This previously ran in the January 2020 issue of PS Magazine.

The gist: How we mentor may be changing, but one thing never changes. Wise counsel from a trusted adviser is priceless when it comes to advancing your career and growing your business.
Sounding board. Cheerleader. Paradigm-shifter. Challenger.

In today’s hyper-connected business world, the roles of mentors and mentees are fluid — and often hard to define. It’s no longer a case of young and old, rookie and seasoned veteran. The increasingly rich diversity of products, services and technology within the print services industry means we all have something to learn.

But there’s also the matter of an aging workforce, where deep institutional knowledge filed away in the minds of experienced owners, operations leaders and managers is at risk of going out the door with them.

It’s clear: mentorship matters. But finding the right relationship can be tough. The good news? There’s more than one way to connect with wise counsel. Here we take a look at three different approaches to mentoring — from outside and within the industry — and how it impacts the lives and companies of those involved. Plus, we share tips on how to make sure the advice you receive is the right advice.

Together, we can create a strong, bright future for our industry.

Plato’s New-School Approach to Mentoring

Quang Hoang was at a crossroads.

Just a few years ago, the co-founder and CEO of Plato, an online mentoring platform, was fresh out of an elite French engineering school when he and a friend developed one of the first Slackbots — a way to run code and automate tasks through the online collaboration platform, Slack.

The bot, designed to help manage expense reports, earned them an invite to a Y Combinator session, the world-renowned startup accelerator known for launching the likes of Airbnb and Stripe. While in San Francisco, the bot and its two young creators gained the attention of several U.S. investors. And, with more money in the bank than they knew what to do with, the pair headed back to France.

But they arrived home to an empty office. All three of the young engineers working for their tech startup had quit.

“It was really painful,” Hoang recalls.

While he and his partner were at home in structured engineering environments that lauded hard skills, they lacked the soft skills and people management techniques needed to grow a team. “We understood that people don’t leave their companies; people leave their managers, and we had transitioned from being engineers to being managers without really realizing it,” Hoang says.
 

Life-Changing Advice

With investors urging them to hire, hire, hire, the young co-founders needed advice. Really good advice.

They found it in Michael Seibel, CEO of Y Combinator. “Michael told us, ‘If you’re not super passionate about what you’re doing or actually experiencing the pain of what you’re trying to solve, then you’re not going to make it work. You’re going to work for the next 10 years of your life on this company; make something you’re deeply passionate about.’” Well, Hoang admits, “we were not super passionate about expense reports.”

That’s when the idea for Plato emerged. The pair wanted to create a platform to help engineers and product managers develop soft skills and build better teams. And they wanted to solve the problem through mentoring.

“This one conversation with our mentor changed our life and the trajectory of our company,” Hoang says. “Now we’re working on building a tech solution that will, one day, provide mentorship opportunities for every single person on this planet.”
 

The Plato Approach

Hoang notes much of today’s methods for finding mentors is rather random. A person might try to build a relationship with someone they met at a conference or reach out via LinkedIn. Or, perhaps they’ll be paired with someone from within their own organization who may or may not be a good match.

Plato takes a more scientific approach. The platform matches mentors and mentees based on a number of criteria, including size and type of company, job level, and types of experiences each has faced or is facing. When developing a mentor profile, Plato provides a framework for storytelling based on the problem they faced, actions they took and lessons they learned.

“Anyone who can tell their stories is a mentor,” Hoang says. That’s because sharing experiences, and the lessoned learned from them, are what help people grow. “I’m both a mentor and a mentee, and I believe everyone should be both,” Hoang says. “You always have something to learn from others, and you always have something to share.”

Midwest Distributors Association Forms Strong Bonds

Six years ago, Daniel Williams wanted a change.

After rising through the ranks to lead customer service at a large commercial print manufacturer, the Kansan was ready to venture into print sales and start forging his own destiny.

He reached out to one of his customers, C.W. Betts, the owner of Forms One, a small distributorship just 30 miles from Williams’ home in Pittsburg, Kansas. Williams hoped for a behind-the-scenes look at the print sales business and Betts, with retirement looming and no clear succession plan in place, readily obliged.

“I had three young kids at the time,” Williams says, “and I was concerned about making enough to survive.” Betts was successful, though, and thought Williams, with his commercial print background, could be, too. Williams began working at Forms One in April 2014 and bought the business a few months later.

