Okay. I have such a hard time pronouncing that state.
It's one of those states where I'm like,
oh man, I always forget.
How do we say it?
All right. What's your favorite thing about Iowa?
My family's there.
That's a very good answer.
That is the answer to have.
My family's not there.
So other than that,
unless you are inviting me for Thanksgiving,
what's another thing about Iowa that you love?
I think that the people from Iowa are
some of the best people on the planet.
I haven't lived in Iowa for a long time,
but I always still consider it a part of my home,
a part of my upbringing.
Everyone there is friendly.
They really want to help others.
People there are just kind,
generous, really good people.
I would say that the heart of Iowa's goodness is its people.
I love that. I got to try now.
Now, you're like a walking representation of that
because you're all about mentorship
and getting people into mentorship.
A huge shout out to your state for incubating
and cultivating that with you. That's super cool.
Today, we're going to be talking about being a mentor.
You got the mentor project.
You're working with amazing people like Eric Solomon.
I'm not even going to try to go into all the accolades
of what he's been able to accomplish in life.
I'm just super happy that we got connected
and they came on the show and all the good that he gave.
I'm excited to get to know you today as well.
Before we dive into all that is mentorship
and inspiring the world to seek mentorships
and provide mentorships,
what are three resources that have helped you along the way
in your own leadership, Debra?
Well, the first thing that has helped me along my way is mentors.
Not just one, but I mean, I can't tell you
how many mentors I have and I've had.
And that is one of the biggest resources.
I'm so happy you're championing that.
Keep going, keep going.
Yeah, so it's people. Everything goes back to people.
So the first resources, I'd say every person out there
who's been a mentor to me.
Another has been my educational institutions.
I really, I'm a first gen college student.
And so for me, I really, when I went to college,
it was life-changing for me and then to graduate school.
So those were big resources.
I still maintain contact with former professors.
So that's another resource that's a big deal.
And I like to be that resource for students that I teach.
So-
Okay, I'm gonna tangent on this for a minute.
Okay, good.
I need something huge.
And if you look at my PodFest profile right now,
those you were going to PodFest,
it says Jackson went to Brigham Young University
and it says 0.33 GPA.
Oh, right.
I'm a big fan of owning just how good I was
at doing bad in the university.
And so people think I'm outspoken against universities.
That is not true at all.
I am very outspoken in terms of doing education right.
I am very outspoken in terms of, man,
I watched Jordan Angelos come back from his mission.
And I came back from mine.
I looked at his resume on LinkedIn and mine was pitiful.
I had nothing on mine.
And he had already interned at Goldman Sachs.
He had already become part of a venture capital group
as a senior strategist.
By the time we had graduated, like right after we graduated,
he had done all these things.
And I thought back on our reflected
on our university experience.
He was just as fun, if not more fun than I was,
yet he did school right.
He knew how to really unlock the resources that exist
in any university universe, so to speak.
And I think it's so important that just life is harder
if you don't get your degree.
There are certain aspects of life that are much harder.
And anybody can ask me about that.
So sorry, I'm not going to champion for all of you
for our work with people that don't go get your degree
and don't go do it.
But we have to do education the right way.
So I'm really happy to hear, Deborah,
that you're able to maximize your university
and institute opportunities.
And I'd love to give you the mic again.
How did you do it?
Because I screwed it up.
Here's what I'll say.
And I'm not saying, hey, go out and be.
For me, it grounded me.
It gave me a path to follow.
I didn't have a path.
And so I was paying my way through college
and then finding my way through graduate school.
And it was when one of my professors said to me,
she said, you're not doing so great in school.
And I wasn't feeling like I was doing so great in life either.
I was kind of teetering.
And I didn't quite know how much you're
supposed to put into it or what am I supposed to get out of it.
I didn't know anything.
And when she said that, I was like, well,
and I got a little defensive.
And I was like, well, what do you mean?
I'm passing all my classes.
And I'm doing stuff.
And she's like, you're not doing it well.
And so why don't you just quit if you
don't want to do it well?
And she knew me well enough.
I stayed in touch with her for a long time after that.
She needed to give me a kick in the pants, so to speak,
to say, what is it that you want?
Do you really want this?
If you don't, go be the four hour a week worker and do great.
Do whatever you want to do.
But put your all into it.
And at that moment, I was like, you know what?
I'm going to put my all into it.
And I switched it around.
I got really great grades.
And I pivoted away from some of the things
were sort of sucking time that didn't need to be.
And from that moment, I really enjoyed school.
And it made me think about it a little bit differently.
That was really my kick in the pants from a mentor
that got me moving.
So cool.
That's amazing.
Resource three.
This is already heavy and juicy.
I love this.
Resource three is friends.
