4 Tips to Finding the Perfect Mentor

When you’re juggling a career, social life, and hobbies, finding time for career-related training is challenging. One way to improve your skills is by taking a course or program. Another is to read many books. However, one of the most effective ways is to learn from a mentor with the skills and experience you’re looking for. Finding the perfect mentor is not easy, but there are some tips you can follow to find the right one for you.

Tip 1: Choose a mentoring style you’re excited about

To learn from someone with a social media presence, start with an online search. Follow this person on their social media platforms, watch their videos, or subscribe to their newsletters. If they have free seminars or workshops, sign up for them. Your purpose is to learn more about their teaching style, as well as what they teach. You want to choose a mentor whose style resonates well with you.

To learn from a mentor you’ve met in person, build a connection. Most likely this person doesn’t have an online presence because they don’t offer mentoring professionally. They don’t have courses or videos available for you to learn from. This person may be a coworker or someone in your professional network. You’ve heard their advice during a networking event or an informal discussion and their advice resonates with you.

Whether your mentor is a well-known celebrity or someone you know personally, ask yourself if your mentor challenges you. Someone with similar life experience or skills may not be able to mentor you as well as someone with a higher level of skill or more years of experience.

Tip 2: Take action and start learning

When you’ve found someone you like as a mentor, ask yourself if your mentor can motivate you to get results.

Your mentor should inspire you to take action when you watch their YouTube video or teach you about a new concept. Their message should excite you so much that you want to learn and change. They should also be approachable. For example, you should feel comfortable having dinner with them without feeling nervous.

Their mentorship should have you thirsting for more knowledge about the same topic or madly scribbling notes. You should be excited about applying what they are trying to teach you as soon as possible.

To get the best results from working with a mentor, have some goals in mind. The worst scenario is to be too general about what you want your mentor to teach you. If your mentor posts a lot of learning material online, focus on one topic at a time, not getting your hands on everything they have ever published. If your mentor wants to help you improve your skills, don’t set a general goal, such as, “I want to get better at my career.” Set specific goals and share these with your mentor.

Tip 3: Choose a mentor who chooses you

Getting feedback from your mentor is important. Don’t just take classes with your mentor. Sign up for coaching sessions or group sessions to practice what you’ve learned. Take your mentor out for coffee and ask for an evaluation. Get feedback on your progress as often as you can. 

If you can schedule an hour with your mentor, plan goals in advance. Prepare questions to ask your mentor, or list what you’d like to improve on before your meeting. Set clear expectations and outcomes to show your mentor that you respect their time.

Work with a mentor who is invested in your future. After receiving feedback, take some time to reflect on what you’ve learned. Was the feedback valuable? Can you use the feedback to make improvements? Did your mentor seem genuinely invested in providing you with meaningful goals and useful feedback? 

A mentor who is a good match will encourage you, tell you what progress you’ve made, be honest in their critique, and help you set goals for next steps.

Tip 4: Focus on making progress

Finding the right mentor is like an investment. You want someone who is approachable, excited about what you want to learn, and honest when mentoring you. It will feel uncomfortable and even painful to be told that you aren’t doing something well. However, if you only spend time doing things that you already excel at, you will not grow as a person.

Embrace change and getting uncomfortable. You chose this mentor because they are great at something that you aren’t. Follow their lead and get comfortable facing your fears. Each time you challenge yourself to try a small goal, you make progress. When you look back, you’ll be surprised at how far you’ve come.

In life, the best direction to keep moving in is forward. After you reach one milestone in the road, aim for a new one. Always keep challenging yourself and you will grow as a person.

Key Takeaways

Finding the perfect mentor is a search for a two-way relationship. Your mentor should be someone you are inspired to learn from, but also someone who is excited about seeing your career advance to the next level.

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Gratitude Quotes

Time to reflect! We’ve now completed the first six months of 2023, also known as Q2 in business circles. It’s also the end of another week. What are you grateful for?

There are so many wonderful things: family, friends, the weekend, another fulfilling week… the list goes on. 

As we think about the things we’re grateful for, we’ll share some thoughts about gratitude from writers and storytellers.

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.” — Neil Gaiman

“I want to touch the heart of the world and make it smile.” — Charles de Lint

“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relatives.” — Oscar Wilde

“New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” — Kurt Vonnegut

“Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself.” — Alice Walker

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Yummy Benefits of Remote Work and Travel

One of the very best benefits of remote work is saving time commuting to and from work daily. The tradeoff is one big in-person meeting once a year so you can interact off screen. It’s an opportunity to socialize without checking what time your virtual meeting ends. Kind of like the yearly Christmas party, but better, because you stay in a nice hotel and (depending on how well-traveled you are) get to visit a new city.

The benefits don’t end there. You also have three meals a day – paid for at the company’s expense. The downside of this setup is it’s a little restrictive – you eat when it’s time to eat, and you eat where they’ve decided you’re eating. If you’re a free spirit, that can be a downer, but this is a great convenience if you like a well-planned life! The benefits of meals provided by the company only continue from there.

Benefit 1: Breakfast

If you’re always in a hurry in the morning, or you hate putting together a million items for a quick breakfast, then breakfast is your first bonus of the day. When you get to the meeting room, an assortment of pastries and fruit and a variety of tea is there to greet you. Coffee is just caffeinated or decaf (unless you run out to Starbucks first). When you’re done eating, you can leave your dishes around and they’ll magically disappear.

