You Need a Jay-Z and a Beyoncé: Sponsors and Mentors in Cybersecurity Careers

uh hi everyone and good morning I appreciate you all being here I am super excited to present uh you need a Jay-Z and a Beyonce uh how sponsors and mentors can supercharge your career my name is Anthony Hendricks I'm a cyber security and data privacy attorney based in Oklahoma City so while I am a lawyer I am not your lawyer and this presentation should not be considered legal advice instead think of this as a conversation between friends but if you need legal advice please please please please find a local lawyer that can help you I also host a cyber security podcast that focuses on exposing underrepresented groups to the field of cyber security and data privacy

uh and you can find the podcast anywhere where great podcast are found so what are we going to be talking about well we're going to be talking about the best rapper alive so at the 2020 four Grammys Jay-Z took the stage to accept the global impact award and so this was a a kind of career defining moment it's it's one of those big Awards uh for Jay-Z but instead of just talking about himself he spent a large part of his speech talking about someone else talking about his wife and he Amplified her accomplishments he defend her Artistry and uh tried to change the perception of her among the Grammy voters and so while the speech was met

with a lot of criticism a lot of push back people were pointing out that that wasn't the purpose of that speech uh it pointed out something else it pointed out what the role of a sponsor is uh we're also going to be talking about Beyonce and so why are we going to be talking about Beyonce well Beyonce is Beyonce right so any excuse that we have to talk about Beyonce is probably a good one right um but just looking at more research about her she illustrates what a mentor is and so often times people get the terms sponsors and mentors confused right and so what I want to do today is talk about those two things but

I want to use examples so that when you leave here you're thinking okay I know what a mentor is because I know what Beyonce does I know what a sponsor does because I know what Jay-Z does and so that allows you to find what you need in your career because you know what those items are and while both of them are important for you in your career so what are we going to talk about and what is the order so we're first going to just have a conversation about mentors and sponsors we're going to talk about what those terms are we're going to look at some research uh from some of those leading kind of business

uh uh articles and Publications and then we'll talk about Jay-Z and Beyonce and why you need both of those in your careers and then we'll talk about how you can be a better mentor and how you can be a better sponsor if you're in that stage of your career and then how you can find a mentor how you can find a sponsor and how you can be good at that job because being a mentee and being a protege is a difficult job as well and you need to be good at it so that people want to invest in you and invest in your career and then uh at the end we can have whatever questions that you want

and then I'll be handing out some cyber security stickers as well sound good with everyone all right so let's rock so mentors and sponsors so everyone needs a little bit of help and so mentors and sponsors can play a meaningful role in your career they've done that for me um but they do more than just help you get a promotion right they they do more than just help you get that next job they also help with retention in organizations they help reduce burnout and they help limit career frustrations and those are all types of things uh that could be roadblocks in your careers and having a mentor and having a sponsor uh helps you avoid those issues and they

play a more significant role for diverse and non-traditional workers right um they help you when you're entering into a new field become successful and so mentors and sponsors are important for everyone but they are especially important for people who are entering into the field who are often underrepresented so what exactly is a mentor what is mentorship so mentorship is a relationship uh between you and somebody who is sharing knowledge and providing guidance um so think of a mentoring as you um directly having a relationship directly with a person where they're encouraging you where they're giving you advice um that's pretty straightforward I think we all kind of understand what a mentor is it's that person that's giving you that kind

word they're giving you a little bit of advice and they're pointing you in the right direction and so there are different types and different flavors of mentoring so there's this traditional model called The Guiding Light so this is where you have someone that's a little bit older than you and they're saying hey you know I've Seen It All I've gone through this and so let me walk you through kind of these issue and let me point out some things that you may not kind of understand so this is kind of that traditional model of a mentor that you think about that older wiser person U but there's also another category called windows and so these are your colleagues