I can't tell you how often I have been in a bind
and a friend has come there to sort of bail me out
or that I've been there for somebody else.
Friends make me feel like I have purpose and value
and relevance.
And so that's another resource.
So these are all free resources that are out there for us.
That if I didn't have any one of these or only two out
of the three of them, it would just
be crushing for me because I really do rely on all three
as resources for myself.
If I need to have an answer, I go to a friend.
I go to a mentor.
I maybe call somebody that was from my university.
That's really what I go to.
That is such a neat way of looking at it too.
The what you said right there, you
said if I didn't have one of these three resources,
when we can look at that, perhaps even walk and meditate
on it, if not journal that reality,
what if we didn't have friends?
What if we didn't have the institutions?
What if we didn't have mentors in our life?
What a great way to get ourselves grounded
on the principle of gratitude and really
coming to understand the abundance that we
have available to us.
I hadn't done that before.
And now you got me moving towards a meditation exercise
that's going to be a lot of fun.
The education institutes, you did say they're all,
there's all those are available freely to us.
Yes, LinkedIn Learning does not cost money to get into it.
Udemy has courses.
Harvard has free courses on it.
My challenge to all of you is to also think
in terms of the professors, the people who wrote the materials.
They are the well of water, not just a glass of water.
Mentors love to mentor.
They love to help and teach.
So great opportunity to dive in and strengthen your knowledge.
And if you're looking for a program
to set you up with excellent mentors in the mentor project
is right in front of you with Debra.
So we'll come back.
We'll talk about that with Debra.
What is she doing?
Why is she building it?
What's the vision behind it?
And we'll see you guys on the other side.
All right.
Welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Callum, I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
And we'll be talking about the mentor project, what she's doing
to connect all of us with people who can help us move our lives
forward and maximize our opportunities here on the Earth.
I'm a big fan of the quote, a bunch of people
who are doing great things.
And I'm excited to be here with Debra.
Debra, welcome to Vision Pros Live.
Welcome to Vision Pros Live.
I'm your host, Jackson Callum, founder and CEO
of First Class Business.
And I'm super excited to have Debra Heiser on.
Debra, welcome to Vision Pros Live.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, Jackson.
Welcome.
Thanks for having me, Jackson.
I'm super excited to be here.
I'm so excited.
And we're about to get started.
A derivative of that quote, a bundle of sticks
is stronger than one.
And the analogy of that, right, being
able to have multiple people around us and helping us,
it strengthens us.
It gives us more purpose sometimes.
Sure, you can get lost in the numbers.
But that's also the benefit of isolating down
Before I dive in and bring Debra back on, I also want to give you some resource access points.
So number one, over the eyes of the Rafa, part of Latinos, that's opportunities.
This is our homegrown program. My Latino community is just taking off with this.
And we are looking for digital ambassadors out there, virtual assistants. We're training people
who have never heard of LinkedIn, Upwork, Fiverr, Canva, et cetera, that there's a whole world of
opportunity ahead of them. And how do we do that? Well, we get awesome Latino leaders.
If you're that person listening, you're like, I'm a Latino, come be on our podcast, this podcast,
but also our Spanish speaking podcast and inspire the world. Because when you share your story about
where you came from and what you've overcome, your immigration stories or your stories of staying and
fighting the good fight wherever you live, or just living in prosperity on the beaches of Mexico,
there's so many opportunities there. And when you share that story, it gives people the opportunity
to say, you know what, maybe that's possible for me. Maybe that story, maybe it's your story that's
going to inspire some of our Latinos to say, you know what, I can do this. I want in. And we do all
of that free of charge. We want to help people dive into that. We're doing that in India. We're
doing that in Pakistan. We're doing that in the Philippines as well. All of those programs are
now public and moving forward. And at the end of the day, my friends, we've got 8 billion people
to help in this world. So one of the ways we go out doing that is bridging the economic gap to North
America, South America, and rest of the world. One of our partners in doing that is also named
Zach Ullman. Zach Ullman of learnandgrowrich.net. I love this guy. He is now our official chief
financial officer. As of a few weeks ago, we spent the last six months really looking at each other's
things and go, wait, how do you have all the same things I have? But we both focus on completely
different angles. And the abundance was so clear. Zach is not only working with me as a CFO. The
reason why that was so important is because of how much we're scaling and how many companies
we're going to be working with. I needed to find somebody who had the infrastructure and systems
to be able to scale that. He's got a program of around 800 people who are in his tribe, if you
will, in his course and group environment. He runs that super well. He's got a heart of gold.
