a job?

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 01:13:01

What drove you to expand into also discussing PPC and Google Ads more in your community?

 

Andrew Foxwell : 01:13:07

Founders was started. Uh it was uh it was two and a half years ago now, and then three weeks later we went into lockdown. So it was an incredibly hard first year of her life for Gracie and I and for her. She had a lot of health issues, et cetera. So we really felt lonely in that journey. So we came out of 21 and we’re like, came into 21, and I was like, I just, and then I was 14, and I’m like, what’s happening? You know, I’m like freaking out. And so I thought, well, there was another group that I was part of of like 10 people. It was so neat to be able to talk about this with like 10 different colleagues. And so I thought, well, you know what? Like, what if we tried it, fired it up, fired up a community for people that bought two courses from us. I remember that the list was 31 people. We’re not millionaire course sellers here. And I was like, all right, these 31 people, let’s like, let’s like tell them we’re gonna launch this. And I think like almost every one of them joined. And I thought, oh, okay, that’s cool. There’s like a membership here. Uh and so then I had a community. We had like 20 people or 20, or you know, 28 people, or I think it was something like that. It’s grown and grown and grown. And as members have said, hey, you know, I could really use a little help on CRO as well. Uh or I could really use a little help on um talking about agency ownership. You know, so many pieces of that. I mean, my gosh. So then you launch all these other channels, you launch all this other stuff. We had a Google Ads channel, and then I thought there, there, there’s a there is a need for for, you know, kind of getting into more Google ads, because I think that for a long time it was like only meta ads, people did that, and then it was like only Google Ads. And there was more of this that members were saying, no, we do both. And we and so there was this massive overlap. And I thought there can be more in here. So we reached so we had the PBC community that we launched in April of 22, um, that was a separate community. And now in December, we’re we’ve just rolled it into our main community. Because as a separate entity, it didn’t have the legs and the legit like the ongoing legitimacy I thought it was going to have. And I think it was because I was still thinking in that old model of separate, and in reality, we’re all kind of doing it all, you know, to some degree.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 01:15:14

What an episode. Thank you for joining me on episode 100 of the Digital Marketing Mentor. Today’s compilation reminded us that mentorship is less about perfect credentials and more about imperfect humans showing up for one another with honesty, integrity, and a willingness to grow. If you take away one thing from these stories, let it be this mentorship is a two-way street. Its value can’t always be measured in a tangible way, but by the commitment to continuous learning and the openness to learn from each other. Whether that learning comes through a formal program, a casual conversation, or a chance encounter at an event, I want to extend enormous thanks to every guest who shared their mentorship journeys, to every listener who continues to engage, and to the team at Optage, the home of the digital marketing mentor, for providing a platform where human moments and marketing can flourish. If you’re listening and thinking about how you can mentor someone today, start small. Ask a thoughtful question, share a concrete resource, or open a door to an opportunity you’ve noticed might fit. Small actions compound into meaningful growth over time. Finally, if you loved episode 100 or want to hear more stories like these, I’d love to hear from you. Your feedback shapes the next chapters of this show. Thank you for being a part of this community. Here’s to continuing the journey, mentors, mentees, and the human side of marketing. Until next time, I’m Danny Gavin, your digital marketing mentor, inviting you to stay curious, stay honest, and stay connected.