 kind of start to bond and create that. But don't require involvement. So if you have people on your team that just don't feel comfortable doing this, maybe you've had experienced developers that you're like, you're gonna be super awesome as a mentor. But they just don't feel comfortable doing it. Do not require them to do it. Allow them to opt out for something that they're not comfortable doing. This is something that you bring into your company and it's a new thing. Maybe they'll see one junior developer come through this kind of scenario that you set up and maybe they see that become successful and eventually they'll decide to join. But don't require people to do it. It's something that they don't. Not mentors. I like to stress on this, managers can be super great mentors. But the thing is, is that mentors or mentees need to feel comfortable bringing up questions about things that maybe they should know. Maybe they don't know what CSF stands for. Maybe they don't know what react is. Maybe they don't know something and they, inside they're like, I know I should know this, but I don't know it. Don't put them with an integer. They're not gonna feel comfortable saying, hey, what is the answer to this question that I feel like I should already know? Part of them is someone that they can, again, really to create those bonds with and feel comfortable asking. What they might think is stupid question. Open lines of communication. This is gonna be different for each company, but set up a way that there is an open line of communication. Maybe you've got a set office that works once a week or maybe it's, hey, there's a Slack channel that's always here for anyone who has questions about X or code or whatever it may be. Find a way to create that open line of communication so that they know that there is always an avenue or a place that they can ask a question and they're going to want this. They are gonna want to know what they should strive to succeed to. And maybe they don't know that learning react is something that they should spend time on. Maybe they don't know that learning animations in CSS3 is something that they wanna do because they don't know what they don't know. So create goals for them. Work with their mentor, work with them to track their progress and create goals. And then make sure that you remember those goals. Really put a lot of emphasis on working hard to get into this end result and build a program. So as I've been kind of trying for this, you can kind of get a feel that like if you're gonna start to do this, like if you can create a program and get set developers involved and get new developers involved. Once they've gone through this program, you can actually convert them into mentors. So they will be able to relate to the new mentees a lot easier than someone who has been in the industry for a while. And they've gone through it recently. They'll be able to say, great, you've gone through this. Let me help you. Let me be your friend. Here's a great person to talk to if you wanna learn about, you know, whatever. Here's another person to talk to if you wanna learn about something else. Create a program with these people that you probably are. So we're gonna move on to developers. So if you were just personally a developer or personally just anyone in the organization that you want to do through a strong mentor, this part's gonna be great. As to why, this is why you want to do it. Why you should be a developer is what we learned about it. It was growing my network. So once I joined Girl Development and once I started teaching classes, then I would actually meet people in the audience or in that classroom. They might have been like project managers or maybe they were business analysts or maybe they were designers, but they're all with different companies. And so I met a lot of really great people from a lot of really big companies. Before I actually took hand-pian, I worked at General Mills. The General Mills job I got because I met someone in a Girl Development class. And she's like, you're amazing, you need to work for us. And it blossomed into a job. So it will help you grow your network if you're personally a job-looking or we just want that network to be able to reach out to. Maybe inside your company you've got projects that sometimes you need additional help. Any growing your network can help you in so many different ways, jobs, resources, just friends. It's just a great way to come out. The official title for any type of mentorship or volunteering, I call it a Selfish Act of Selflessness. So selfishly, it makes me feel amazing. So I do it because I feel good. But at the end of the day, it's a kind act and I'm helping somebody else. And we both just feel good. So it is something that just makes everyone all around to feel really good. I'll tell you a comfort zone. I'm very extroverted and I've always been that way. There are some people in this industry that are not. They might be very introverted or maybe they don't enjoy meeting new people or at least don't enjoy meeting in uncomfortable situations for them. But this will allow you to kind of start to grow outside of your comfort zone a little bit and just a little bit at a time. So you can do different things that will help you kind of broaden out that comfort zone and not just stay in your day to day. I go to work, I go home, I go to work, I go home. You're on scale. So teaching means that you need to know your stuff. It was actually kind of interesting. So the first time I taught the girl for all of its CSS class, we talked about colors. And I think originally it was like CSS had the 16 standard colors, like blue, green, actually right around. So I taught that and one of my students was like, oh, did you know that there's those that says there's like 147 colors? Hey, it turns out that CSS3 offered out 147 colors and I thought it was 16. I just wasn't, I didn't Google, I didn't Google to see what colors that are normal and I'm using hexadecimal. And it was just one of those things, like when you teach things, you start to refresh yourself on some of these skills. So if you start to teach an intro to