Two weeks ago, no, maybe three weeks ago now, they did an event down in Columbia where he lives
and 1500 children came out to this event. And it was an event to help the children get access to
food, access to water, access to materials and training and stuff. I don't know a whole lot about
the details, but you can certainly go see exactly what he's up to. And Zach and I are working on
some big plans in terms of helping out in the world. So if you're looking again for a mentor,
a resource, somebody to help you on the financial side of things, then I highly recommend checking
out what he's up to. It's so important that we are wise stewards of our venture as we build.
And that's exactly why I brought him into my doors and my home. The water project, the water
project is not ours. Years ago when I was considering different charities, different causes
to contribute to this came across my radar and I couldn't relate to it. I have never been thirsty
in my life. And at the same time, it gave me an opportunity to meditate. What would it be like
if my kids or I didn't have water? And the water project set this up just like Kickstarter or
crowdfunding projects where you actually get to look at which community you might be helping.
You get to see what project they're working on, how many people are going to be helped by it.
And when you contribute, they will actually give you updated reports of what's happening with the
borehole well that they're building or the sand dam. And that inspired me so much that I've talked
about it ever since then. And this picture, I try to internalize every time. My kids don't even
celebrate Christmas as fanatically as these children celebrate clean water. The impact that
you can drive by giving to this, the impact you can drive even if you do not have the financial
means to give back to this by simply sharing it with a friend or family member who comes to mind
who might actually end up contributing. Never underestimate the value of just sharing and
spreading the word, my friends. I hope you do that with me. And without further ado,
we're going to get back to Deborah Heiser talking about mentorship, how to maximize our lives as
visionaries. Deborah, thanks so much for joining me on Vision Pros Live.
I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me.
Absolutely. So when the mentor project comes up, I have a feeling some people are like,
you're over eager student like me. And I'm like, oh, I know what that is. I can tell you everything
about it already without even hearing it. I'm not going to do that to you today. So tell me about
the mentor project. What is it to you? Who are you helping? How can we benefit the most from it?
So the mentor project, it's evolved and shifted over time in terms of what it's meant to me.
But really, right now, it feels like part of a mission that's much bigger to make a movement
so that people understand that we, you just mentioned there are 8 billion people, but we
are the most precious natural resource in the world. And if we access each other and connect
with each other, we can create unimaginably amazing things. And I've learned that through
the mentors who are astronauts to astrophysicists to artists who go out and they make enormous
change in their careers. And then when they work with a mentee, we've seen mentees do things like
patent a whole bunch of times in a year, or they do things like present at conferences,
they do research, they do all kinds of things that they wouldn't have had access to before.
And that connection, seeing that happen, it just makes me realize that we all as one person can
make a big difference in the world, especially when we do it all together. Oh, it's so huge.
Who would you say outside of family and friends? Who would you say your first mentor was? And what
was that like? So my first mentor was my grandfather, but you don't want family. So I'll say that first,
I'll say that one of my first mentors was that I really knew was a mentor was my college professor.
And she went beyond being an advisor, she would invite me into her home, I got to meet her baby
that she had. And so outside of school, she was, I was getting together with her and meeting with her.
And she, she was the first person that I think said, this person can do it. I don't know if she
will or not, but she can do it. And she was my first, the first person that really believed in me,
and that I had the ability to do something other than, you know, just sort of float through life.
That's amazing. Mine was probably my middle school band director. You know, I may have had somebody
before that, but he took things to an entirely new level. One, I remember the very first interview
and he was, I wanted to be a drummer. I couldn't coordinate my hands and legs to save my life.
And I was so disappointed to get it, but then he selected me to be part of the trumpet players.
And he was a trumpet player. And so he, I mean, he really took me under his wing, became the
seventh grade outstanding band student. We made second in state, you know, and this guy, if you
watch the movie Whiplash, if any of y'all ever seen that, it's about this drummer who just gets
hammered by his college professor. And it lovingly reminds me of my middle school band director.
You know, even though it's like the most intense, like you never want to teach you, no freaking love
Richard Gonzalez. And we still stay in touch to this day. So it's, it's amazing what happens.
Like, and I, we both mentioned people who they had their profession, right? They had their salary
and what they were kind of supposed to do. And yet they ran the extra miles, right? They saw the
opportunities to help us in greater capacities. So in the, in the mentor project, how does it work?
