I was mentored, and I believe that's what allowed me to make MDRT in my third year and Top of the Table in my fifth. I feel I would have been 10 years behind that path without that strong mentorship.

Mentorship is the most important thing, the absolute most important. Now, it doesn't mean you have to pick one person and only listen to what that one person says. But you need to put people around you that want to give you little pieces of knowledge.

Because I only know a couple of ways to learn. You read about it yourself. You retain the knowledge. You find someone that knows what they're doing and saves you nine books, eight videos and nine lessons by pointing you in that right direction. So, I suggest that anybody wanting to make MDRT, wanting to level up at MDRT, find that mentor that works for you.

Listen to them. Create an atmosphere where you're allowing yourself to be mentored.

Some people don't allow themselves to be mentored. An important piece is, open up. It is not personal. Take the feedback as feedback, and apply as much of the skills and knowledge as you can through that mentor relationship. What I needed most work on is I needed help on allowing that mentor to mentor me.

When I'm nervous, I tend to get a little cocky. There's no intention behind the cockiness whatsoever, and in most cases, I don't even know I'm doing it. But I had to be pulled into a room one time by my mentor and say, “Well, you know what? I asked the general public, this was the feedback.” So, sharing negative feedback with that mentee is very difficult. It's difficult to hear for the mentee, and it's difficult for the mentor to share. So, from a personal example for me, I needed help recognizing that this was occurring, and I was able to move past it to continue growing success.

I'm mentoring someone right now. He's provided so much feedback on how the mentoring is doing, and positive feedback, that he's actually helped us develop a program on what we'll now set as a standard for our next set of mentees. Without that feedback from that mentee, we wouldn't be as successful at mentorship. So just like we expect our mentees to be successful,

we also have to take that feedback and keep growing our ability to communicate our program and how we deliver to these individuals.

Ask the questions. Ask a lot of different people. It is very important that you and your mentor mesh to some degree. Now it doesn't have to be perfect, and you can't look for perfection because you look for the rest of your life. But you find someone that you trust, you respect and you ask that mentor. MDRT provides that opportunity. It gives you connections. It allows you to meet people around the world, and you can find those individuals to mentor you. Not only can mentor you, want to mentor you. Vital to the success of a mentee. It might take you a few to connect, but once you have that connection, you'll get excellent mentorship through MDRT.

We've always been told when you're at MDRT, if you're looking for a mentor, you look for Court of the Table and, even better, you look for Top of the Table. In most cases, they've received mentorship to get to where they are. So, they understand what's required. If you ask the questions, they can help you and steer you down the path of who they think you should be talking to.

To level up, find a mentor

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Ryan Jake Perkins, CFP