Even before he bought the business, Williams reached out to another former customer, John Glickert, owner of Missouri-based Continental Group, for advice. Having bought the distributorship, Glickert was a wealth of knowledge on ways to facilitate the purchase and manage day-to-day operations.

Williams admits he was a bit bug-eyed by all of the “minutia” of running the business — from getting jobs, finding plants to produce them, getting POs issued and artwork created to receiving vendor invoices, issuing his own invoices and paying the bills. Even though his wife helped out in the office, he knew he needed more support.

That’s when Glickert invited Williams to be a member of the Midwest Distributors Association, a small, private network of independent distributors.

A Professional Group ‘on Steroids’

The group quickly became Williams’ lifeline.

“Everyone is a unique person, so they have different perspectives and allow you to think outside of the box much easier,” he says. The invitation-only group is carefully curated to ensure no two members are in direct competition with one another. “The only interest they have is to help you be better.”

Started in the early 1990s as a means to share vendor relationships and expand the availability of manufacturers, the group has evolved into a close-knit collection of owners sharing best practices and other practical advice to help each other succeed.

They operate simply. Similar to email groups found at larger organizations, members use a group email to put forth questions and share ideas. Twice a year, members take turns organizing and hosting an in-person. “It’s like a 10-person CEO conference with no guest speakers,” says fellow member (and PSDA member) Krish Bilyeu, certified document consultant (CDC) at Tabco.

Early on when Williams needed to find a vendor to turn a quick order, Glickert introduced him to the president of a manufacturer that could handle the project. “[Glickert] opened the door to an avenue I might not have been able to even find,” says Williams, who has since developed a close, ongoing relationship with the same vendor.

Likewise, Williams also brings new angles to the group. His prior experience as a government printing office (GPO) administrator enables him to direct members to manufacturers “off the radar” from typical product lines used by others in the group.

Williams says the advice, support and encouragement found in the Midwest Distributors Association is priceless. “I’m grateful to have them in my life.”

Mentoring the Next Generation at Ennis

Monty Ferguson had more than 20 years in the printing business when Ennis, Inc., purchased the Printegra facility he managed in Smirna, Georgia. “We thought we knew how to run our businesses,” says Ferguson, “but the first thing they did was assign us mentors.”

He was paired with Mike Allen out of Denver, who helped him assimilate into the company culture and fine-tune his operations. This allowed Ferguson and his team to meet company goals and act quickly on things that needed attention in the facility. Now Ferguson also manages the Printegra facility in Indianapolis.

“It’s great to have someone there to help guide you one way or the other. And [having a mentor] also allows you to form a relationship that you’re comfortable with going back and forth,” Ferguson says.

From Mentee to Mentor

About two years ago, Ennis tapped Ferguson to mentor an up and coming general manager, Jennifer Pettigrew, at Mutual Graphics in Tennessee. He drew upon his experiences with Allen, wisdom gained from his father and insights from respected business gurus to help shape his approach.

Rather than trying to replicate exactly what he does and how he does it, Ferguson says it’s more about “giving her the tools or help to become who she wants to be while meeting the company’s objectives.”

Pettigrew came up through the business from an accounting and human resources background versus Ferguson’s operations and production background. When orders came in to quote and she wasn’t sure if production had the capabilities, she’d reach out to Ferguson.

“It gave us an opportunity to really go through the equipment capabilities to determine if it could be done or not,” he says.

According to Ferguson, the best mentoring relationships happen when both parties are willing to share and listen to each other’s experiences — a true collaboration. “We both have different aspects and different views. At the end of the day, neither one of you may be 100% accurate,” he says.

Mentoring Our Way to a Stronger Industry

Hoang, Williams and Ferguson all agree mentoring relationships are valuable for both mentors and mentees.

“You may go into a relationship thinking you’re just there to help someone, but you actually get as much out of it as you give. There’s always knowledge to be gained,” Ferguson says.

That’s especially true in the print services industry where products and services grow increasingly diverse each year. And as more people come into the industry from different manufacturing backgrounds and other avenues, Ferguson believes it’s through mentoring that those experiences and knowledge will be shared — ultimately making the industry stronger.

“At the end of the day, the printing industry is relationship built,” he says.

By Laurie Hileman