JavaScript, maybe you're so in your way of doing things that you forget like these are the foundations or oh yeah, you can do it like that. It just also just gets you better at doing what you're doing because you're teaching. There's successes feel like your successes. So this kind of also plays into the selfish acts of selflessness. But when they succeed and they make their first job, it's like a huge party internally for you. You have helped them, you have guided them, you've given them tips to help them become better developers. And when they get a job, it's just very exciting for you. I actually have a few different students that have gone through my classes and I just had a CSS class like a week and a half ago. And this is like super, super amazing for me. But she went through all my classes. So after kind of going through the first set of classes, I actually ended up writing a standard HTML class from HTML, you move to CSS, and from CSS you move to like web concepts. Then from there you decided to go on a new JavaScript or whatever else. And she came to all of my classes. She went to all the JavaScript classes. She did the WordPress class. And I went see her for about a year or so. She came into my classes at TA. So she volunteered at TA and I found out that she was in an internship or a React role. So she took the skills that I gave her and then other people through Girl Developing gave her and actually went and got an internship job and she's going through interviews right now for a full-time developer role. And it's just like it feels so good and that success, like it just gives me like goosebumps. It's just amazing that I helped contribute to that. And you left on friendships. I had a woman who is from Northern Minnesota and she would drive down to the Twin Cities to come to my classes and come to some of the other classes we're offering. And we're now like great friends. She's all over my Twitter all the time. She's on my Facebook page. We're constantly talking about how she's doing, how I'm doing. It's just a friendship that is always going to continue to be there because we went through so much together. All right, so you learn about why and why you should be a mentor. Really, because it feels good and you're helping other people. But where should you find that? Where can you go to find mentors? Colleges and universities are going to be pretty large. What I actually recommend is that you find out who the director is in that specific program. So if there's a development program or a design program or any type of computer science program, figure out who that director are or what some of those leads are and they can help guide you into maybe certain students or maybe they've already got some type of program that they do or maybe they've got some meetups or something that they do. So just start to reach out to them where you feel like those candidates are going to be. Obviously that's a little bit touchy they're 18 children so you need to be a little bit more careful and figure out how that works. So just quickly for you. But they're also very passionate. Like there are a lot of kids that already know this is exactly what they want to do. And if you can help them when they're younger, that's even better. I also actually actually teach a kids coding class and it's so fun because the school that I taught at was mainly like Hispanic students. It was about getting faculty and Hispanic students and then the rest kind of broke down from there. Which is pretty uncommon for Minneapolis. Who wants to go to a Minneapolis? It's colder. But it was awesome because some of the students came in because they were required to take extra credit. Actually like take that kind of credit for school. And so they're like, oh well we think this coding class is going to be super easy. And they came in there and they were pretty grumpy. They did not want to talk to me and they did not want to write to code. And I started just doing some basic stuff and we changed something and I pushed it up on the internet in every way. Super quick changes, didn't get to you. And then all of a sudden it hit them and it was like, whoa, you can change the internet in a matter of minutes. And once I stopped, they were very excited. And so I turned this group of students into like, oh, we're just stuck here because we have to be here. To like 10 students that were like, oh yeah, I'm gonna be at four or something. Like this is amazing. Like I'm gonna start taking computer science classes. Like I will learn about computers more. And it's super awesome. So don't rule out anyone who might be younger or who might be in even elementary school. I'm trying to get my kids to go. Actually where I really got started, girl development, definitely played into that. But a lot of times I met a lot of people in those classes who were coming from our folk school in Minneapolis and that's where I met a lot of the people that I know and a lot of people that still continue to reach out to me on LinkedIn. Just had like four people reach out from some recent classes and be like, oh, I hear that you really care about mentorship. And that's exciting to me because someone is telling someone and that's just what I care about. But if you have a folks school or a boot camp, those are really great places because they're trying to work very quickly and they really need someone to just give them that quick advice that they need to just get through that program. Local organizations or groups, anything that's on Meetup that is tech related. Maybe it's even just a WordPress Meetup group. Maybe it's a different kind of Meetup group. Maybe there's a web industry as one. Maybe there's actually a girl development or a women who code or yes we code in your area. Although those places are going to have people that want to learn to code. These are not only super fun but also a great place to meet people. In Minneapolis, we have one that one of our agencies puts on and it is all for nonprofits. So we build websites for nonprofits. It's 24 hours, you don't get to leave, you can sleep if you want. But for the most part, it's go, go, go for 24 hours. And