Benefit 2: Try new food recommendations

You’ll have opportunities to try new cuisine. If the style of cuisine is not something you’re familiar with, your coworkers will be eager to help with recommendations. You may also find yourself eating food that you should be familiar with, but it looks different, like a salad that you need to cut. How often do you eat your salad with a knife and fork? Always be ready to try something new!  

Benefit 3: Fine dining

If you haven’t experienced fine dining, you’ll have more tales to add to your life experience. A coworker said she chose risotto as her main dish because she didn’t know what to pick. She’d never experienced fine dining before. I recommended the sablefish or duck because I’d had sablefish several times at restaurants. Later, I realized this might have sounded like I was a regular at four and five-star restaurants. Oops. I’d forgotten to add that those experiences were all company dinners. 

Key Takeaways

Remote work can be isolating. You don’t see your coworkers during your regular workday. This routine changes when you travel for your yearly in-person team meeting, which is like a mini-vacation away from home. One of the highlights is the delicious food and the plentiful opportunities to try new dishes. This is definitely a perk of remote work for a company.

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Clever Restaurant Marketing Tactic with Food

Does food taste better when it’s cute?

I dined at a Michelin-recommended restaurant where my party was tempted by the desserts shaped like fruits and animals. For example, pastry shaped like a purse, custard buns that looked like apricots, and tarot buns that looked like Minions.

We chose the duck-shaped, mango-flavored milk gelatin. It had the texture of thick ice cream and pudding. Or maybe I shouldn’t say “it,” like how we refer to food, but more like “it” the way we refer to cute puppies or kittens. The words “mango-flavored milk gelatin” doesn’t sound appealing, but when you look at the photo, and when you see your table neighbors ordering cute ducks sitting innocently on a plate, you need to order one.

My Pokemon expert friend said the duck was Psyduck, so he said we had to try it. He’s spent many years capturing Pokemon on his phone. Here, he had just found another Pokemon.

From a business perspective, I admire this clever restaurant marketing tactic. Make your food cute, and the orders will come. Make your food into the likeness of creatures your customers love, and the orders will come.

Was the dessert delicious? Yes. Would you order food that looks like cute animals?

6 Tips for Travel Team Get-Togethers If You Work Remotely, Part 2

If you’re an extrovert and love to travel, a week-long, expenses-paid business trip to a resort town is paradise. If you’re an introvert, “team bonding” and “hanging out all day with your coworkers” sounds intimidating. 

There’s a reason you love remote work. You’re in the safety of your own world and most communication takes place via DMs through your fingertips. Going from rarely seeing your coworkers to seeing them all day?😲Let’s not think about it.

But here we are, at our annual remote team, in-person get together. As you prepare for your first company meeting, consider these tips if you’re with your coworkers in person for the first time. If you’ve read part 1, continue with part 2.

Tip 4 Start a routine if your days are not routine

The daily routine of remote workers, especially those who work from home, is a little different from those who work on-site at an office. If you work in person, you’re accustomed to following a routine before you leave home, when you’re at the office, and before you leave the office.

If you work from home, it’s not a big deal if you don’t have time to pack your lunch. You can scrounge around to see what you can find in your kitchen. If you feel too hot or cold, you can take a few steps to get to your bedroom and do a quick outfit change. 

When you’re working for a week in person, you need a whole new routine. You may need to bring your laptop because you can’t leave it at your home office. You have to remember to bring any critical medications because they won’t be just a few steps away.

Before you go on your trip, take notes about what you’ll need to bring. Once you’re at the hotel, write notes or set reminders on your phone to remember what you need to do or what you need to bring to your first meeting. These tiny points will help your day to run more smoothly during your work week away from home.

Tip 5 Prepare to challenge yourself

Challenge yourself. Always. This is a powerful goal, whether you work in person or remotely. You’ll have many opportunities to challenge yourself, whether it is to have long conversations, try treetop excursions, sample new food, go on a scavenger hunt, or make a presentation in front of a group. 

Extroverts love to meet new people, so hanging out with your teammates from breakfast to bedtime is fun. You have an abundance of opportunities to get to know your coworkers.

For introverts, being with your teammates for several days can be exhausting. You’re socializing with almost complete strangers, making small talk, or diving deep into topics such as family. You’ll need to be your extroverted self. 

No matter how social you are, there is something new to try. It’s a chance to work and have fun at an all-expenses paid vacation. 

Tip 6 Nurture those connections

Now that you’ve had the chance to connect with your teammates in person, keep the connections going. Follow up on conversations you had during your get-together. Ask your coworker if they checked out that TV show you recommended.

Depending on how much you enjoyed socializing with your coworkers, you might find it lonely to return to working on your own. Or you might enjoy returning to working on your own again. It’s a bit of an adjustment for remote workers to go from working alone, to being surrounded by your coworkers all day, and returning to solitary work again.

On the bright side, you’ll have made new connections or deepened relationships with coworkers you work with regularly. Your family and friends will also be excited to hear about your working vacation!

Key Takeaways

Spending several days with your coworkers can be a fun experience. It’s a chance to meet them in person and leave the house to go to work. If you’re an introvert, seeing your coworkers all day could be overwhelming, but following some tips can turn this trip into a memorable working vacation. 

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