A recipe for lifelong mentorship: Optionality, trajectory, likeability by Reza Satchu - Quarterly Publication - Ed. 01 - Flipbook - Page 10
A recipe for lifelong mentorship: Optionality, trajectory, likeability by Reza Satchu
MENTORSHIP
HOW TO FIND A MENTOR
WITH YOUR BEST
INTERESTS AT HEART
B Y R E Z A S AT C H U
P
eople
only
have
so
much time to dedicate to
younger people, meaning
there’s only so much time
in the day. So, the question is: How
do you choose? How do you decide who you’re going to spend
your time on? For me, if I look at
the three most important mentors
in my life, I think I was good at figuring out who was also on a trajectory and if both of our trajectories
could accelerate from this relationship.
Two reasons why someone
might want to mentor you:
They think there’s
something about
you that would
enable their
impact or advice
to have an
exponential
effect.
Reza Satchu
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Founding Chairman &
Co-Chair, NEXT Canada;
Managing Partner,
Alignvest Management
Corporation
It doesn’t necessarily mean
that it’s always going to happen,
but it means that there’s some
optionality around it. I think that
people saw in me some level of
optionality.
They like you as
a person.
They’ve actually got to like
you. They’ve got to want to actually spend time with you and they
actually have to like your story
and like your values and like what
you’re trying to do. That this is
someone that I want really want to
help, bet on and spend time with.
At Merrill Lynch, my mentor
was Stan O’Neal, a truly remarkable person. His great-grandfather came to America as a slave
and he grew up without running
water in Birmingham, Alabama. He
came from adversity to a position of power at Merrill. Although
he had a different story, I think
we identified with each other. I
worked really hard for him and he
ended up paying that forward for
me. He wrote my reference letter
to Harvard Business School and
ultimately invested in a variety of
my businesses. And then, when he
hit a rough patch at Merrill, I sent
him a letter saying, “Your legacy
is much more than Merrill Lynch’s
stock price, it’s in all the people
like me who were inspired by you
and have done more because of
you.”
Then at Fenway, there was a
fellow named Peter Lam who took
great interest in me and, at the
age of 28, he made me a full partner. We raised a 500 million-dollar
fund, followed by a billion-dollar
fund. My wife and I were finally
able to pay off our student debt
— I owe Peter a lot. I was very
careful to make it powerful and
impactful every time I interacted
with my mentors. I’d go see Stan
once or twice a year. Either I had
something of significance to tell
him or something of significance
to ask him. I tried to make sure
that the meetings were meaningful and short. I always made sure
that we had some laughs and I
became very close friends with his
assistant — which is also key.
And so, when I think about my
role as a mentor now and why I
created NEXT, it really has a lot to
do with trying to
find people who
have real
optionality.
I view my class as a mentorship
class and what I want is to make
sure that I am spending time with
people that I like, but also people
that have tremendous optionality.
The joy I get is knowing or hoping
that NEXT has a positive impact
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