Why I Mentor, and How I Actually Do It

Every other week somebody reaches out asking me to mentor them. A founder whose sales have stalled. A young tech salesperson staring at a quota they do not yet know how to hit. A developer who wants to stop writing code for other people's decisions and start making some. For years I read every message and had no good way to say yes. So the messages piled up, and so did the guilt. So I finally built a proper front door. This is what is behind it. Start with why, because the why explains everything else. Look at what I actually do. I have trained marketing, sales and ecommerce teams at Nestlé, Nigerian Breweries, NIMN, ARCON, AAAN, ADVAN, ADMARP, MTN, Publicis, Dentsu, WPP, Konga, Jumia, Meta and many more. I founded [Digital Tech Sales Academy](https://digitaltechsalesacademy.com) to train the people who sell technology across Africa. Everything kept coming back to teaching. Mentorship is simply the most personal form of it, one person, one situation, no hiding place. Here is how it actually works, because most people picture mentorship wrong. They imagine inspirational coffee chats. That is not what I do. It starts with an application, and the application is deliberately demanding. I ask what specific challenge you are stuck on, what you have already tried, and what you want to be different a year from now. I also ask for your numbers. Revenue, customers, team size, salary, whatever applies to your situation. People sometimes ask why the numbers matter so much. Because I think in numbers, and because the numbers stop both of us from lying to ourselves. Vague goals produce vague progress. A number moves or it does not. If I take you on, we agree what success looks like in one or two sentences, written down, before anything starts. Then we work. Sessions are a mix of physical and virtual depending on where you are, once a month as the rhythm, and every session ends with an assignment. Not homework for the sake of it. The work happens between the sessions or it does not happen at all. And every session begins with reviewing what you said you would do, because a mentor who forgets what you promised is just a pleasant conversation. Engagements run from four weeks to a year. The short ones are a burst on one sharp decision. Take the role or not. Price it this way or that way. The long ones are transformations, someone becoming a different calibre of operator, and those are the ones where the quarterly numbers review becomes the most powerful moment in the whole thing. Revenue was this, now it is this. You wanted this to change, did it. Progress that is measured feels real. Stalling that is measured cannot hide. Now the part some people will not enjoy reading. It is paid. Engagements start from 250,000 naira and scale with the duration. I want to be plain about why. I have watched free advice get politely ignored for over two decades. People give real attention to what costs them something, and the fee is how both of us take the work seriously. We agree it before anything starts, so there are no surprises. And once every quarter I take one young dynamic person at no cost, entirely at my discretion, for somebody with fire and no funds yet. Who is it for? Young leaders in marketing, digital sales and technology, and founders who are past the idea stage and stuck on something real. Who is it not for? Anyone collecting mentors the way people collect certificates, and anyone who wants me to do the work. I will hold the mirror and I will hold the standard. You carry the load. What do I get from it? More than I expected. Mentees ask questions that force me to examine things I stopped noticing years ago. And there is no feeling in my work quite like watching somebody's numbers move because they finally had the conversation they were avoiding. If this sounds like what you have been looking for, the application is at [martins.com.ng/mentorship](/mentorship). Answer it honestly. The messy, specific, slightly embarrassed application beats the polished one every time.