So Deborah, what is your goal for being on the show today?
So the goal I have is to spread the word of mentorship.
Most people think of mentorship as just something that,
you know, if I need somebody's help, I'll go ask for help.
And it usually comes from the person who's asking,
and it's a nameless, faceless person
that they're thinking of.
And I really want to be able to highlight
how important mentorship is,
especially from the perspective of the mentor
and why it's so important to get connected with individuals,
both from the mentor's perspective
and the mentee's perspective.
And I think this show can help to highlight that.
Tell me more about that.
So there are so many mentoring programs that exist.
And when I speak to colleges, they'll say,
we invested a ton of money in mentorship programs
and they don't work.
No one uses them.
And when they do use them, they, you know,
they usually do what would be like a dating app system
where they just try to match people up
so that they have a mentor.
And it's never utilized well
because neither the mentor nor the mentee
are really coming at it from a connected point of view.
And I really believe in the way
that the mentor project operates
is by making the connection come from the mentor.
What is it the mentor wants to give back?
What is it that they're looking to get out into the world?
And we've never ever had a problem
having someone want to take that information
or their expertise that they're offering.
It makes it so much easier
when you are giving something that you can say,
here's my expertise.
Is there anyone who'd like this?
And when we have experts, I'm talking about astronauts
and astrophysicists and very famous artists.
So people come and they want that,
but they wouldn't ever know to ask for that.
You know, what person says,
hey, I'd love to pick the brain of an astronaut.
But when an astronaut says, who'd like to pick my brain,
we have a lot of people who then say, I would.
And that's really the big difference
is that people think of mentorship as a sort of,
you know, one-off, it's very superficial.
It's something that people can get anywhere
from just about anyone.
And you can get it from anyone,
but you really have to know what your ask is
and your why and what you wanna get from it.
Wow.
This two things I see in this,
a lot of times when mentors are mentoring people,
it's more like a program, hey, you buy into this program
and you pay me X amount of money
and in return you get X amount of hours from me.
And that's, it's gonna help you with this, this, this,
et cetera.
Yeah.
And I'm assuming, and I think when we're going with this,
how is that different from your platform
that you're mentioning?
If someone's paying for mentorship, it's not mentorship,
something else, it's coaching,
it's you're involved in something else.
And a lot of people think that you can pay someone
to mentor you and it's just not the case.
If you're paying someone, you're not being mentored.
If you're getting paid, you're not a mentor.
Coaches will also say, often say, well, I'm a coach,
but I mentor also.
No, would you do it if somebody wasn't paying you?
Probably not.
So you have to ask yourself that.
And that's really, we don't, it's 100% free
for anybody who comes in to be mentored
at the mentor project.
Our mentors are giving away their expertise
and it isn't like they're being taken advantage of.
This is, you know, people who've said,
I wanna make sure that I remain relevant.
I wanna make sure that all of my information and expertise
and knowledge and values that I've accrued over time
weren't for nothing.
I like to think of the Daffy Duck sitting on the pile
of riches going mine, mine, all mine.
It's a very lonely place to be there.
And anyone who's an expert or at the top of their field
will tell you that that's a very lonely place to be.
And people like to share that with others.
You're absolutely right in that.
Deborah, I can see so many uses and so many connections
right now where the project can just take off.
Just today, I had Anna on, she's from,
originally from the country of Georgia.
Right now she's living in Atlanta though.
She does what's called mentoring, but the way she framed it
was relationship mentoring in homeless people.
So they go and focus on helping homeless people
in homeless shelters.
And they give them those relationship connections
that they're missing.
It's what, I can't remember the exact word she quoted me.
I think it's on my Google list.
But essentially they come in because a lot of times
homeless people don't have those connections.
They don't have people to turn to,
they don't have the community they belong with.
And if something goes wrong before they go homeless,
they don't know what to do.
So they come in and they be mentors for them.
For these people.
They're right now focused in Atlanta
and they'll be expanding in other cities
throughout the United States as well.
So I can see so many other uses of the mentorship programmer.
People who wanna make a difference
and people who are making a difference
are coming together and bridging those gaps for people.
So I totally see what your goal is.
So thank you for sharing that.
My pleasure.
Yeah.
My next question for you, Debbie,
is why do you think leaders hide from funding their vision?
You know, I'm not sure in terms of getting,
asking for funding for their vision.
It could mean a lot of different things.
Some people have answered it with literally funding,
like getting funding for their vision,
getting funding for whatever they're doing.
