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So Deborah, what is your goal for being on the show today?

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So the goal I have is to spread the word of mentorship.

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Most people think of mentorship as just something that,

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you know, if I need somebody's help, I'll go ask for help.

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And it usually comes from the person who's asking,

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and it's a nameless, faceless person

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that they're thinking of.

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And I really want to be able to highlight

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how important mentorship is,

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especially from the perspective of the mentor

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and why it's so important to get connected with individuals,

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both from the mentor's perspective

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and the mentee's perspective.

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And I think this show can help to highlight that.

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Tell me more about that.

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So there are so many mentoring programs that exist.

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And when I speak to colleges, they'll say,

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we invested a ton of money in mentorship programs

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and they don't work.

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No one uses them.

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And when they do use them, they, you know,

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they usually do what would be like a dating app system

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where they just try to match people up

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so that they have a mentor.

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And it's never utilized well

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because neither the mentor nor the mentee

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are really coming at it from a connected point of view.

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And I really believe in the way

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that the mentor project operates

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is by making the connection come from the mentor.

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What is it the mentor wants to give back?

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What is it that they're looking to get out into the world?

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And we've never ever had a problem

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having someone want to take that information

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or their expertise that they're offering.

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It makes it so much easier

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when you are giving something that you can say,

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here's my expertise.

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Is there anyone who'd like this?

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And when we have experts, I'm talking about astronauts

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and astrophysicists and very famous artists.

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So people come and they want that,

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but they wouldn't ever know to ask for that.

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You know, what person says,

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hey, I'd love to pick the brain of an astronaut.

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But when an astronaut says, who'd like to pick my brain,

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we have a lot of people who then say, I would.

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And that's really the big difference

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is that people think of mentorship as a sort of,

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you know, one-off, it's very superficial.

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It's something that people can get anywhere

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from just about anyone.

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And you can get it from anyone,

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but you really have to know what your ask is

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and your why and what you wanna get from it.

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Wow.

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This two things I see in this,

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a lot of times when mentors are mentoring people,

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it's more like a program, hey, you buy into this program

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and you pay me X amount of money

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and in return you get X amount of hours from me.

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And that's, it's gonna help you with this, this, this,

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et cetera.

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Yeah.

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And I'm assuming, and I think when we're going with this,

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how is that different from your platform

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that you're mentioning?

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If someone's paying for mentorship, it's not mentorship,

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something else, it's coaching,

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it's you're involved in something else.

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And a lot of people think that you can pay someone

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to mentor you and it's just not the case.

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If you're paying someone, you're not being mentored.

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If you're getting paid, you're not a mentor.

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Coaches will also say, often say, well, I'm a coach,

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but I mentor also.

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No, would you do it if somebody wasn't paying you?

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Probably not.

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So you have to ask yourself that.

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And that's really, we don't, it's 100% free

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for anybody who comes in to be mentored

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at the mentor project.

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Our mentors are giving away their expertise

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and it isn't like they're being taken advantage of.

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This is, you know, people who've said,

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I wanna make sure that I remain relevant.

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I wanna make sure that all of my information and expertise

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and knowledge and values that I've accrued over time

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weren't for nothing.

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I like to think of the Daffy Duck sitting on the pile

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of riches going mine, mine, all mine.

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It's a very lonely place to be there.

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And anyone who's an expert or at the top of their field

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will tell you that that's a very lonely place to be.

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And people like to share that with others.

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You're absolutely right in that.

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Deborah, I can see so many uses and so many connections

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right now where the project can just take off.

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Just today, I had Anna on, she's from,

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originally from the country of Georgia.

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Right now she's living in Atlanta though.

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She does what's called mentoring, but the way she framed it

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was relationship mentoring in homeless people.

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So they go and focus on helping homeless people

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in homeless shelters.

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And they give them those relationship connections

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that they're missing.

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It's what, I can't remember the exact word she quoted me.

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I think it's on my Google list.

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But essentially they come in because a lot of times

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homeless people don't have those connections.

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They don't have people to turn to,

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they don't have the community they belong with.

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And if something goes wrong before they go homeless,

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they don't know what to do.

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So they come in and they be mentors for them.

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For these people.

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They're right now focused in Atlanta

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and they'll be expanding in other cities

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throughout the United States as well.

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So I can see so many other uses of the mentorship programmer.

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People who wanna make a difference

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and people who are making a difference

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are coming together and bridging those gaps for people.

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So I totally see what your goal is.

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So thank you for sharing that.

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My pleasure.

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Yeah.

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My next question for you, Debbie,

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is why do you think leaders hide from funding their vision?

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You know, I'm not sure in terms of getting,

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asking for funding for their vision.

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It could mean a lot of different things.

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Some people have answered it with literally funding,

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like getting funding for their vision,

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getting funding for whatever they're doing.

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Some people have answered it as putting time, value,

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their money, their effort, their resources into their vision.

