The Sunday News
Itai Chapunza
Genesis 13 verse 5
Now Lot, who was moving about with Abraham, also had flocks and herds and tents. But the land could not support them while they stayed together, for their possessions were so great that they were not able to stay together.
As Lot moved around the world with Abraham, he was being mentored into a great businessman and investor.
The evolution of any businessperson is like this. First you are employed, then you become self-employed, then a businessman then an investor. So at the time they went out of Egypt Lot had evolved into a self-reliant businessperson.
He was taught so well that he became too rich to stay with Abraham as the land could not support the two of them at the same time. It is very important to mentor someone to carry on the work when you are no longer able to. All mentoring relationships either need to translate to you taking over the business or you growing your own.
Although Lot lost sight of the things Abraham was giving him, Abraham had shared a part of great generational knowledge with him. Lot had gained so much from Abraham that he was an individually powerful businessman without Abraham.
The advantage of being mentored is that you get to have your vision kick-started by joining someone who has a similar vision and you avoid a lot of mistakes on the way.
You are also imparted with knowledge that is decades old over a very shot period of time. This is not to imply that mentorship should only be short-lived, but I mean the time it takes for you to gain knowledge out of experience is far longer than that you would take while being mentored.
When the world’s most successful investor was in Columbia University at the mouldable age of 21, he came across the renowned American economist and professional investor Benjamin Graham.
The rest as they say was history. Graham taught and mentored the young Warren Buffett and thus, one of the most fruitful mentor-mentee partnerships was born. Warren Buffett went on to own Geico, the company run by his mentor by his own company, Berkshire Hathaway.
The relationship shared between Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham was a teacher-student one, the depth of knowledge possessed by Benjamin Graham left the young Warren with the right concepts and understanding how investment systems operate. The pupil, in this case, used that knowledge to become one of the richest people in the world.
We also experience the flip side of the coin. Adolf Hitler was mentored by a man called Dietrich Eckart. Eckart met Adolf Hitler when Hitler gave a speech before the DAP members in 1919.
Eckart was involved with the Thule Society, although not a member.
The Society was a secretive group of occultists who believed in the coming of a “German Messiah” who would redeem Germany after its defeat in World War I. Eckart expressed his anticipation in a poem he wrote months before he first met Hitler.
In the poem, Eckart refers to “the Great One”, “the Nameless One”, “Whom all can sense but no one saw”. When Eckart met Hitler, Eckart was convinced that he had encountered the prophesied redeemer. Eckart exerted considerable influence on Hitler in the following years and is strongly believed to have helped establish the theories and beliefs of the Nazi Party. Few other people had as much influence on Hitler in his lifetime.
Adolf Hitler’s mentor Dietrich Eckart was not a saint but he could not have imagined that his student would be responsible for killing an entire group of people almost to extinction. Between 1939 and 1941, 80 000 to 100 000 mentally ill adults in institutions were killed. 5 000 children in institutions and 1 000 Jews in institutions.
Outside the mental health institutions, the figures are estimated as 20 000 according to Doctor Georg Renno, the deputy director of Schloss Hartheim, one of the euthanasia centres. The number is 400 000 according to Frank Zeireis, the commandant of Mauthausen concentration camp.
Another 300 000 were forcibly sterilised. Overall it has been estimated that over 270 000 individuals with mental disorders of all kinds were put to death, although their mass murder has received relatively little historical attention. Along with the physically disabled, people suffering from dwarfism were persecuted as well. Many were put on display in cages and experimented on by the Nazis.
A mentor and mentee relationship usually works well if the relationship begins as soon as you discover the direction you intend to go in life. For many of us Christians it begins when you discover your calling.
It is very important to find someone who is living what you are striving to achieve in whatever field. If you are interested in banking it’s best to find an investment banker or bank manager to mentor you. This makes it fairly easy for you to advance because at your disposal is someone directing and advising you.
You become aware of what to avoid and what to aim for. He can tell you the sort of education to seek. A mentor also schools you on the things you should pay attention to and things you should not. In business there are things that are destructions.
They only waste your time and money with no real benefit in the present or in the future. These are things that should not be given your time or money. A mentor can tell you things you should diplomatically or out rightly reject.
With the help of your mentor you are able to identify the difference. It means you inherit centuries of studying and learning within a few years. What took them 20 years to achieve because of stumbling blocks can take you 5 years because you do not make the same mistakes.
There is no strict criteria to the sort of person a mentor can be. This is because at times he can be very different from you as he represents what you aim to be. For example if you aim to invest in a retailing business on a large scale, you can be mentored by a shop owner for retailing, though on a small scale. Although he may not be an owner of chains of shops, he understands the in and out of retailing that will be a very important foundation to build your big business. Thus when seeking a mentor, try and get someone with the following characteristics:
Your mentor must be a Christian. This ensures that you do not stray from your own beliefs and Christ is the only foundation that we can successfully build our lives on.
In the same line of business that you wish to be in. This makes it easy for them to mentor you because it simply becomes transferring their daily and past experiences into you as lessons.
They must be older. This is because age brings wisdom. It does not make sense for two students in the same class to mentor each other as they are both trying to navigate the same level of life. It’s like Jesus said, a blind man leading another blind man, they will both end up in a pit.
So find a mentor as soon as you can and mentor someone when you feel ready to do so. That way the world becomes a better place because more and more people excel in their work through mentorship.
