Here is the story of three pairs of mentors and mentees, how they forged their relationships and how they maintain them so you can implement this advice with your mentors—both new and established.
Kofo Akosile and Charles Adi, CFP®
When Kofo was a sophomore in college in 2014, the Nigerian Student Association had a career event where young professionals came and talked about their job. Charles spoke at the event.
“He said something that stuck with me,” Kofo explained. “He said, ‘Find something you want to do that you wouldn’t need to be paid for.”
The idea of helping people with their finances and navigate the financial system intrigued her. She wanted to know more.
“She asked me, “Could I shadow you?’” Charles said, noting the nature of his advising role would make shadowing him uninteresting. So instead, he offered an office visit where he arranged for Kofo to meet four different advisers to get different perspectives. The last of her meetings was the firm’s main partner. She came out of that meeting with an internship where she would work directly with Charles.
One day, Charles noticed Kofo wasn’t doing her best work. He didn’t mince words.
“I told her, ‘Your quality of work sucks,’ and instead of taking it personally she said, ‘You know what? You’re right,’” Charles said. “[With] the maturity she showed in the ownership of her mistakes, she proved herself as a hard worker and someone who was really intelligent.”
Kofo recalls the story with a laugh, but she wasn’t laughing at the time.
“It can be hard to hear sometimes when people are brutally honest with you,” she said. “I took a moment to think through what he was saying, not what I felt. It was an opportunity to hold myself to a higher standard. I thought, ‘Oh, he’s not going to let me slide. He’s holding me to a standard I should hold myself to.’”
“From then on I had a newfound respect for her and saw her as having a future in the profession,” Charles said.
Right then, Kofo realize she’d found her mentor. So after her internship ended, she would frequently update him on what was going on with school, her job prospects and later discussing career challenges. During their time as mentor/mentee, Kofo took on several internships, graduated and got a job, and Charles started his own business.
The pair meets about once every quarter. Sometimes they go out to lunch or meet at Charles’ office.
“Part of the beauty is not only am I growing, but I get to see his growth—I get to see him getting to new heights,” Kofo said.
Mentoring Kofo has given Charles a reminder of early career challenges.
“It’s easy to forget when you’re in the profession so long the things you struggle with and stumble on,” Charles said. “It gives me a lot more patience with the people I work with on my side.”
Things Kofo and Charles want you to remember when cultivating a mentor/mentee relationship:
- It takes time. Don’t force it. Like with any relationship, it has to be a good fit and it needs time to grow or it’s just not going to work.
- Add value as a mentee. Everybody’s time is precious and if you’re constantly taking and never giving, the relationship won’t work.
- Be genuine. You can’t have an authentic relationship with a mentor if you’re not being genuine.
- Stay in contact. Meet and email on a regular basis.
“The value that I’ve been receiving is motivation,” Kofo said. “It’s a very tough career. It’s helpful having someone speak life into you and letting you know it’s going to be ok.”
Diana Yanez and Janet Larsen, CFP®
Diana Yanez had organized a Toastmasters speech contest and Janet Larsen was one of the contestants. They struck up a conversation and Janet told Diana she was a financial planner.
Diana had heard about financial planning by reading George Kinder’s Seven Stages of Money Maturity.
“My exposure to financial planning did not make me feel it was the career for me. The way Janet presented [financial planning] sounded like the book, but I didn’t think it was real. I didn’t tell her that flat out, but I thought, ‘This woman is lying, she’s predatory and sells people things they don’t need,’” Diana recalled with a laugh.
At the time, Diana was unhappy with her career as a business analyst and was looking to switch careers. When she saw Janet again, Janet brought her a CFP Board brochure about why financial planning was a great career for women, then she invited Diana to an FPA NexGen meeting.
“It was obvious to me that she was full of ambition and such a good fit for being a financial planner that I could see her being one and being successful at it,” Janet said.
Janet herself had several mentors—some official and some unofficial. With Diana, the mentor relationship evolved. Diana asked if they could get together so she could ask Janet more questions.