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You can answer this whichever way you like.

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So we, in the beginning, when we started the mentor project,

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we purposely didn't fund the vision.

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We decided which way do we wanna go with this?

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Do we want it to be a for-profit, a non-profit?

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How do we wanna work it?

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And as an applied developmental psychologist,

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I wanted to see if the theory would work,

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the theory that we're built to want to give back,

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that we're built to want to be generative.

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And everyone was telling me, no, it is not the way we are.

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If you are an expert in something,

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you're gonna be too busy,

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and you're not gonna ever wanna give anything away for free.

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And so we decided not to fund our vision.

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We started out with about $547

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and some really high-level mentors.

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And what happened was, when we started with those few,

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it was great.

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We were going into schools, everything was terrific.

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Then COVID hit.

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And then we went from 10 people to 60 within six months,

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and then to 80.

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And then we've been over 100 people have come through our doors,

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and there were waiting lists so many times,

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because we grew so rapidly, because we saw that people do wanna do this.

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Funding our vision, if we were looking at it financially,

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would have put an extrinsic motivator on it.

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And we wouldn't have been able to see

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if people are really intrinsically motivated to make this happen.

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And when I say that, I mean, every person was a volunteer,

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not just the mentors, our admin.

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I volunteered my time.

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There wasn't a single person getting paid.

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And we built an entire company based off of intrinsic motivation.

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And had we changed that, I think our model would have been motivated

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by extrinsic things like money or something else.

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And we were able to go, we just hit our five-year mark,

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without starting by funding our vision.

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So in your expertise, why do you think the leaders hide from funding their vision?

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I think that some people hide from funding a vision

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because they don't believe in the vision.

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In our case, we believed in the vision.

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And so we said, let's see if this can be an intrinsically motivated organization.

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In terms of others, I can only guess that maybe they don't believe in it.

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We had a purpose for what we were doing.

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It was purpose-driven, the way that we did it.

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But having tried things in the past, you really have to put a lot into it.

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And if you're going to fund something, you have to be able to tell people about it

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in a way that makes them want to fund it.

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And I can see hiding from that because you have to know it inside and out

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and be able to tell somebody how you feel about it.

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And ask them for money, which is uncomfortable for a lot of people, myself included.

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So I can understand why a person might hide from funding a vision.

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Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.

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My next question for you is two parts.

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And I think that those two questions should be the last for our segment today.

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What defines a great leader to you, Debbie?

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To me, a great leader is someone who listens to others.

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It's not about them.

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It's not ego-driven necessarily, but it's more vision-driven

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that the person is listening to them.

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It's more vision-driven that the person is looking at the vision

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and that they can pivot as needed.

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So I really do think that a great leader is only as great as everyone else in the company.

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And that their vision has to be able to pivot as needed

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with times that change and with the company culture that might change.

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And they have to be able to move and be fluid in that way.

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Why would you say that?

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What stories or lessons have you learned that come to that conclusion?

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You know, every leader that I've seen who's done a great job

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has not just stood up and said, hey, do this.

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And I've had the great fortune within the Mentor Project to work with people

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who are in the military and people who've led with corporations

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and people who've led in different ways.

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And every person that's a really good leader leads in the same way.

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They're not saying, let me take from myself and my knowledge and give it out to you.

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They're saying, let me learn from you, bring it in, and try to get us to that place.

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So I think a great leader is able to take from others

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what they are the big vision that everybody is seeing together,

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and they're able to get that out and move it forward.

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I like to think of a really great leader being an amazing bus driver,

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somebody who is taking that bus and getting it to the destination

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it needs to go to safely and quickly and efficiently.

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Thank you, Parshana. That was very precise.

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And I really, really liked it.

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Thank you.

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I have one more question for you.

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And that is a little deep one.

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Debbie, what is success to you?

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Success is – success to me is if I'm to think of it, it's like a river.

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It's like water. It changes at every moment.

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Success to me could be that I accomplished something that I was looking to do,

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like I have this.

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This is success at the end of the day when I check it all off.

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Success is reaching any goal I have, however big or small.

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So success for everyone is going to be different,

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and it's going to be different every day, every hour, every minute.

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So I might have a long-term goal that I say I want to accomplish something in time.

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I can try to achieve that, but along the way I'm going to have a whole lot

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of little successes I need to get there.

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And I think of mentorship and I think of all of the mentors and mentees.

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Success to me with that is making sure that the mentors and the mentees

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are reaching all of their small and large goals that they're trying to achieve

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along the way, because as one thing I've noticed is that a lot of people

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start small with their ideas, and they don't even realize how great they can become

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at something that they're trying to accomplish.

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So success grows with them each time they hit a new level,

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and they may have never sought to do that ever.

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Thank you for being here today.

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I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.

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I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.

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This is going to get more and more fun.

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We'll have more and more engagement as well.

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We'll invite people to participate in the show,

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and thank you for giving us your time and attention.

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Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.