Friday Q&A: How Many Mentors Should You Have?

Every Friday, we’re answering your questions about business, startups, customer success and more.

Happy Friday!

This week’s question comes from Jonah Walker, who asks:

This question appeared on our post about influencer outreach mistakes.

I wish I had a magic number for this, but the real answer is, it depends.

Mentor relationships can vary greatly from one case to the next, and it all comes down to a couple variables:

• How much time do you have? If you’re meeting with a mentor every week and spending an hour with them, you probably won’t have ten mentors. But if your relationship is a more distant one, and you meet every now and then or even just talk on the phone or via email, then you can sustain more. Remember though, that the time commitment isn’t just about how much of your time you need to spend getting help from them; consider how much time it will take you to add value to their lives, too.
• What do you actually need? I’ve had different mentors throughout my life based on the position I was in. After starting Groove, I struck up relationships with others who had started B2B SaaS companies. When we grew past $100K in MRR, I looked for people who were experts in other areas where we were struggling (people management, capital allocation, etc…), with less bias toward industry.

As to the third part of the question:

If you do have multiple mentors, do you ask them all for advice about the same issue or do you target it to a particular mentor?

I’ve never emailed them all the same question. I always direct my questions to those who I feel will have the greatest expertise with that topic, to both respect *all *of my mentors’ time and to maximize my chances of getting great, targeted feedback while calling in as few favors as possible.

For more, check out the guide I wrote for connecting with awesome mentors.

How about you? How do you manage relationships with the people that you learn from? Let us know in the comments!