You know, getting, getting, do you sign up and get assigned a mentor? Do you talk to them directly
first? What's the system set up like? So it's pretty easy. We, you just click a button on our
website that says become a mentee, and then you fill out a form. And from there, you do meet with
a person. And so you'll meet with Samantha or someone else who will then, you know, you'll,
you'll put in the form who you think you might want to meet with. And then she's going to put it
together so that you're connected with the mentor. We're now getting a platform that will do that a
lot of that for us. But a lot of people don't realize that, you know, a lot of us, myself
included have always thought, well, I know what I want, or this person looks appealing. This is
what I want. Some of our biggest impactful mentoring has happened from people that they said, I, I
don't know if that's for me, or I don't know that that person is for me. And then we see something,
we say, just try it. So we usually try to get people connected with about five people so that
they can find that, you know, maybe they want to meet with five, that can be helpful. It's usually
not just one person that's the guide. And a person will see lots of different mentors. So they get to
see them one on one. We also do big group meetings where people can see five different mentors. So
we have one, we have TMP Kenya. And so we'll have mentors every month, you know, a panel of about
two to five people speak to students in Kenya, and then they'll say, I didn't even know that that
exists. I want to meet with that person, you know, so it gives them a taste of who's out there.
Because if they're like me, I didn't know anything existed out there, I needed to see something in
order to know that I would even want to be mentored in that. So we try to offer that to students all
over the world.
That's huge. I can see a massive alignment opportunity between what we're building with
opportunities and the mentor project as well. You know, these communities and getting people
connected. So I'll be diving in after the show onto that specific button. I'll be looking at
that specific button and taking a look myself. I'll also be asking my team members to dive into
that and say, Hey, guys, what do you guys think? What do you see happening with this? Where do you
see it going? That would be a lot of fun.
It is free, just so you know, it's all the mentorship is free. So any student around the
world who wants mentorship does not have to pay for it. It is 100% free from the top 1%
in their fields who are offering it.
I think that's a key to mentorship as well. Now, I'm not opposed to paid coaching. I'm not opposed
to paying to work with people at all. I just think for me, there's like a philanthropic value. I don't
know if that's a word, but I'll use it. To mentorship where it's like, okay, this particular
engagement that's happening is kind of above and beyond or disconnected from any transaction that
may also exist. And so I love that you guys stand for that and represent that. I'm curious for
other visionary leaders out there who they want to go about doing good. You know, they have the
intention of building something, but they also have a need to sustain, right? To be able to eat
for a living. They got to eat, they got to have food and water and do other things they want to do.
How do you sustain that? What is the key or what are the ways you diversify revenues and income
so that you guys can create a program like this?
So I'll tell you that and then I want to give sort of the definition of where the mentorship comes
from so that it explains why we did this. So when we were first forming it, we were like, do we want
this to be a for-profit or a nonprofit? Like, what do we want from this? And as a developmental
psychologist, I have always studied the aging, right? And in the middle of it is a developmental
milestone called generativity. So when you said philanthropic, it feels like that. There are three
ways we engage in that. And that's philanthropy, volunteering and mentoring. And they're all things
that we give to someone else without expecting anything in return. So building on that principle,
I said, we really can't be a for-profit and operate really well because that's an extrinsic
motivator. We can't pay our mentors because you're not paid. If you're being paid, you're not a
mentor. So that example of the university professor, this was at her house. This was not
during advising hours. We were already, I was meeting with her outside of school. And so
we need to, we've figured we needed to go about this in a way that we were being true to the
actual form of mentorship with regard to generativity to see if it actually works. No one had ever gone
about something, looking at it from the mentor's perspective. Everyone said to me, no mentor at
that level is going to want to ever give their time for free. Are you kidding? They're too busy.
They're too important. They're too whatever.
What presidents told you that? Everyone, everyone was telling me that. And then we went from 10 to 60 to 80 to 100 within a year of mentors at really high levels saying, can I mentor? So we operate on donations and everybody who's working, except for a few core people that have to get paid, are volunteers.
And that is all falling within the generativity framework. And it works. We're five years in and just in 2024, we gave out $3 million of mentoring hours. And so this is, we really wanted to understand, is this true and real? Because if you go into the workplace, people are paid to be mentors. They're not mentors.
So I'm going to ask you a question about that. So one, I loved everything that you said, the math brain and quality assurance guy. And he says, wait a second, if mentorship is free, which is the way we both kind of agree to that, how is it possible to quantify the value of the number of hours provided for mentorship if we don't technically assign a valued number to mentorship being given? How do you do that?
We took the lowest amount that a person gets for doing what they do. And we calculated it that way, a per hour.
Did you guys fact check the, because a lot of people claim they, you know, I mean, Dan Martell, I have no reason to doubt that he makes $3,000 an hour.
We did not calculate it based on that at all. I know I'm just saying, but I'm just curious about how you guys went about it. And it's not a matter of challenging, the number doesn't matter. Not to me, not to you, not to really anybody.
We asked around and said, what do you get for mentoring? Not for mentoring, for your work or for what you do out, you know, what do you charge? And we can see what people charge and what they get.
We can, we know what they get for speaking engagements and some make $50,000 an hour. We did not put it at that. We put it at 500 because that's a very standard and not very high rate.
