Invisible Mentors

Have you ever wanted a specific mentor in a particular area of your life?

I’m sure you have. We all have.

Maybe you want a mentor for …

• Financial Advice
• Career Advice
  • Freelancing/Consulting
  • Software Development
  • etc
• Health and Fitness
• Real Estate Investing
• Parenting
• … and more

However, most of the time you can’t find a mentor because you dont know anyone who has those skills or you simply are in an area in which no one is around to fufill that role.

An Invisible Mentor can help fill that role.

What is an Invisible Mentor?

An invisible mentor is a mentor who has no idea that they are your mentor. You learn from them remotely—either by randomly interacting with them in person or simply by observing their actions and behaviors.

For example, I have many invisible mentors. Some of my mentors are real estate investors who are wildly successful. I have fitness mentors who are at a completely different level than I am. I have software development mentors who I learn from all the time. All of my mentors have no idea that they’re mentors of mine.

Who are these mentors?

They can be friends, they can be family, but most often in my experience they are real people that have a public online persona (in one way or another). They often post content about whatever you’re interested in being mentored in. If there is published content of said mentor, they don’t even need to be alive. They could have written books or journals or gave oration that was notated. If you can learn from them in any form, they can be your mentor.

For example, here are some (not all) of my invisible mentors with what I choose to be mentored on by them:

• Gary Vaynerchuk (business, marketing, content creation, positivity)
• Grant Cardone (real estate, sales, mindset, leadership)
• David Heinemeier Hansson, aka: DHH (software, business, software mindset)
• Elon Musk (drive, life mission, leadership)
• Jocko Willink (discipline, leadership)
• David Goggins (discipline, will power, fortitude, resilience)
• Blueprint (independence, artistic expression, sobriety)
• Malcom Moore (snowboarding)
• Viktor Frankl (meaning of life)
• Marcus Aurelius/Seneca/Epictetus– (life, philosophy, leadership)
• Robert Greene (human nature)

I have many more that span into areas such as relationships, arts, and more. Many overlap with others and I learn from them all.

Your mentors are your mentors. You get to choose them. Not everyone will agree with your choice of mentors. I know that many people will disagree vehemently with my partial list above – I’m ok with that, and you’ll have to be ok with it too. You can’t make everyone happy.

Lastly a mentor can also be a negative mentor. As in, they can do things that you dislike and you use them as a mentor in what not to do. You use them as a template for things to avoid/do the opposite of.

Which leads me to …

Choose what Qualities Your Mentor will Mentor you on

In other words, you don’t have to agree with everything your mentor says or does.

For example, I might agree with what one mentor says about business or marketing or mindset, but I might completely disagree with them politically or personally on another area of their life.

You have to know what your mentor is teaching you and filter out the stuff you don’t care about.

For example, many people see Grant Cardone as a grifter. However, I’ve studied Grant for many years and he’s doing one of the things that he can teach you to do: Sell. Some people hate this about him. But he’s giving you a real world demonstration on his tactics, and they work. If you look past that he’s always selling (and trust me, you’re being sold to) there are some INSANE nuggets of wisdom this guy drops. So, for me, I have learned when he’s selling me so that I can filter that out so I can learn from him. He came from nothing and built an empire of real estate. He continues to tell people to do the same thing and I’ve watched many follow in his footsteps and become quite wealthy, but not through selling, but through real estate. So, for me, I’m learning and getting into real estate now. Grant is one of my invisible real estate mentors. I also treat him as a mentor on selling because he’s an amazing salesperson.

This is just one example. There are areas of Elon Musk’s life I don’t agree with, or some things that David Goggins’ says that I don’t apply to my life. If Goggins’ told me about real estate, I wouldn’t listen. He mentors me on being tough and resilient and I look to him for reminders of that when the going gets tough and I get what he calls the “woe is me attitude”. He helps get me out of those moods. He’s one of my invisible mindset mentors. He also works out when he doesn’t want to, thats discipline. He’s also an invisible discipline mentor.

How to Ask Invisible Mentors Questions

Sometimes you need to ask your mentor a question because you need clarification. You can do this a number of ways.

• Email
• Leave a comment on a piece of their content online
• Phone call
• Chat in person

If the mentor is someone who is online, an email or comment is often the best chance you have at getting a reply. Often a community of like minded people will reply with some great advice that might echo what your mentor says. Sometimes your mentor will reply directly.

I remember one such time one my mentors replied directly to me, in 2011. It was Gary Vaynerchuk. He was posting on LinkedIn one day, then twitter the next, then Facebook, etc. So I reached out via LinkedIn messenger and sent Gary a message and asked him how he decides to post on one platform vs another. His reply was so succinct and so perfect that it’s been etched into my mind:

“Go fishing where the fish are.” – Gary

In other words, if people are on that platform, go there. Plain and simple. Nothing more to it. I’m sure there is other strategy behind it, but it made sense to me and helped me immensely. I ran with that and found that I got the most reach and response from people on Twitter (now X), and I amassed a 25K+ following there. In other words – I went fishing where the fish were, for me.

You might not get your mentors direct reply, but you’ll often get what you need from the supporting community of others who are treating the person as an invisible mentor as well.

Mentors are Ephemeral

In other words, your mentors do not have to be mentors forever. Once you master said skill, or decide to move on from it, that invisible mentor no longer has to remain an invisible mentor. For me, I’ve had many invisible mentors that have come and gone. I still have vast respect for some of my previous mentors, but I’ve grown beyond them now, or realized they no longer align with what I’m after in my life.