“She was very proactive,” Janet said. “Once she decided she was going all in, she was very enthusiastic about it.”
In 2015 Diana decided to go for it and make a career change. She wanted to take a year off to volunteer and study for the CFP exam, and Janet encouraged her to do so.
“Janet was like, ‘Do it. Do it now. You’re single. You’re not happy with your job. You can do it,’” Diana explained.
Janet had the professional and life experience that Diana could learn from, and Janet encouraged Diana to do things that she wouldn’t have otherwise done. Things like going to FPA Advocacy Day in California and applying for an FPA Diversity Scholarship. Janet always kept her word and made time for Diana.
“This relationship came to me right when I was asking for it and it was a springboard to other people that I met,” Diana said.
Janet offered Diana what her mentors had given her throughout her career: guidance, answers to questions, openness, inclusion and introducing her to people she could connect with.
Though the pair are separated geographically now (they met in California, but now Diana lives on the East Coast), when they were close together, they would meet once a month, sometimes for lunch.
“I would not be where I am today if it weren’t for her,” Diana said.
Advice from Janet and Diana for cultivating mentorships include:
- Ask questions and ask for what you want. Make sure you know each other’s goals and be respectful about asking questions and asking for what you want.
- Find a mentor with similar temperament. Diana and Janet are alike in a lot of ways so it’s easy for them to relate to one another, Janet said. Sometimes, finding somebody you have a lot of common characteristics with will help you gel faster.
- Be consistent. It takes commitment to be a mentor and a mentee. Evaluate whether you have the time and capacity to be consistent.
- Be appreciative. You’re both giving of your time in a mentorship relationship and showing appreciation is key.
Ella Taylor and Steven Branton, CFP®
It was at a ’50s themed party many years ago when Steve and Ella first met. They struck up a conversation about food and cooking because at the time, Ella was working as a pastry chef while interning as a financial planner. Steve had been in the profession for a few years.
“Right off the bat, Steve said, ‘I’ll be your mentor,’” Ella said. “We would meet for coffee and he actually got me an internship at his company.”
It was around 2008 when they started their mentor relationship, and while many planners were struggling to get in the door during that period of market volatility, Ella had an internship.
“I had no idea what a big deal that was, but looking back, that’s huge,” Ella said.
Their mentor/mentee relationship continues still, as Ella signed the lease on her office space and opened her own firm, Ella Financial Advising LLC.
“It’s truly incredible to watch somebody I was maybe a couple years ahead of in the process from starting off as a student, to doing full advisory work and opening her own business,” Steve said. “It’s been amazing to experience that.”
They found the more informal nature of their relationship helpful.
“With the more informal, friendship-based relationship, I can also be more vulnerable,” Ella said. With a more formal relationship “I would feel more pressure to not open up about the things I’m actually afraid of … I know it’s a safe place to say these things and he’s not going to judge me, and I know it’s not going to come back and bite me in my career.”
To Ella, this mentorship has helped her realize she is not alone.
“It normalizes some of the things you’re feeling,” she explained. “I know being a woman—and being a gay woman in this industry that’s very straight and very white—it can be kind of lonely and a little bit scary.”
But having a mentor to express these feelings to is helpful—especially when you’re first starting out.
“In the first eight years, a lot of advisers leave the profession because it’s hard to get your footing,” Steve said. “It’s crucial to have a mentor when you’re starting out.”
Advice from Steve and Ella include:
- Find somebody who is different from you. For Steve, it was important to support a woman. As a person of color, he makes it a point to help out other people of color and women as a way to not pay lip service to increasing diversity efforts and actually do something.
- Cultivate it like you would a friendship. At its core, a mentorship is a friendship with an interest in somebody’s professional life. Don’t be so structured and rigid. Let the relationship ebb and flow.
- Be vulnerable and available. Express the things that concern or scare you. Discuss the things you need. Get comfortable being vulnerable. Carve out the time for each other and follow up. Respond to emails. Show up to meetings.
- Hold each other accountable. People thirst for accountability partners. Be that for each other. Understand their goals and values and hold each other to those.