although it's exhausting, it's so exciting because the people on our team, I actually love the team that we did. And I found some experience developers, we had a few experience that we could really get to through some of that hard code stuff. But the other three or four people on our team would came from code schools and they were all newer, but they were so ambitious and so excited to learn. So we gave them a lot of things to be at college in. One of them was really good with CSS. We're like, here you go, here's the design and just make this for us. Someone was like really good at JavaScript. So then they ended up creating something that we needed for this crazy advanced form. It's just really cool, but not only on your team can you meet people, but you also get to meet other people on other teams. So we had other people that were like taking a break or maybe just walking around. And it's a great place to just meet with conferences where we are at today. In just a little bit, I'm gonna put you all on the spot and kind of express your interest in this. Is it too quiet? It's hard to hold it right here. But conferences are a great place to also meet people. You can just walk up to them or whatever it might be. Finding people at a conference that are looking for this is also a great place to find them. All right, so we learned about why. We learned about where to find them. Now I'm gonna teach you about how you can be a good mentor once you find those people. I would say by far, this is like your number one job is boost their confidence. They're gonna come in and they're gonna be excited to learn, but they're also going to be hesitant about the things that they are capable of doing. They may have gone through a coding program. They may have gone through a college. Really depending on what their education is, they're going to have a different level of confidence. And it's really important that they give them the confidence that they need to be able to move forward. Even the most experienced developer gets a posture syndrome. I can't even tell you in a week how many times I think that I made the wrong industry choice. I'll be working on a coding example and all of a sudden I'm like, I don't know how to do this. And then I'm like, should I even be a developer? Why am I even here? How do I get this job? Should I quit before they realize that I'm an imposter? And that happens weekly. It's like this emotional roller coaster. And we really need to encourage junior developers to get through that. It's hard. It's hard to get through some of that stuff and allow them to feel good about the fact that they can do it and that we all won't do that. Got their career path. So one note here, don't tell them what to do, but ask them the questions that will help you give them advice. So I have someone who just reached out like six months ago and they're like, hey, I just got out of a pot of prime academy, which is Minneapolis' local school. She's like, I hear that you really enjoy mentorship. I want to chat with you about some things. So we had lunch and we were talking and she's like, I'm gonna leave for a job. She's like, I really don't know where to go. And I just asked her a few questions. I was like, you know, in your day to day, are you really fast paced? Do you want to constantly be busy or do you want very structured, like easy to predict work? And she's like, oh, I really want to be fast paced and I just want to be busy. And I'm like, oh, you should look at agency work. And in agency work, you might be looking at open source. You might be looking at a variety of different quotient language. And so versus if she wanted something that was more structured, I was gonna say cool or corporate, like something like that. And so we got to know that she wanted to be fast paced. And so then I was like, well, do you really like aesthetically what the website looks like or do you like how it functions? Like what excites you more? And she's like, I really like how it functions. And I was like, awesome, then you should get into some backend coding. So maybe PHP or maybe like Ruby or more advanced JavaScript. And so I just asked her a couple of questions and we were able to pinpoint that she wants to get to an agency, possibly learn some more backend coding and do more of the functionality of the website. And that really helped us narrow down jobs. It also helped us narrow down the companies that she wants to work for. And you can do that with just a few people. Be available. This one is super, super hard for me. I'm not super great at this mainly because I'm actually really bad at saying no. So I do everything all the time and then I'm super busy. But we have at least be available when you say you're going to be available. So if you like they want to have in-person meetings or maybe online coding sessions or whatever that looks like for you, set those guidelines and tell them when you're available and then be available during those times. I'll share resources with them. So you don't know what you don't know. I already mentioned that earlier. They may overlook something because they don't know that they need to learn it. Maybe they don't know that react to something that's super important in WordPress or is going to be super important in WordPress. So tell them the things that they should be looking into. Again, this same person that I was just chatting about, she was asking me about that. She was like, well, we learned how to do the right to coding. Like, yeah, I was speaking. Do you think I should look at something else? And I was like, well, that's completely up to you. But there are of course like, there's other jobs you're collaborating with me to. And they don't know some of that stuff unless they talk to someone who knows those things. So tell them those things and share blog posts or online coding tutorials or online meetings, sessions like this that are recorded. Share that information with them so that they can learn about those things. Working coding examples. This one, if I would have had a mentor, I think I would have started to learn to code a lot faster. I'd actually really strive from-