And you're doing things people are, if you're an astronaut and you're getting things, you're getting higher than that. If you're an astrophysicist and you're on television, you're getting more than that. If you are, this was not a high rate that we put for the top 1% that are our mentors.
So we decided to go for the lowest possible rate. If, if our mentors who were doing this, decided on something. And that's actually what I'm getting at for the visionary leaders who are out there.
They overthink it analysis paralysis kills great projects, but also not quantifying the value of what we do can quickly.
And also scare people and put people in a position of like fear. So I don't ask about it for the mentorship sake as much as for the other visionary leaders who are trying to position their own value in the world.
Oh, I'm sorry. I love that. I would not on overestimating, you know, you really want to get, that's why I felt like we should go for pretty low.
We could have gone for $50 an hour, but honestly, none of our mentors that that isn't what they would be getting.
I wanted it to be something that was accurate and reasonable because you know what? People should know around the world that, you know, if the year a kid in a, in the middle of the United States and you would not have access to somebody in Silicon Valley.
You want to know, wow, I'm getting that much value. I deserve that. I'm worthy of that.
I wanted that to be out there because I think people need to know that when you are giving of yourself, though it's not a monetary thing, that person should know at some level that they're getting something super valuable.
I love that. It's a, it's a very big piece of inspiration that sometimes we overlook and I was almost overlooking and I was like, I'm so glad you said that because you know the there's this movie called the experimenter, I believe.
It's about Stanley Milgram. I'm so glad I thought of his name. The guy who did all the social experiments on people that was, he wasn't controversial in my opinion, the news turned it into a giant controversy to spin it.
Yet, he came to uncover that we are such sheeple, like we will just kind of follow what other people do and like you could literally take a tank of water to Africa, downplay it so much, right, and it really doesn't have it.
Convince people it's not valuable. And if you if you're strong enough and you get a large enough tribe to tell people it doesn't matter like people will believe that it doesn't matter.
Right. It's amazing what we are willing to believe and so we can use that power for bad. We can also use that power for good. And that's what I love about what you're doing with the mentor project.
Joy using this for a lot of good. So, is there. I'd love to know more about the stories behind, you know, how, like what, what are some, not even necessarily stories.
What types of experiences are coming out of these mentorship opportunities.
Oh, we just had one that ended on Sunday. So, we have an artist, his name is Justin Thompson, and he have a few that I can share that are really exciting that just happened.
So Justin is an artist and he was like, you know, I really love working with kids I can't wait to mentor and I love in person and you know we really got going during coven there was no in person anything.
But as soon as cove it sort of lifted and people really able to fly around a school contacted us in Shirati, Tanzania and said, we would love to get a mentor to come here and we have a house that somebody can stay in.
And Justin who's from California was like, I'll go. And we're like, Okay, so we made it happen. So there's this community of 500 kids from a school.
They had not been exposed to, you know, Western art in the form of cartooning at all. So we sent supplies over we fundraised we sent supplies over sent Justin over a ridiculously long trip.
And he said it was real changing for himself. You know, here he is a guy that lives in California. You know, he's never been thirsty or hungry or anything he's there.
And it was so exciting because they decided to do a mural and he's he's works for Schultz creative studios so he's the guy that gets to draw Snoopy places.
So he's there and he's drawing this enormous beautiful gorgeous mural on the wall of the school now there's nothing on the walls it's brown the whole thing is brown.
And then there's this magnificent mural, all the townspeople came out, including like moms holding babies and the men, and they were all like helping and doing stuff and getting involved in it.
It was so exciting. So he's there then he's working with the kids in the classroom.
And then he said, Okay, well, we won't end with this. I'll meet with the students once a month on zoom and he woke up at 430 in the morning to meet with the students on zoom 15 students that were selected for a scholarship.
And they met with him that way for a whole month and then got to learn how to do cartooning with emotion over the course of the year. So he did that came back and was like, amazing.
They were like, this was amazing. And then he went back the next year.
Another amazing experience and the kids from the previous year came over and they were like, hey, how are you and it was great to reconnect.
Then just this January, he went to Brooklyn, New York, did the same thing with kids in an after school program in flatbush.
And then you know the ideas, maybe we can get these kids bridged between Tanzania and Brooklyn and get art going that way.
So one man, this, this is so exciting to me is one man didn't just change one life. He changed the community. Now he's in a new community, and it's going to be world changing in a way because he were probably going to be able to.
So that's one guy, one guy. And then two of the women who are on Jennifer wisdom and Cynthia Morrow worked with three, three people.
One is somebody who works with us. Her name is Samantha Stone. And she said, I want to get mentorship in research.
So she joined the group along with two high school students, one from Mexico City and one from Virginia and New York.
And they learned how to do systematic review, which I did not learn in graduate school. I have a PhD and I did not learn how to do that.
