CEO shares his No. 1 tip for finding a mentor—and the big mistake to avoid on your search
Matt Higgins' "number one" piece of advice for finding a highly successful mentor: Don't ask anyone to mentor you.
The "Shark Tank" investor and RSE Ventures CEO doesn't like it when people cold-message him with mentorship requests, he said during Tuesday's CNBC Make It: Your Money virtual event. "Mentorships don't just form from two strangers," he said.
A request for mentorship from a stranger might seem demanding and come off transactional, Higgins said. Instead, if you have someone you want to enlist as a mentor, reach out with a specific question that you want advice on. Then, you can start to build a relationship that might lead to mentorship down the line.
You could ask Higgins, for example: "I heard on 'Shark Tank' that you struggle with impostor syndrome. Tomorrow, I have a huge interview. Can you give me one sentence of advice?"
"I am going to answer that," Higgins said, adding: "Ask a discrete question that makes it easier for somebody to help you and maybe over time an authentic relationship will form, and they will lean in."
Putting ego aside and asking for help isn't embarrassing, Higgins said. And though he says he wasn't always comfortable with it, he's learned to embrace "the indignity of putting [himself] out there and DMing folks and explaining [his] mission."
Higgins isn't the only "Shark Tank" star to weigh in on the value of mentorship. In a 2020 interview, Mark Cuban said that he isn't "a big mentor guy" because he views them as a "shortcut" to success.
"That's not to say that mentors and coaches can't be of value," Cuban said. "[But] there are people telling you, "I'm going to make you rich' and 'I've got the solution," when they have never really done it themselves."
Daymond John, another "Shark Tank" investor, is less skeptical. Learning how to bounce back from failure from mentors "changed his life," he told Make It in 2021. Those mentors weren't necessarily billionaires or CEOs, he added — they were simply people in his family and community who were willing to help him out.
"You may not be able to get a hold of Daymond John or Barbara Corcoran," John said. "But mentors are all around in our community. They're just in disguise."
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