who have already experienced these issues um they're closer in age to you and they can provide you firsthand experience of about what's going on and so I I like to call these the Jay-Z rule so Jay-Z wants wrapped hope did that so hopefully you wouldn't have to go through that right and so these windows are your peers and they're telling you hey this is what happened to me and so learn from my experience so you won't have to go through that uh and then we have mirors so mirors these are usually people at your level who can help you identify your strengths and your weaknesses and so they may not be giving you actionable kind of guidance on what

you should do next instead they're having a conversation and they say hey you're really good at at giving talks you should do more of that or hey you know uh maybe you should work on your writing because you always complain about getting a lot of feedback from your writing so maybe that's something you should work on and so they're not kind of giving you uh the the recipe on what to do but they're kind of reflecting back to you about areas that you're good at and areas where you may need some improvement and because they're on your level it feels like you're just having a conversation with your friends so what do mentors look like uh

when you think about a mentor you really think about that older senior person who's investing in you but that's not always the case and so sometimes it can be your peers it could be somebody on your same level or maybe just one rung above you and so you can find mentors all types of places and mentors can be any type of person who wants to invest in your success so what a mentor is not so mentorship isn't focused on only teaching you skills it's not a training program and so a lot of times when people think about a mentor they're thinking okay they're just going to teach me a bunch of stuff sometimes but that's really not the focus of your

relationship it's a relationship driven kind of process and it's less about criticism but more about being your personal hype man that person that's encouraging you to do something telling you hey you should apply for that hey you should do that um they're kind of just giving you that pep talk that encouragement uh that push that you need so let's talk about what sponsorship is and so uh one of the classic examples and we'll talk about that a little bit later is Jay-Z's relationship with rapper Mt ble and so we're going to talk about that in a little bit but what exactly is sponsorship so this is where a senior leader is spending their social capital

on using their influence to to advocate for their Protege and so mentorship when we talk about that that's a two-way relationship it's you and your Mentor right but when we talk about sponsorship it's a three-way relationship it's your relationship uh with uh not only the pro and the sponsor but also with the audience the people that the sponsor is trying to change the perception of you the persons that are going around and advocating and telling hey this person that I'm working with is great they're a future leader they're a star watch all the wonderful things that they're doing so it's a it's a three type of relationship so what exactly does this kind of sponsorship relationship look

like well it kind of falls into a couple of different buckets so one is amplifying your protege's accomplishment so often times people don't like to brag about the great things that they're doing that's fine your sponsor that's their role they're going to talk about hey did you know that last year they did X Y and Z and they accompl all of those things and so your accomplishments sound so much better when other people are saying it especially when it's someone who has a lot of credibility in an organization along with that sponsors are betting their reputation on your future success uh they're saying that hey I'm going to give this person a bigger project a bigger task because I

believe that they're going to be able to accomplish this and so they're giving you that opportunity for you to succeed they are betting on you being successful um then also they're sharing their Goodwill and letting others know that you are their Protegé they're going to let you know that this is my person this is the person that I'm supporting this the person I'm advocating for uh I like to call this your Rockefeller chain uh so if you've seen any of the members of Rockefeller rapping they all have their chain uh that's the symbolum of the label so everyone knows that they are with Rockefeller they're with Jay-Z and so that's him giving his Goodwill to

them and so a sponsor is also a Defender that's a big part of their role and I I think it's probably the most important um they defend you from criticism and if needed they offer explanations for why something might have not been as successful as you wanted um and this is important because often times when you have a sponsor they're going to give you these big projects these Big Stretch activities for you to do things that you might not think that you can accomplish and they're giving you that opportunity because when you are successful uh now everyone knows that you should be a leader that you should be promoted that you're ready for that next kind of role

in the organization because you had a task that was a little bit beyond you and you found a way to be successful and so they're they're going to protect you from criticism and then they're going to explain if things didn't go out uh happen the way that it should have happened and so what is the impact on your career you know mentors and sponsors are so important and mentor mentorship can help you develop stronger and more valuable relationships at work it can provide you access to uh important decision makers it can help you develop social skills and create kind of new ties with other people U mentors act as an endorsement and a signal of respect uh from

