I Am Usually the Mentor. Turns Out That Was a Vira-Lata Move.
A friend here in Switzerland asked me the other day if I have someone bigger than me in the industry who can be my mentor.
I said no. I am usually the mentor.
What I did not say, because I was still figuring it out, is why.
I have a business degree and a marketing degree. Which means that in most rooms I walk into, my brain is already ten steps ahead of the conversation. The funnel, the positioning problem, the gap in the strategy — I see all of it before anyone has finished explaining what they need. That is useful. It is also, if I am being honest, slightly lonely and occasionally consuming in a way I do not talk about enough.
The problem with seeing ten steps ahead is that you cannot turn it off. I analyse everything. Every post before I publish it. Every decision before I make it. Every strategy before I execute it. It is useful and it is exhausting in equal measure. So exhausting that finding a proper mentor in the industry did not even cross my mind. Not because I thought nobody would bother. But because I was too busy overanalysing every step of the way to notice the option existed.
The vira-lata move was not the one that says I am not worth it. It was the one that says I am too busy figuring it out alone to ask for help.
For the non-Brazilians in the room: vira-lata. Street dog. The one who does not expect to be chosen. The one whose first instinct is to assume the good thing is not for them. Brazil used that word to describe its own national football team for decades, right up until the moment they won the World Cup. We have a complicated relationship with believing we deserve the seat at the table.
So. My friend asked a completely reasonable question and my brain immediately answered: who would take their time to teach me? Not who could I learn from or who do I admire enough to want in my corner. Just: who would bother.
I absolutely love listening and helping people. It is my daily dose of sugar rush. Genuinely. Someone brings me a problem, I light up. Someone needs a strategy, I am already three solutions in before they finish the sentence. It is not a performance. It is just how I am wired.
And now that I think about it, maybe I talk too much. Maybe I jump in so fast with the answers that people stop bringing me the questions. Maybe the reason I am usually the mentor is partly because I leave very little room to be anything else. Maybe this is me overanalysing the whole thing again.
Probably.
I kept thinking about it after I walked away. I have been so busy being the person people come to that I stopped noticing I was also the person who needed somewhere to go. I give a lot. I share what I know. I answer the messages. I forward the studies at midnight. I make the introductions. And somewhere in all of that I had decided that needing something in return was not part of my deal.
Which is, as I said, a vira-lata move.
So I am in a search. Not for a formal mentor with a title and a programme and a certificate of completion. Just for someone further ahead who is willing to have an honest conversation about what the road looks like from where they are standing.
I do not know who that is yet. I am paying attention. And possibly talking slightly less.
If you have found yours I would genuinely love to know how.
Jessica Gabrielzyk
