FBC – 374 – The truth about choosing a mentor

The truth about choosing a mentor.

Are you looking for a mentor who can help you reach your goals faster?

Finding a mentor can help you compress years of struggle, trials and errors into days thanks to their experience.

If you listen to most highly successful people, they will advise you to find a mentor.

Now, there are some things that they don't tell you… Some things that are very important and that you need to know about before embarking on a quest to find the mentor who is going to catapult you to success.

In this podcast episode, you are going to discover the hidden side of mentorship and you will be able to get an edge over your competitors

Leave me a comment to tell me how and where you are looking for your mentor

— Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/freedom-by-choice/support

I wanted to talk to you about mentorship, OK? Because this is a subject that I have been exploring quite a lot recently, because I am mentoring people and, I will advise you to get a mentor.

A mentor is actually very good because they can take years and years of information and trial and error and they can compress it for you and basically show you the map to get to where you want to go.

I told you my mentors, even though they had no idea they were my mentors, were in different different fields. One of my mentors was named Joanne Warner. She was my boss in the first company where I worked.

And the other one was was actually assigned to me when I joined the company. And his name was Dominic Yong. So these people are not famous. They're not in record books or anything, which tends to show that mentors don't have to be, you know, like famous people or something. They don't have to be billionaires. They just have to be people who can show you a way of where you want to go in life.

So I want to be able to mentor people and show them what I know and maybe something that could help them and pave the way for them. Just telling them what I've been through before and some of the hurdles that are waiting for them and guide them.

So the episode is not just saying, oh, yeah, mentors are so good, you know, just get a mentor and stuff. Yes, you should absolutely get one. But there is something that you need to understand before you get a mentor.

It's just like everything you know, there's good and bad. You have to choose that mentor very carefully. The reason why I'm saying this is because the people you spend the most time with are the people who influence your life a lot, to be honest.

So if you have a mentor, chances are that you're actually going to spend a lot of time with that person and that person is going to influence your life. And that's the thing, right? You will very often adopt the way of thinking and the thoughts and opinions of your mentor.

The truth about choosing a mentor

And this is something that you need to know and then you need to understand. Because if you don't choose your mentor carefully, then you might actually turn into that person.

So there might be some things that you want to want to rub off on you from that mentor, right? But there are other things that you might not be aware of, that will also rub off on you. OK, so please understand your mentor. You will adopt their way of thinking if you're in like a real mentorship situation.

And there's something that you need to ask yourself, well, yeah. Do I want this or not? Do I like the way this person thinks? And not only about your business or something. Because, again, you can have mentors in different subjects. You can have someone who is your mentor in relationships and someone who is your mentor in sports and someone will be your mentor in business. OK, so it doesn't mean that you have only one mentor that does it all.

I'm not saying that bad things are going to happen. I'm just saying that this is something that you have to understand. You will adopt a lot of things from your mentor. So you choose them carefully, choose someone you know, some people who have good values and they're nice people and they're trying to do some good and stuff and also understand that your mentor's opinions are just opinions. They're not the truth. The universal truth.

So when your mentor is teaching you stuff, please, please, please, always make sure you take the information, analyze the information, then form your own opinion and then create a brand new opinion on it. OK, so if it goes in line with what the mentor said, yeah, yeah, fine.

You know, but don't just ingest everything they're giving you and then just spit it out. Try to be your own version of these teachings.

My goal here is actually to get you to ask yourself these questions or think about the subject that you might have never considered before. And think about it from your own perspective, with your own history, form your own opinion, and then you use this to move forward in life or help others move forward.

OK, so that was my message here for the people who are and looking for a mentor and stuff, you know, it is very good to have a mentor, if you ask me.

How I actually pick a mentor now

Most people pick a mentor by how impressive they look. That is exactly backwards.

The right question is not how successful they are. It is whether they have done the specific thing I am trying to do, recently, in conditions like mine. A billionaire who scaled with a 200-person team cannot teach a solo operator how to ship alone.

I look for three things. Proximity: they are one or two steps ahead, not fifty. Proof: they have receipts for the exact outcome I want. Presence: they actually answer when I ask a real question.

I have paid for access to famous names and learned almost nothing. I have traded value with quiet operators and changed my whole trajectory. The lesson stuck.

Good mentorship is really pattern transfer, and the founders I trust keep pointing at the same idea. Stripe Atlas built its founder guides around operators who shipped, not theorists. Harvard Business Review has covered how the best mentoring is specific and reciprocal, not worship from a distance.

I write about the ones who shaped me in my Substack essays, and I break down their tactics in my growth hacking playlist. Pick proximity over fame.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the truth about choosing a mentor for your business according to FBC 374?

The truth about choosing a mentor is that paid one to one mentorship is usually overpriced and most operators benefit more from following three writers consistently, joining one paid community, and running monthly accountability calls with peers. Real mentorship is asymmetric. A great mentor saves you ten years of mistakes, but those mentors are rare and rarely accept money.

How do you find a real mentor who actually helps your business grow?

Find a real mentor by becoming the kind of person experienced operators want to spend time with. Ship visible work, ask one specific question instead of asking for advice, and follow up with how you applied the answer. Most cold outreach fails because it is generic and self serving. Approach mentors with proof of action, and the right ones notice.

Why do most paid mentorship programs fail to deliver real value to clients?

Most paid mentorship programs fail because they teach generic frameworks to mixed audiences instead of solving the buyer specific bottleneck. A 5,000 dollar mastermind run by a coach who never built your business model is rarely worth the cash. Buyers benefit when the program ties to a measurable outcome, has fewer than twenty members, and shows results publicly.

What questions should you ask before paying for a business mentor in 2026?

Ask the mentor four questions before paying anything. What businesses have you personally built and what was the revenue. Can I speak to three current or former clients privately. What specific outcome will I achieve in ninety days. What is the refund policy. If any answer is vague or hostile, walk away. Real operators answer all four.

About the Author

Martin Ebongue is the founder of martinebongue.com, an online business and lifestyle design blog focused on helping aspiring entrepreneurs build location-independent businesses. Since 2014, he has been creating and scaling online ventures across multiple niches, from digital products and affiliate marketing to SaaS and content platforms, while traveling the world. He shares the real-world strategies, tools, and systems that work, with a particular focus on AI-powered automation for solopreneurs. Follow him on YouTube, X (Twitter), and Instagram.

Related Reading

• FBC , 4 Part 1 , This is the story of my life: Success, Failure and The Hurdles.
• FBC , 3 , Escape your life of sacrifice! Don’t settle for less than your dream lifestyle.
• FBC , 8 , The Weirdest Challenge To Boost Your Confidence
• Other really cool tips that will give you an unfair advantage