others and so why is this relationship important why is this relationship important to have well when we talk about cyber security in this industry it's hard for organizations to be able to keep employees and there's a lot of different reasons why um but one of the reasons why people leave the organization is a high level of stress and a lack of support right those are some of the common things that happen and so mentorship kind of aims at those two types of things so mentorship can also reduce burnout so workplace burnout is increasing and compared to two decades ago people are twice as likely to report that they are suffering from burnout at work right and and so what is the cause

of burnout well according to studies from hbr loneliness and emotional exhaustion at work lead to burnout and mentorship and the connection that it creates can help reduce this feeling of loneliness at work uh and ultimately can help you with the issues of burnout and burnout is extremely costly for organizations uh it results in a 37% higher abeny rate uh 49% more accidents at work and 16% lower profitability and so it's important for organizations that employees don't feel burnt out and one way to do that is to invest in mentorship it's also costly for you right a study from UC Irvine found that it reduces longevity by 70% and and that's a pretty pretty shocking kind of

uh a number it's more uh the reduction is more than alcoholism more than drugs more than all of those types of things uh and so burnout can be costly for organizations and for yourself and one way to fight this is to fight loneliness and develop real relationships with people who care about you so what are the benefits of sponsorship well sponsorship equals promotion so sponsorship is one of the strongest predictors that we have for promotions and increases in salary if you have a sponsor you're likely going to get promoted you're likely going to make some more money it's the great equalizer uh when it comes to Promotions sponsorship matters more than someone's gender personality level of education

and experience it is a game changer for you if you're entering into a career people with sponsors also have a higher level of career satisfaction you get more fulfilling feeling at work because you have someone who's looking out for you who's giving you these great assignments they're putting you in a position where you feel like my career is moving forward and that comes from your relationship with your sponsor so what exactly is in it for the sponsor well it's a two-way street so if you're a sponsor uh there are some great benefits that you can have senior Executives who have a Protegé or50 3% more likely to have received a recent promotion I think people kind of

understand that if you're are investing in other people the organization is going to invest in you as well uh and this works even at people who are at entry level who sponsor someone else they're 167% likelier to have gotten a recent stretch assignment and stretch assignments are the best way for you to show that you have these new capabilities new skills so that you're moving on to a higher position or a different role with a better title all right so let's talk about Jay-Z and Beyonce so you need a Beyonce uh mentors provide encouragement they help you celebrate your wins and that's Beyonce's roles and so I'm going to look at a couple of examples but often times when

you ask Young Artists uh who are R&B singers about who their Mentor is or who they aspire to be uh they're going to say Beyonce and let's look at a few TMZ style uh examples so let's talk about this Guiding Light model that we talked about earlier so I want to talk about uh Khloe and Haley and this is a R&B group uh signed to Beyonce's label and in interviews uh the group consistently refers to her as a mentor that can refer to her as family uh not just because they work with her right it's because their careers are mimicking hers they started uh singing at a very young age Beyonce started at a young age they're

in a group trying to transition and navigate uh being their own solo artist that's exactly what Beyonce did uh when she moved from Destiny's Child to a solo career and so Beyonce has seen those difficulties that they're kind of facing and she's able to talk to them about it she's able to explain hey it's going to be rough in this area hey making the transition from being seen as more of a teen artist to A more of an adult artist is going to be a transition and I made it and here are some things that I've seen here are some roadblocks and some issues that you're going to have to address and so she's serving as a

Guiding Light uh for those young ladies but she also serves as aera and so let's go back to the Grammys but let's not go to the 2024 one let's go to the Grammys last year and so lizo won the Grammy for record of the year and she actually beat Beyonce uh and during her acceptance speech she talked about how meaningful and inspiring Beyonce was uh but afterwards people were asking her can you kind of just explain a little bit more and so in interviews uh she talked about how Beyonce offered kind words how she offered encouragement and talked about her strength as an artist so she pointed out things that lizo was so great at and so you got not only

