by Dan Ulin
I mentor exceptional college- and grad school-bound kids and empower them to crush it in school, work, and life.
I’m older than my adolescent, teenage, and twentysomething mentees—not wiser. With the understanding that there are no mistakes, only learning opportunities, I have more life experiences to reframe so I can “fold time,” as it were, and save my mentees a few years or a few decades. If something I learned in my 30s, 40s, or 50s (and would prefer to have learned far sooner) can help them get ahead, great. If not, I’ll gladly refund their misery.
One of the reasons time folding is so close to my heart is that I spent decades going over my “mistakes” (which got me nowhere) until I realized, somewhere around the age of 40, that I’d missed the opportunity to reframe these as valuable learning opportunities decades ago. One of the most important aspects of time folding is erasing the idea that there are “should do’s” and replacing those words with the phrase “I would prefer to’s.” Empowering language like this builds resilience and adaptability—two critical character traits for young people to cultivate. They’re in extremely short supply and, when contextualized and put into practice, serve kids well as they continue growing in a world that’s shifting and changing at light speed.
There’s no monopoly on wisdom, and when adolescents, teens, and early twentysomethings realize that their life experiences are no less valuable than those of someone their parents’ age, they light up. It’s one of those rare experiences for young people that empowers them to source self-esteem from within rather than seek it from without. This flavor of confidence enables my mentees to “lead the pack” in and out of school.
And leading the pack doesn’t preclude pulling up others behind them to keep pace.
I know the mentor-mentee relationship is really clicking when, five or six sessions in, my mentee can course-correct me on an observation I’ve made. That feeds two birds with one seed: it makes me a better mentor for them and, in turn, models behavior they can take into the world as they, in turn, mentor others.
My mentees bring this way of thinking into their own workshops as they mentor younger kids—a key component of the Elite Student Coach Program. The pay-it-forward mentorship model is the very definition of the proverbial win/win.
And let’s not overlook the lateral (“dojo”) mentorship model either—if it can work with competitive athletes on the playing field, it can also work with colleagues in the office. There’s even the “mentoring up” model in which kids mentor adults; this is seriously empowering.
Here’s a pro tip for young people looking for a place to begin: if you’re starting from ground zero and have no work experience, seek out a mentor using personal or alumni networks. It’s an excellent way to practice the fine art of self-advocating.
Another pro tip: People love to talk about themselves, so get out there and ask those who’ve done what you want to do (doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, artists, writers, and so forth) how they got started. Lean in and listen. If you ask your interviewee’s permission to record the interview, then transcribe and clean up the resulting document using equal parts AI and your own brain, you’ve got chapter one of your new book, How They Got Started (or something along those lines).
Run 12-15 interviews, and you’ll become an expert in interviewing others (in and of itself a highly monetizable skill), get ahead of others who have no experience, and, most importantly, have a book you can leave behind when you leave a successful interview.
The combination of humility, likeability, and ingenuity has serious stopping power.
Remember: outstanding people stand out. Seize your power—you’ve got this!
Here’s an example of one of my mentees who’s seriously crushing it. She’s already gained admission to several top-tier colleges and universities and is waiting on the Regular Decision results from several others (which will be released by the end of March or the top of April). Asha, who lives outside of Denver, is a high school senior born with severe hearing bilateral hearing loss. She’s founded two successful startups: 1) the Asha Art Academy, a workshop program in which she mentors young artists in creating a portfolio of work over two or three days, and 2) Superhear-os, a super-original aid charm company that challenges the negative stereotypes surrounding hearing impairment. The name originates from Asha’s childhood, when she couldn't pronounce “hearing aids” and called them her “heroes” instead. This playful term has come to embody Asha’s mission: to make wearing hearing aids a joyful and uplifting experience. Asha is also a highly-accomplished pianist and violinist who performs in her school orchestra and is a varsity soccer player and competitive ski champion. As her mentor of many years, I’m proud to be working with Asha; she’s one of my real-life superheroes!
Connect with Dan
Comments