To be able to click with your mentor and have an easy rapport is
the goal. Kathi Huntley, a leadership coach with Advance
Power Leadership International in Saint Jo, Texas, knows the
whole mentoring process well. Not only is she a mentor and coach
for her clients, but she was also mentored by a leadership coach.
"The best mentor doesn't make you reliant on them,"
she says. Rather, they help you find what you really want to do and
come up with feasible ways to get there.
When searching for a mentor, there are some key questions to
ask, says Huntley. Do you have a rapport with this person? Do you
feel like you can raise questions? Does he or she ask about your
dreams and desires for your business? And once you've found
someone, like so many things in business, it's the level of
communication you have with your mentor that will determine the
success of the relationship.
The communication channels were clear when Matt Springfield
hooked up with his two mentors, Kent Hill and Harry Carneal.
Springfield, 29, founded Elliptix LLC, a Dallas-based information security
firm, in January 2002, under the direct guidance of Hill and
Carneal. The three are so in sync that both mentors serve on the
Elliptix board of directors.
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Springfield met his mentors while working at an investment firm
where the two worked. Hill was the first to take him under his
wing. "I traveled with Kent [for nearly a year] and learned
quite a bit from him," says Springfield. "Specifically,
[watching] his presence in meetings has really taught me to sit
back and observe."
Especially in venture capital meetings with business owners,
"Kent had a way of sitting back, listening and studying,"
says Springfield. "It's almost like a poker game. He'd
extract the information that [we] needed."
For someone in the security business, that "sifting through
the nonsense" skill seems invaluable. And Carneal brought
something else to the table: He helped Springfield bridge the gap
between the technology that was his forte and the plain-speaking
consumer. "I typically will go into a little too much
detail," says Springfield. "[Carneal] helps me to build
the actual presentations to where they make sense, [as] my mind
doesn't think like a consumer's mind."
And it's not only their business skills that Springfield
wants to emulate. He says it's Hill and Carneal's ability
to meld work and family life so well that inspires him.
"They're family men," says Springfield. "How
they are still able to [maintain] a good balance [between] family
and work has been important to me." With sales expected to hit
nearly half a million for 2002, Springfield's emulation has
certainly paid off.
Originally published in the August 2002 issue of Entrepreneurs Start-Ups magazine
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