encouraging words but you got someone saying hey here are some things that you are great at and I don't know if anyone told you that today but you were really good at these particular things and she served as that Mera for lizo and so that's an important role that mentors can play so now let's move to the world of business let's give you some business examples right and so More than 70% of Fortune 500 companies offer some form of kind of mentoring a mentoring program for their employees and most of these programs don't achieve uh what what they set out to do so in 2017 researchers at Harvard Business School conducted an experiment at a US call center and what

they did was they said all right we're going to create a mandatory mentoring program for new employees it's a four-week four-week program and it is mandatory for uh employees and so they took a group of the new employees and those employees had to do the mandatory training and they took the other group and they said hey you have a choice you can do informal mentoring or you can say no I don't want any uh informal mentoring and then they compared the results so during the first two months on the job the people who had the mandatory 4-week mentoring program generated 19% more daily revenue than the UN mentored individuals more than 90% of the revenue gain uh was sustained

in the six-month period afterwards and so just four weeks of mentoring at the beginning allowed them to still keep those same benefits as they moved further along in their career it also meant that people were more likely to stay at the organization they were 14% more likely now that sounds like a small number uh but when you deal with call centers uh people be in and out of that place all the time so 14% is a big number if we're talking about a call center so the mandatory mentees also outperformed the people who had informal mentorship so people who said hey I'd like a mentor and then they just had an informal mentorship program people who

had the structured required 4-we program outperform them and after the experiment the US call center adopted this mandatory program and even after taking away the cost the added expenses that it might come from setting up this program and implementing it they had a 87% return on investment and so so you got your money back multiple multiple multiple times now along with having a Beyonce you also need a Jay-Z so we started the presentation by talking about Jay-Z speech at the 2024 grammies but what exactly did Jay-Z say right and so just in case you weren't watching um let me just pull out a few phrases and uh we can talk about that together but you

know some things I don't want to embarrass this young lady but she has more Grammys than everybody and so what exactly is he doing here well he's talking about Beyonce's accomplishments and I think people just don't sit sit down and realize that she has the most Grammys ever and it sounds much much better coming from someone else instead of having her to brag about her accomplishments somebody else was doing that for her and this is extremely important because often times uh women are less likely to brag about their accomplishments and so that's why sponsorship is great because there's someone there who could say nah I'll say it if you won't say it I'll say it and so we also talked about how

sponsors have a relationship with the audience the people who they're trying to change their perception so you attempt to change how people view your Protege and so I'm going to pull out just another quote from Jay-Z and his speech more Grammys than everyone and never one album of the year so even by your own metrics that doesn't work think about it the most Grammys never one album of the year that doesn't work right he's changing the perception of the audience he's talking to those Grammy voters he's trying to change how they view Beyonce how they view their award and how they should view Beyonce's Artistry and so he's able to have that conversation because he is Jay-Z he's somebody who's

accomplished himself and he's also using that moment where they gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award to tell them about how they're not doing their job so let's look at another example and I like to talk about Jay-Z's relationship with M Bleak so Memphis blee was the first artist that Jay-Z signed to Rockefeller records they grew up in the same neighborhood and Bleak has been with Jay his whole career sponsors share their Goodwill with their proteges and we already talked about how uh he's wearing that Rockefeller chain but he also uh uh brings him on tour he brought Memphis Bleak on tour when all he had was 16 bars from one of JayZ songs to perform he had no other

material to perform and Jay-Z took him there and said we'll figure it out as you go uh you better go to the studio and create a new song but I'm going to put you on stage and people listened because they were there to hear Jay-Z and he shared his Goodwill with blee but also sponsors give stretch assignments so while mentoring is less about criticism sponsors are required to give that tough love right because your protege's career is intertwined with your career right when they see that person they see the sponsor and so you need to have those kind of real conversations to say hey here are some things that need to fix because when people see you walking

around or see you doing those things they're immediately thinking about me because I've given you all of this Goodwill and so uh blee does a lot of interviews on podcast uh and he had one a couple of ones on this podcast called drink Champs and he admitted that Jay-Z told him he was lazy he sat down with Jay-Z talking about hey what what's next you know I'm thinking about what I can do next and he started listing all the things that he wanted to do and Jay said hey blee you know what's wrong with you you're lazy you're not working hard enough you stopped working hard and he started talk telling him about all the