These high school students were 16 and 15 learned how to do this and did it because two articles came out in peer review journal article just this year.
And in 2024, they're they presented their work in a very large mentoring conference that was in New Mexico.
So that was huge that those students were able to do that. And it was so moving that the young woman in Mexico City said she wants to start a mentoring program in Mexico.
And so these are just a couple of them. There are more examples that we have on our website. But one that bridged kids from other countries and now is making mentorship being seen in other parts of the world.
So I can go on and on.
Huge, huge, huge. I'm a huge fan of the movie and the concept of pay it forward. Right. And doing simple things like that create ripple effects that are universal. Man, that is so awesome.
You said something that you said an interesting word choice. You said it ended on Sunday. What ended on Sunday? Did the relationship for mentorship end?
As Justin got on his plane, he just left Brooklyn on Sunday to go back to California. So it literally was something that just happened.
And just all the pictures yesterday. So it was the relationship still exists and he has the ability to maintain those and do what he wants with it.
But the project itself wrapped up on Sunday. That one week ended. He was able to go there for one week. And so that week ended.
And it was funny because Justin called me on the first day and I remembered him saying this when he was in Tanzania too.
Now he's working with middle schoolers. And if you can put yourself back into band in middle school, we're all looking to fit in and we're not looking to get ourselves out there.
We are not looking to be like me, me, me. That is our life. No way. So he goes to Tanzania and I remember getting texts from him on WhatsApp and he's like, I don't know if they like me.
And then here he is in Brooklyn. He's like, I don't know if they like me on the first day. And in both, it was absolutely overwhelmingly positive.
And so it's really cool to get to see somebody break through to middle schoolers in such an enormous way in just one week. Like that was just, you know, five days that he was with them.
So shout out to all those kids that opened up and showed their vulnerability.
Absolutely. If you haven't ever had the opportunity to do something like that as a visionary leader, then you got to find ways. You got to create, there's so many opportunities. I lived in Uruguay for two years and I got to do that for two dedicated years.
And we painted murals in schools and we'd all sorts of stuff like that. And it was, it was life changing to be able to go through that again for yourself.
In addition to the ripple effect that you then get to see as every, I'm getting older now, decade starts to pass. You start to see like, whoa, like that. I got to be involved in that.
You know, what a great, fortunate experience. So let's shift into a deep, darker subject for a minute.
Deborah, what's the worst leadership experience that you've ever had?
You know, I'd say that my, my worst leadership experience, I mean, I would have to say, is it from my perspective or somebody else's?
You know, what's going to benefit the visionary leaders the most? And it could be either one.
My, my worst leadership moment ever, I think, has always been when I have hesitated with something and doubted myself when a door is open and I didn't walk through it every single time.
And so an example for that would be, you know, I was presented with an idea to do some bigger mentoring during COVID, like in 2020.
And I was so paralyzed by fear of doing it. You know, it was when we were first starting, we first started to grow. We were at like 60 from 10.
And I, I'm a psychologist. I didn't come out as a leader in this way, you know. Psychologists tend to lead themselves.
You know, so here I am. I was so overcome with fear of stepping through that door that I didn't. And I think that that was a bad leadership moment on my part, because that shows that I don't feel secure in what I'm doing.
You know, it showed that I felt weakness within myself. Now, how I could have fixed that, what I was, that I could have gone to one of my three resources and said, help me through this.
Instead, I just let the door close. And did it affect the organization? I don't know. Could have. But I don't know.
We learned from that.
Yeah, I would say that's my worst leadership experience.
I was on a bus in Uruguay. And I remember being, I was probably a little upset and I was tired and I kept getting this prompting, go talk to this guy, this young man.
And I just ignored it. I mean, I ignored it. I just defiant to this. And I got off that bus and I regretted it. Like I felt so bad about it.
And then about a week and a half later, somebody comes by our event and we're having like a kind of a sacred reverend experience and they're pushing one of these megaphone to blast, you know, advertisements around the blocks because that's legal in Uruguay.
At least it was. And so I run outside to like, please turn it off. Like, please go another direction. And I sent this person on their way. And it dawned on me after about five minutes.
I was the same kid. Oh, I felt so awful.
It was like crushing to my soul. I was like, Oh my God.
And I believe full heartedly that the reason why I went through both of those experiences was a giant reminder to not forget to engage, to not leave people in that situation. When you feel that prompting and that calling to act and to do something valuable for somebody else, just do it.
So we all end up having those moments. And I thought about that in a while, full heartedly. What's the best leadership experience that you've ever had?
I'd say the best is the mentor project. It's something I never thought I would do. It wasn't something I signed up for. I was like, I'll be the bus driver of this thing of 10 people.
