A Stable of Mentors
Keep three or four mentors on a rotating monthly schedule so you always have someone to talk to.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 90%
A redundancy-minded approach to mentorship: rather than relying on one mentor, keep a 'stable' of three or four and meet each on a different Friday of the month, so someone is always available even when one or two cancel. Paired with a way to actually find them — asking your network to recommend someone strong at a specific challenge you face.
Origin
Bangaly Kaba's personal practice, shared as advice he 'always recommends.'
Core principles
- 01One mentor is a single point of failure — a busy month leaves you with no one for two months.
- 02Three or four mentors on staggered weeks give continuous access to guidance.
- 03Find mentors by naming a specific challenge and asking for a recommendation, not by cold-asking someone to 'be my mentor.'
- 04A recommender vouching for common purpose creates higher mutual affinity than a cold outreach.
How to run it
- 1
Recruit three or four mentors
Assemble a small stable rather than betting on a single mentor relationship.
- 2
Stagger them across the month
Meet a different mentor on each Friday of the month so you're learning and pressure-testing ideas every week.
Pro tip If one or two cancel, you still have two people to talk to — continuity is the whole point.
- 3
Find new mentors via targeted referral
Instead of asking someone to be your mentor, tell people what you're working on and ask 'do you know someone who's really good at this?' Let a recommender broker the intro.
Pro tip Framing it around a specific challenge creates a 'trade' where both sides see mutual benefit, raising the odds of a real connection.
Watch out Cold 'I like your style, will you be my mentor?' outreach tends to convert worse than a referral around a concrete need.
In the wild
Kaba illustrates: if your one mentor is busy one Friday and you only meet monthly, you now have no one to talk to for two months while you're going through a lot — unable to bounce ideas or build skills.
→ A stable of three or four avoids this gap entirely.
Common mistakes
Relying on a single mentor
It creates a two-month gap in guidance whenever that one person is unavailable.
Cold-asking someone to be a mentor
Reaching out with 'I like your style, will you be a mentor' is weaker than a challenge-specific referral that creates mutual purpose.
Is it for you?
Best for
Early-to-mid-career operators who want consistent guidance and a reliable way to build new mentor relationships.
Not ideal for
Someone who needs deep, sustained coaching on one narrow domain better served by a single dedicated relationship.
From the transcript
“it's actually better to have a stable of mentors you want to have three or four and ideally what you do is you meet with…”
“if you have three or four mentors if you know you have someone different to talk to every week and if one or two of…”
“do you know someone who I might be able to learn from who has done this or has good thinking about this recently”
From the episode
Unorthodox frameworks for growing your product, career, and impact
Bangaly Kaba (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Instacart)