things that he needed to do to be better but it wasn't just tough love it wasn't just criticism he then gave him a stretch assignment he said all right you're telling me all the things that you want to do and he handed him a bottle of duay liquor and said you're going to sell these and so now he's an executive for duay liquer with no uh undergraduate degree no marketing degree no nothing never sold uh any liquor before but he said hey I believe in you uh this is my company this is your stretch assignment go to all the meetings learn about the business and be a leader in the organization and he gave him that stretch

assignment so let's look at an example from the world of business um so a bank did an internal kind of research on why their female managing directors left their organization like why were they leaving and they were leaving not for work life balance most of the time people say oh we shouldn't even care because they're just leaving for work life balance they don't want to work hard and that is not the case people were leaving because they wanted a promotion they wanted a bigger role in an organization and they weren't getting that from working at their company they weren't getting those internal promotions and so they left to go somewhere else where they could further

their career and so they said okay we need to stop this we need to figure out a way to be able to keep these uh managing directors in our organization and so what they did is they created a sponsorship program with the goal of assigning more women to critical posts within the organization and so the program prepared uh paired proteges with executive committee members to increase uh their exposure to these senior leaders the senior leaders who are going to be making those decisions um but they also ensured that they had an influential Advocate and so you can't advocate for someone that you've never met right you can't advocate for someone you don't have a relationship with and

so they started building that relationship and so ultimately they were able to find that one-third of the people who participated in this sponsorship program are in larger roles within the organization within one year and another third of the people in that uh kind of participated in the program executive said hey we feel comfortable with them being promoted to the next level and so you either got a promotion or you're about to get one and so that is a great kind of results from a sponsorship program so let's talk about getting a mentor and getting a sponsor and being good at your job as a Protegé and a

mentee so one of kind of the downfalls one of the kind of issues uh with uh being a mentor and a sponsor is that sometimes you can confuse those terms exactly what they mean right uh we spent a lot of time talking about it so we're not going to be confused because we're going to be thinking about Jay-Z we're going to be thinking about Beyonce um but I want to use the example of Ursula Burns and so Ursula was the CEO of xerx zerox from 2019 from 2009 to 2016 right and she was the first black woman to leave a Fortune 500 company when asked about what helped her get this role she talked about the mentorship that she

received from the company's two prior CEOs and so she used the word mentorship right but when we started asking her about examples what she was describing was sponsorship and so it's not uncommon for people to conflate those two terms and it can lead to troubles and issues uh when she was in middle management the then CEO of Xerox uh showed her the difference in leadership of a company versus being in charge of a department and he started giving her more responsibilities kind of bigger projects that people can see and this led to big risk for her but it also had the potential for big rewards and one of the things that was really important is

that the former CEO gave her a lot of air cover so what is air cover basically uh he protected her from criticis ISM and allowed her that time that she needed to take those big swings to do those bigger projects to do things that may have been outside of her traditional job description and so that led for her to have all of these great opportunities and she didn't have to fear about someone talking bad about her uh or criticizing her because she was doing something else beyond what her role was because she had the big boss going around and telling people no no no she's doing what she's supposed to do I think she's the best person person for this

job so he provided her a lot of air cover another kind of problem with sponsors is that sometimes sponsors act like mentors and you may be saying well that's fine right you need a mentor you need a sponsor so what's the problem well a study from the center for talent Innovation found that sponsors themselves don't really understand the role and how to do it well and so only 27% of people who answered the survey uh who identified themselves as being a sponsor said that they advocate for a promotion of their Protege which is one of the big things that a sponsor should be doing they should be saying hey there's a position open I know the perfect person

that is my protege I think they are the best fit uh and 19% reported uh that they weren't providing uh only 19% reported that they were providing air cover that kind of protection that's important and so a lot of them are missing out on the key things that are required to be a mentor and and so to be a sponsor and so gaining a sponsor is more challenging than getting a mentor so it's important that people who actually have that skill set the people who have that high credibility those people who are in senior leadership positions it's important for them to know what a sponsor is and to do the things that sponsors do because not