And it's turned out to be the best leadership experience ever for me because I have connected with people I care about deeply. And it's really about, you know, in my opinion, the feeling of how can I amplify the legacies of everybody that I'm working with.
And that's to me the best leadership experience ever. How, how I got gifted with that, it feels like such an important thing to me to be able to get a person's legacy out there.
So this has been my best leadership experience ever.
I will not be doubling down or one-upping you in relation to that. That is a phenomenal leadership experience and it's going to continue to be one that thrives. I absolutely love what you're doing. You deserve your flowers on what you've built out and how you continue to build it.
My favorite question to ask, if this was the last experience you ever end up having to speak, what powerful lesson can other visionaries learn from your experience?
Everything you need is just a matter of looking to your left and looking to your right. You have all the resources and everything you could ever need because the people that you're surrounded by are going to be there for you when you need them.
And we often forget that, but the most powerful lesson I can say is that you need to do nothing more than look to your left and look to your right.
I love that. People are our greatest resource. I'm a big fan of saying Google things first. Right, use Google. That's a great resource.
And then, yes, all the people around you can also help bridge those gaps too. But the efficient answer is Google. The better answer, the bigger opportunity is to include others.
One plus one often equals 11. And sometimes people overlook the compound effect of working with others. So thank you for that.
Let me drop that little quote there in the comments for anybody that we guys can remember. Hang on to it and meditate on that factor.
We've got about three, four minutes left, Deborah. There's so many directions I could take this. We could go to more stories. We could go to particular programs.
I'd rather know from you, what are the overlooked questions, the overlooked topics that sometimes you want to be asking these environments and the host doesn't make the room for?
What would you like to dive into? I think that's one thing that I would really like to be able to do is to give the definition of mentorship.
And I don't often get that because there's an assumption of what mentorship is. Yes, I made that assumption.
So the mentorship is like a recipe of five ingredients that are really important. It's not a transaction.
And you hit on that earlier when you said that it feels philanthropic. It has it stems from generativity. That's the first ingredient.
We as mentors have to be caring for someone else without expecting anything in return that we are giving that. And we don't care if they do anything for us ever.
We don't care if no one ever knows what we've done. And the mentee involved in this, because it is two people who are involved in it, has to want to receive what it is that the mentor is giving.
So I might be saying, I want to give this to you, Jackson, and you say, but I don't want it.
That means we're not really in a legit mentoring relationship because you have to want what I'm giving.
The second thing is it has to be intrinsically motivated. So you can't be motivated by an award or reward or certificate or money.
And the example I always give is if I asked you if you'd like to go volunteer your time in a soup kitchen, most of my students say, yes, I would.
And they say, because I feel so good about it. And then I say, well, instead of doing that, go volunteer your time at Starbucks.
And they also all say, no, there's no way I'd want to do that. I'd feel sort of taken advantage of.
And that's because that extrinsic motivator makes that same action of giving food and beverage to hungry, thirsty people feel very different.
So if you're getting paid to be a mentor, you're not a mentor.
The next thing is a meaningful connection. You have to like the person that you're mentoring.
So, so often we have people who are assigned a mentor or mentee, and they go through the motions, even though they don't really feel like they're connected with them,
but they're, they feel like it would be a failure if they said, I'd like another mentor. And there's no failure in mentorship.
You just have to go get a different one. And that's, you know, something to be really aware of.
And the one of the biggest is trust. So, you know, I have so many examples of where trust came into play and how that was something that was so critical in mentorship.
But if you don't trust your boss, if you're at work, you think that boss is going to judge you and say, hey, I'm not going to promote them or I'm not going to give them a good performance
if they find out I have a weakness. That's, you have to trust that person. That's not going to be a good mentor.
Likewise, the, the mentor has to trust that that mentee isn't going to go steal their idea and run away with it, or that they're going to throw them under the bus somehow.
There has to be trust on both parts. And finally, there has to be a goal. If you're just chatting, you're not mentoring.
And that goal can shift and change over time. It could be that I need a mentor for one thing right now, and that's it.
And that goal is stated and you get that and that was a mentoring interaction, or it could be one that shifts and changes over a lifetime of mentorship.
So that's really, you know, the same as baking brownies. If you leave the sugar here.
That was amazing, Deborah. I keep going, but I just have to say it too. I'm like, oh my gosh, that was awesome.
So, you know, if you make brownies and you leave the sugar out, it looks like it, but it doesn't taste like it. And that's what mentorship is right now.
We've got a whole lot of brownies without sugar in them that's being that are being told, you know, that it's mentorship. And that's why a lot of people feel.
I'll come back to that. On the positive side, my friends, April Fool's Day is coming up. Make sure to put those salt in those brownies. Okay, go ahead. Keep going.