Some people have answered it as putting time, value,
their money, their effort, their resources into their vision.
You can answer this whichever way you like.
So we, in the beginning, when we started the mentor project,
we purposely didn't fund the vision.
We decided which way do we wanna go with this?
Do we want it to be a for-profit, a non-profit?
How do we wanna work it?
And as an applied developmental psychologist,
I wanted to see if the theory would work,
the theory that we're built to want to give back,
that we're built to want to be generative.
And everyone was telling me, no, it is not the way we are.
If you are an expert in something,
you're gonna be too busy,
and you're not gonna ever wanna give anything away for free.
And so we decided not to fund our vision.
We started out with about $547
and some really high-level mentors.
And what happened was, when we started with those few,
it was great.
We were going into schools, everything was terrific.
Then COVID hit.
And then we went from 10 people to 60 within six months,
and then to 80.
And then we've been over 100 people have come through our doors,
and there were waiting lists so many times,
because we grew so rapidly, because we saw that people do wanna do this.
Funding our vision, if we were looking at it financially,
would have put an extrinsic motivator on it.
And we wouldn't have been able to see
if people are really intrinsically motivated to make this happen.
And when I say that, I mean, every person was a volunteer,
not just the mentors, our admin.
I volunteered my time.
There wasn't a single person getting paid.
And we built an entire company based off of intrinsic motivation.
And had we changed that, I think our model would have been motivated
by extrinsic things like money or something else.
And we were able to go, we just hit our five-year mark,
without starting by funding our vision.
So in your expertise, why do you think the leaders hide from funding their vision?
I think that some people hide from funding a vision
because they don't believe in the vision.
In our case, we believed in the vision.
And so we said, let's see if this can be an intrinsically motivated organization.
In terms of others, I can only guess that maybe they don't believe in it.
We had a purpose for what we were doing.
It was purpose-driven, the way that we did it.
But having tried things in the past, you really have to put a lot into it.
And if you're going to fund something, you have to be able to tell people about it
in a way that makes them want to fund it.
And I can see hiding from that because you have to know it inside and out
and be able to tell somebody how you feel about it.
And ask them for money, which is uncomfortable for a lot of people, myself included.
So I can understand why a person might hide from funding a vision.
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.
My next question for you is two parts.
And I think that those two questions should be the last for our segment today.
What defines a great leader to you, Debbie?
To me, a great leader is someone who listens to others.
It's not about them.
It's not ego-driven necessarily, but it's more vision-driven
that the person is listening to them.
It's more vision-driven that the person is looking at the vision
and that they can pivot as needed.
So I really do think that a great leader is only as great as everyone else in the company.
And that their vision has to be able to pivot as needed
with times that change and with the company culture that might change.
And they have to be able to move and be fluid in that way.
Why would you say that?
What stories or lessons have you learned that come to that conclusion?
You know, every leader that I've seen who's done a great job
has not just stood up and said, hey, do this.
And I've had the great fortune within the Mentor Project to work with people
who are in the military and people who've led with corporations
and people who've led in different ways.
And every person that's a really good leader leads in the same way.
They're not saying, let me take from myself and my knowledge and give it out to you.
They're saying, let me learn from you, bring it in, and try to get us to that place.
So I think a great leader is able to take from others
what they are the big vision that everybody is seeing together,
and they're able to get that out and move it forward.
I like to think of a really great leader being an amazing bus driver,
somebody who is taking that bus and getting it to the destination
it needs to go to safely and quickly and efficiently.
Thank you, Parshana. That was very precise.
And I really, really liked it.
Thank you.
I have one more question for you.
And that is a little deep one.
Debbie, what is success to you?
Success is – success to me is if I'm to think of it, it's like a river.
It's like water. It changes at every moment.
Success to me could be that I accomplished something that I was looking to do,
like I have this.
This is success at the end of the day when I check it all off.
Success is reaching any goal I have, however big or small.
So success for everyone is going to be different,
and it's going to be different every day, every hour, every minute.
So I might have a long-term goal that I say I want to accomplish something in time.
I can try to achieve that, but along the way I'm going to have a whole lot
of little successes I need to get there.
And I think of mentorship and I think of all of the mentors and mentees.
Success to me with that is making sure that the mentors and the mentees
are reaching all of their small and large goals that they're trying to achieve
along the way, because as one thing I've noticed is that a lot of people
start small with their ideas, and they don't even realize how great they can become
at something that they're trying to accomplish.
So success grows with them each time they hit a new level,
and they may have never sought to do that ever.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show,
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.