everyone can do those things it takes a special type of person with a special type of ability and a special position within an organization to Be an Effective sponsor spor and if you have those people with those skills not doing the real things with sponsorship then people are missing out another thing is men are more likely than women to find sponsors and when women do find sponsors their sponsors are more likely to not do their full job of sponsorship so sometimes they'll be like yes I got a sponsor and then they say so you're going to recommend me for this promotion and their sponsor says H I don't I don't do that they're not doing their job as a sponsor and so that

means that these people aren't getting those full benefits another kind of issue to avoid when it comes to sponsorship and mentorship is that our sponsors and our mentors need to avoid this mini me syndrome it's not uncommon for people to want to work with people who are just like them right you start saying oh I see myself a younger version of myself in this person and you go and you invest in their career um and so the center of talent Innovation found that 71% of mentors say that their chosen mentee is the same race and the same gender as them and so it's not uncommon for people to want to do that I'm not saying that anybody's a

bad person for wanting to invest in someone who they see themselves in but it does create problems because there are fewer women there are fewer people of color in these senior management positions and so these employees are often excluded from meaningful mentorship and meaningful sponsorship when people only want to Mentor or sponsor people who are exactly like them but this also hurts your mini me right uh the best mentoring like the best relationships occur when there are some similarities but also some differences and so if you're looking for someone that's exactly like you you are doing a disservice to the person that you want to help and that you want to invest in their career

so when mentors or sponsors um Mentor someone that's different from them it leads to long-term growth and so a study that looked at mentorship of medical residents found that while same gendered mentors provided this initial growth and this initial help because they're saying hey I had to deal with these issues the exact same thing that you're going through um but after a while those benefits that they got from that mentorship became stagnant their growth became stagnant um however for opposite gender mentorships um while they had to get over that initial roadblock of of figuring out how to talk to people how to find that common ground because they thought that they were so different but

after they did that hard work of having those meaningful conversations uh they were able to lead to long-term growth for their mentee um because their relationship was built on all of those kind of mutual uh um factors that they had to work on and build and find out together so let's talk about being a better minty and a better Protegé so I always like to talk about how do you get a mentor right there's all of these wonderful articles that talks about the importance of a mentor the importance of a sponsor and you read all the way through it and it doesn't tell you how there's no recipe in there and so I I want to just talk about a few

ways that you can find a mentor so how do you find a mentor well you ask um getting a mentor is easier than you think people are often excited and happy to be asked to be a mentor and finding a mentor is easier because there are so many options it can be somebody that you work with it can be somebody outside of your organization that's in the same industry uh it can be someone that um you have occasional conversations with maybe uh you talk to them on LinkedIn about things and ask them questions um it can be somebody who's more senior in an organization or it can be somebody who's your peer or a little bit uh lower

in the leadership uh category and so there are mentors all over the place and you can have multiple different mentors to fill all of the different needs that you may have and so it makes it a little bit easier to find mentorship so how do you get a sponsor well sponsorship requires some work you got to do a little bit of leg work here because sponsors are using their political capital on you they often want to see some initial success before they invest in you right they want to see a couple of quick wins uh so that they know that they're not wasting their time and so you build credibility by performing well and taking

responsibility so do your job and do your job well and that's kind of the starting point uh when you find someone you want to be your sponsor you should research what their role is how they got there and kind of understand what their current priorities are so you kind of take all of that into consideration when you finally sit down and ask them to sponsor you uh in your career I think it's important uh when we talk about being mentors uh mentees and to be uh proteges you have to remember that it's a two-way street you're not just taking um you should bring value to your mentor and your sponsor uh this includes teaching your