Yes, in the world, unfortunately, of mentorship coaching, etc. There is a lot of that going on with missing ingredients.
I agree. And I believe in coaching. I believe in advising. I believe in sponsorship and I believe in mentorship.
It does not devalue one if you say it's coaching, not mentoring. It doesn't devalue anything. Coaches are important. They're great.
Great coaches are great. Great coaches are great. I have to really end that.
It's very rare. You know, look at, look, we look at the sports world. I'm going to tangent on it a little bit, but the sports world, there's very few coaches who win championships.
Right. And you look at the business world, there's fewer coaches who win championships. The likelihood that you are currently being coached by somebody who is championship level caliber is slim to none and worth reassessing.
That doesn't make us hopeless. That means that if we want to have a sense of optimism and hope, we've got to do things to really attract the right people and to make sure we're filtering, understand how to do that.
And Deborah, you talked about this earlier and I wrote down the word blind spots because you're right.
And thank you, Dr. Tracy Gappin, who came on the show yesterday and we talked thoroughly about blind spots.
The reality is if I can't see certain things about my life, which I cannot see a lot of things about my life, then if I'm assessing how to solve problems I can't see, I'm the wrong person assessing what I need.
But if I just like, if I only focus on what I want and what I can see, then I'm probably not going to get help with all of the neat things that I need that would help me enjoy my wants more.
So do you mind talking about that a little bit, the blind spots aspect and finding the right person?
We all, you're exactly right. We all have blind spots all the time, you know, and that's why mentors are so important for us because they can see those in us that we can't see for ourselves.
So how do we go about selecting that mentor?
I say select a lot of mentors. Like you don't want to just have one friend in mind.
Thank you. I was diving into limiting belief mindset and you opened it right up and I'm grateful for that. So how do we select those mentors?
It's, you know, we want to pick the person that we trust and that we feel meaningfully connected with and that we want something they're giving.
Let me practice what you taught me. Let me do that. Ready? So if I want to and all of you visionary leaders want, you got to write notes like this, right?
If I want to find the right mentorship, I got to be willing to want to receive it and I got to find somebody who wants to give it.
Number one, two, it's got to be intrinsically motivated by them.
They've got to be willing to do this not because of a bias or because they want to make a bunch of money from me or because they want to date my sister or something else.
Right. There's got to be, you know, an altruistic opportunity there and that can be formed.
The three, I've got to like that person that's assigned to me. It can't be forced.
They might be doing something really cool or really aligned with where I want to go.
But if I don't feel that power of like, then that should be a big red flag for me to watch out.
I should, I've got to be willing to trust even though they're imperfect, even though they're not going to be the perfect solution.
And they're just as human as me to human as error. They're going to make mistakes.
I've still got to be willing to exercise the virtue of trust.
And finally, I have to have a healthy relationships with goals and have certain goals that I then need to be able to articulate clearly and share with them.
And if I do those things and they also align on their side, then we should have a pretty awesome mentorship opportunity.
Did I get that right?
You got it right. Yeah.
All of us can do that, my friends. I did not prescript this.
I did not know this recipe beforehand, but the amount of value, Deborah, that you gave today was absolutely amazing.
Do you have any final thoughts you'd like to share before we wrap up today?
The only final thoughts I have are that I really truly believe that each one of us can engage in mentorship and make a difference in the world.
And when you change one life, which could be yours, you're never just changing one.
You're changing everybody around you who's connected to you.
So I do hope everyone will engage in mentoring.
I love that. Those of you listening in, we love you. We appreciate you.
We really do hope you engage in this process. We need more mentors in this world.
We've got a billion people to help. We go about celebrating and doing good like this.
And we have a fantastic opportunity to create an even more abundant world for all of us.
Below this episode, you will see action steps that you can take to get involved in the Mentor Project and other projects that Deborah is on.
You'll also be able to connect with her on social media.
Below that, we'll have the resources listed out. Her first resource was Mentors.
We did write a guide a few weeks ago on how to hire and qualify the right types of mentors.
We also wrote one for coaches. And I would say rewind her guide on the mentorship recipe.
Those five steps to defining mentorship is far superior to the guides that we put together.
Use those in tandem to build depth for yourself so you can maximize this life.
And we look forward to seeing all of you on the next episode.
But before I tune out, top right corner, don't forget, it says be our guest.
If you are scared to share your vision or timid to share it, consider just meeting with our team and seeing if it makes sense and could be something of value.
You never know how many people you'll be able to inspire by taking the stage for the first time.
And if you're a seasoned veteran like Deborah and you got a vision that's larger than life, that's already got great traction with excellent people, of course, we'd love to see you guys too.
And again, we'll see you all in the next episode of Vision Pro's Live. Take care, everybody.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pro's 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.