Talent mentors are there for a season and then you must keep moving forward
Listen in to a conversation between my wife and me as we discuss why and how often you should try switching mentors, teachers, and learning experiences. There are benefits to moving on from a mentor, no matter how excellent that person may be in his or her skill. Here are four indicators that it’s time to move on:
your child has learned everything he can and he needs more from another mentor in order to keep his talent relevant to the needs of other people.
you are in charge of who you choose as a mentor. If the mentor’s personal life is complicating the value he once brought to your child, it may be time to move on.
you can free the mentor of having to be responsible for full-on character training for your child. This opens the door to recruiting new mentors who want a specific, limited role.
it’s time to get out of your (and your child’s) comfort zone and be stretched with developing a new area of his talent.
Welcome to the very first podcast by Jonathan Harris discussing talent development in children. Listen to a conversation between me and my wife, Renee, as we discuss why it is that so many parents will overlook the hidden assets in their life in favor of staying average.
How do you know when your son or daughter is ready to step up to the next level of responsibility?
How do you know when it is socially or physically safe enough?
What can you do as a parent to get them to the next level of independence?
The answer to those questions is to decide as parents that you will look for opportunities to put them in situations that are just ***slightly*** beyond the current comfort level for both the parents and the young person. The goal is not to put them in situations in order for them to “sink or swim”, but rather to put them in situations where if it does not go as well as it could, the outcome will only be mildly embarrassing or mildly painful in the flesh. After the situation is over, you can assess the outcome as a parent. You either confirm, that yes, your young person is entirely ready to handle those situations on their own OR you can be grateful that you now know the specific areas in which he needs more instruction or guidance from you. In the latter case, you give him that targeted input so that he can improve himself.
For example: you suspect, but you are not 100% sure, that your son might be ready to handle working on a small project where he has been invited to help out with other very talented and focused men. You would ideally want him to be able to do this, but you are also not sure he can handle navigating the tricky water of a such a social gathering. You don’t want him to provoke some of the rougher adult characters by having your son call them out on their rough language, like he would normally be entitled to with a sibling at home. You also don’t want him to be so over-awed by the demanding and exacting orders of the other professionals to that he wilts under pressure. In that situation, do you let or not let your young man go?
It depends. Say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ depending on the following:
YES: You let him go if you sense that should he accidentally provoke or wilt, the consequences would only go so far as a mild verbal chiding in response to his perceived cheekiness rather than a beer bottle to the head or only so far as having a bruised and blue thigh rather than a severed hand from the use of the power tools. If he only gets slightly hurt, then it is worth it. Next time he will know to be more careful.
NO: However, you should not let him go to a significantly more social or dangerous environment if he might accidentally trigger a fist fight or lose a limb due to his lack of experience. Scale him back down to something safer and let him prove himself first at that level before going to the next.
You can use that same approach when introducing your young person to social media. Start letting him interact with a small and safe circle of friends or acquaintances. Let your son or daughter interact in that zone of safety for a while. If your offspring does not get barked down by older relatives for having over-stepped his bounds and if he doesn’t rile the female acquaintances by insensitive teenage comments, then he is ready to handle a wider social circle. On the other hand, if he manages to make Suzie cry or triggers an upset phone call by an uncle, then you can have a private talk with him about how to better handle the interaction the next time around and/or make amends. Suzie and Uncle Phil will have brushed off the incident by the next day and your son will have learned a valuable lesson. It was worth the risk and now your son is operating at the next level.
In all of this decision making, your goal is not to try and fail him, but rather it is to stretch him and encourage him to go just a little further than he did before. If there is a little mishap, you are there to help him interpret how he can do it better next time. In this way you are like a coach who wants his athlete to push himself to the next level, without actually causing himself harm.
Watch my son’s latest video produced to bring specific value through the use of his aerial videography talent. Also, below is an update on my oldest son’s 10,000 hour journey to amazing talent:
From simple photo taking projects, he grew into learning how to do small videos of my wife doing her product explanations and editing them for brevity. This again was part of a strategy of understanding that our own family environment had advantages he could learn to use for his own benefit. Keep in mind that my son’s original personal interests only played one part in this successful talent building strategy. The other parts are found in the family’s environment and are identified and released by his parents.
The next phase of his talent discovery and development process came when he met a family friend of mine who let him fly his new quadcopter drone with a small camera mounted under its belly. That’s when he realized that he could marry his burgeoning videography with the new affordable flying drones. The feedback he was getting was that there was room for him to bring value to a market that was not yet crowded. When he compared that opportunity to that of becoming a wedding photographer (a typical destination for those with digital cameras and aspirations of going professional), he realized that the wedding market was already very well served. There were would be little room for him in that venue long-term and he would have to beg and scrape for a living. But with the appearance of drones, he realized that this was an opportunity that he should not pass up. It was the classic case of “luck” coming to those who are prepared.
As he started approaching real estate agents to do some basic aerial shots of houses they had for sell or rent, he realized that he enjoyed to talking to grown adult men in the context of business. This in turn caused me to suggest he tap into the expertise of another family friend who was quite the successful salesperson in the insurance industry. That he did. With a few hours of advice and consulting (such as “don’t charge by the hour, but by the project”), Jonathan picked up some better techniques for pitching his service to interested parties. Soon he was engaged in weekly paying “gigs” that involved filming not only housing property, but also undeveloped commercial property. Each time he finished his project and handed off the finished video to the customer, he would also add it to his website. This built up his website as a living portfolio of his work. That public documentation in turn opened up more deals for him. From real estate aerial filming, it now seems to be jumping into some new opportunities involving documenting engineering projects from the air. This, at least, so far seems to leading him into a possible niche. We don’t know for sure, but opportunities and the dollar value that his customers are willing to pay him will be signposts to which way he should grow his talent.
What did we do right and should you do? As his parents, we did not panic ourselves into forcing a career name onto a growing and emerging talent. This allowed us to actively encourage him to pursue opportunities that we previously had never heard about. Because of this parental flexibility, our son is able to explore a growing field involving the application of new technology. And yet, I still don’t think that my son is yet ready to define himself with a career name, because his opportunities are still growing. For now, I’m okay if he says “aerial videographer”, but I doubt that is his end destination. This should be the same with your young person: have a focus, but expect that this focus is simply a building block to hoist him up to get to new and more exciting opportunities, as of yet unknown.
What are some of the discussions I’m having with him now? We have recently been talking about how he probably needs to get himself declared into a C-corporation, so he can position himself with tax advantages and flexibility in future partnering deals. He’s not making enough money yet that it matters, but we want to position him in the best spot possible for future growth. I picked up the phone and talked to an entrepreneur friend who is recommending we look at incorporating in the state of Wyoming because (among other reasons) it is only $50 filing per year vs. the $800 filing fee per year in California. Maybe Wyoming incorporation is an affordable option for him.
We are also talking about how much pleasure and success he is getting at pitching his service to others. This means he might want to think about how he can concentrate on getting new business. To do so he would have to job out the editing of the raw footage he is now doing by himself through the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription service. This in turn would mean he would have to start documenting the “recipe” he would want a contractor to follow so that it meets his customers’ needs. These are all conversations now, but our conversations will often lead to meaningful action in the months to come. I take all these conversations as serious, or more seriously, than his ability to memorize the history dates of a Western Civilization course. (By the way, we love and highly recommend the Western Civilization course by Tom Woods of the RonPaulCurriculum.com). We know that no one will hire Jonathan to give his opinions on history any time soon, but we are fairly certain that he will be amply rewarded as a young man if he delivers faithfully on his service to others through his talent.