Mentor or sponsor a new skill set so often times uh I will teach uh other more senior lawyers uh how to use certain types of technology and they'll sit down and talk with me about business development and growing my book of business and it's a trade and it's a two-way street you should also kind of think about other ways to help them extend their legacy a lot of times people want to be sponsors because they view that as a way to extend the Legacy that they've created and so if you kind of know that uh you can kind of keep that in the back of your mind as you're having those conversations because you understand

what's important to them so what are some other ways that you can be better at being a mentee better at being a Protegé well know what you need from your sponsor and your m what exactly do you want to get out of kind of this conversation what do you want to get out of this relationship because if you know exactly what you want out of the organization uh out of that relationship then you can ask for it and you can know when you're not getting the things that you want if you clearly explain what your goals are you're more likely to get that when you get a project or a task you need to focus on overd delivering right if your

mentor or your sponsor says hey I need you to do something then you need to be laser focused in on doing that work and overd delivering especially at the beginning of that relationship as you're trying to build that trust right you should be focused on doing that work and then you need to be respectful of their time but you also need to respect your time right so if you are meeting with someone um who you're building that relationship with you need to be on time you you need to be a little bit early you need to be respectful of their calendar but at the same time you need to demand that they do the same thing for you right um and

if you do that people are more likely to not cancel meetings last minute because they know that uh my uh minty or my protege respects my time but they also demand that I do the same and so these are just a few small little things that you can do to be better at being a mentor uh or a mentee or a sponsor or a Protegé so what did we learn during this presentation well people forget about half of all new things that they learn within an hour of learning it so it's not uncommon for someone to say Hey you were at bsides and you went to this Higher Ground what exactly did you learn and you're going to be

like I don't remember uh but he did a great job and I love his suit right but it's not your fault the human brain can only focus on 6 to nine people pieces of new information before there's this big steep drop off so I have six takeaways so that if somebody ask you what exactly did you learn you can maybe remember one or two things first mentors provide encouragement and guidance and serve as a sounding board for ideas sponsors are advocates for their proteges having sponsors and mentors can lead to personal and professional growth four people often confuse the two which makes them less effective five you need a Jay-Z and you need a Beyonce six It's

A Hard Knock Life and we all could use some help so ask for mentors and ask for sponsors all right so if you like the slides like the presentation it'll take you to my website and you can download the slides uh this afternoon because I haven't uploaded them yet uh but they'll be on the website and then you can push the button and uh you can get the slides for this talk so that everybody has them so I think that's it for me I do want to thank my law partners because uh they allow me to come out to these conferences and hang out all week at hacker summer camp and give out cybercity stickers uh so yeah I want to

thank them and I also want to thank the associates who are working on my cases because they are working right now and taking care of the cases so I can be here with you so thank you so much and I think we have a few minutes so if you want to have a conversation uh uh feel free to ask any

questions thank you hey uh so I actually wanted to ask um in your career Journey did you have any struggles finding a mentor or a uh sponsor and when you finally did like come to one or more that you had a positive of relationship with what were like the traits that really locked you guys together yeah so it was a lot easier to find a mentor because you can find all types of mentors I have a ton some of them are my mentors about business development some of them are people who when I just need a pep talk I've had a bad day I know that this person they are going to be my hype

person they're just all going to be talking about all the great things that I that I do and so I have some of them within my Law Firm some of them outside of it but sponsorship was harder sponsorship was a hard process and it's a ongoing process right but when I think about what are the qualities of a sponsor uh it's someone who understands what that role is they understand that I am coming to them uh not for a pep talk I don't need a pep talk from you you know I got a whole bunch of other people that'll tell me good job I'm coming to you because I need to be promoted within the organization I'm coming to you

because I need to be put in a better position to have a bigger book of business to be able to get better cases and so they understand what the assignment is and they do that uh also another trait is somebody who wants the job right there are a lot of people who have that kind of capital but they don't want to do it they're thinking that it's too much work or they'll say yeah I I I'll help you and then when you sit down for a meeting the meetings just keep getting a kicked off of their calendar they keep pushing back your meetings weeks and weeks so you need someone who understands what they're supposed to be

doing and who has the time and the willingness to do so and so those are kind of the qualities but my sponsors are are are very different than than me right you know I I don't have someone who you know looks like the older version of me uh but their career looks like the version of the career that I want thank you um are there any Mentor courses or programs that you can recommend one of the challenges I've seen in my experience is that people want to be mentors but there's a lack of um understanding or or I guess rigor around what that means and how to execute on that effectively no that that's a great

question um so when I do presentations I always say Anthony selling nothing so I have no courses or anything that I'm selling and and when it comes to kind of courses that are out there you know I don't have any that I can recommend but what I would say is if you start looking at people who are advertising those things you should have your own list of things that you want and what they're offering should match those things right and and a lot of times there are people who are selling these courses uh about all of these things and they really don't know what they're talking about so if you have your list you know you're

put in a good position I when when you're thinking about being a sponsor what do you look for in your spones yeah so the thing that you know I will eventually be looking for is someone who likes to do the work right somebody who enjoys kind of the practice of blah or whatever kind of area that I'm the sponsor for uh and then somebody who's had some SU successes they don't have to be huge successes but you have to have you know done some work uh kind of put yourself out there to do it and you know that kind of gives me the signal that hey me giving you the push is all you need because you have a lot

of talent there already and so you know I want to see someone who kind of enjoys or or is good at and who has like put themselves out there to kind of do that work we got

in your slide you mentioned that mentors should really kind of know or I mean mentees should know what they want to be able to find a good Mentor uh what about someone who's new to an organization and may not know what they want who still kind of wants a mentor do you recommend they do some research first or would you still advise that they look for a mentor yeah so the thing about it is you may not know all the things that you may want from that organization but you probably have a good idea idea about what you want from your career right you're like hey you know I want to be able to learn skills I want to be put in

a good position uh to be exposed to different people I I I want you know I'm dealing with maybe some confidence issues I want somebody that's going to spend some time encouraging me so those are things that you can know that you want before you may learn about what exactly uh um your organization has to offer because you can have mentors inside of your company but outside of your company's

well hello um what is the what would you say is the cut off if you pick a bad prote like at what point do you say hey um this isn't for this isn't for you this isn't for you know this yeah what point uh so I'm laughing because I took the slides out uh slide out about that um because I was going to use an example um but um my secretary when she was looking through my slides she was like that's a little problematic because I was going to talk about Jay-Z and uh Kanye West and she was like take Kanye out of it no Kanye no Kanye but you know Kanye talked about uh Jay-Z being his big brother and

then that relationship eventually changed and uh you know while they're civil and maybe trying to reconcile uh that relation ship change and so what you should do is you should be thoughtful when it comes to that right you should be giving your Protege every opportunity uh to meet your expectations and so that often requires you to tell them what your expectations are if you have not told them what you want them to do you can't be mad that they didn't do those things right and so you need to have that conversation first uh and then you need to kind of present them a path forward hey you know here are the things I'm expecting from you right I gave you

this stretch assignment and I want you to do it but because everybody knows you're doing that stretch assignment because I gave it to you I need you to check in and just have weekly check-ins about what you're doing you know they don't have to be long they don't have to be and you're giving them what you want and you're giving them a path forward now if they failed consistently failed at that that's when you need to have that conversation um and the problem is when you're a sponsor you're not only having that conversation with that person but you're going to have to start having that conversation uh with the broader Community because you put your

Capital into them and so when they think about that your Protege they think about you so you're going to also have to have conversations with other people and so that is a big kind of punishment uh and so you need to be very careful about it you need to give them every opportunity in the world um before you make that decision time for one more more okay so not a question but I just kind of wanted to add on to what you're saying about as someone who took on too much with a group of people and was consistently failing and had to pull out the thing that helped was a direct honest conversation about like these are

the things I need from you if you cannot meet these expectations then I these are the things that I am losing if you uh cannot meet them um I ended up pulling out and then I was able to like excel in all of my other areas as well cuz I was just taking on too much at once but that's kind of what I would say from the mentee perspective from someone who had failed I just want to say that was a very smart thing to say and it wasn't a failure you learned see what you just did good deal all right well thank you so much uh I'm going to be around I got some cyber

security stickers if you want one uh and let's be friends all right thank you