Sharing this awesome new testimonial below from one of the mentors in the Mentor Match program! Need a gift to give someone this holiday season that won’t get lost in the mail? Try a Mentor Match call. We match vetted mentors with mentees, including mentors that don’t do any mentorship in other programs besides ours!

I don’t tell many people my ideas.

I think I was 15 or 16 when I took a meeting with the editor of Seventeen Magazine at Hearst in NYC. I was pitching them a story idea, along the lines of body image for young women, and the meeting felt productive. I walked away thinking I might have landed an exclusive feature in an upcoming issue of the magazine.

To my pleasant surprise, that feature did come out in their next issue. Without me in it. It revolved around another teen blogger who was pretty mean to me online and via email. I remember crying to my mom (ok, I was a teenager, teens cry about that kinda stuff) and her telling me that I shouldn’t tell people my ideas fully without getting an idea of what the person I want to tell my idea to is working on or pursuing. This can be easier said than done, because you may get super excited about ideas and feel eager to call someone or scream your idea from the rooftop. Who doesn’t want to share their excitement about something they feel proud about!?

I’ve learned the hard way over the years about telling people my ideas, losing friends or getting frustrated more than I should because someone reacted poorly to my idea or even took the idea from me. When I have an idea now, I keep it close to me until I’m ready to share it. I’ll tell my inner circle and my parents, but I’m not posting everything that goes through my mind on social media or emailing people about the idea because I don’t know what will come of every idea. There aren’t many things you can keep to yourself in this day and age, besides your own ideas and feelings. Tell someone, but tell the right person. If you don’t have that person in your life you can trust entirely yet, then focus on connecting with someone you can really pursue an honest and deep relationship with. Waiting for that person may take longer than you want, but it’s worth the waiting.

When I first had the idea for Mentor Match, I called one of the mentors in the program, my good friend Vivek Jain on a trip to Palm Springs I took last summer. I didn’t go too deep into the idea with him on the phone, but I introduced Mentor Match to him and asked if he had any ideas surrounding the concept. He is truly the main reason I’ve pursued Mentor Match, and I will be working on buying his app technology from him for the MM app!

If you pursue entrepreneurship, you’ll realize 3 things – someone will always be jealous of you or your idea. Someone will think it’s a good idea & may have more money or resources to pursue it. And someone’s going to tell you your idea sucks.

 I was 16 when I coined a term “money ideas” which is when (if I’m lucky, maybe once a year) I have an idea that I feel like is THE idea. Mentor Match, the summit program and my Radio Disney show go under that tag line. There’s a difference between money ideas & other ideas because everyone has a lot of ideas but how often do you get too lazy, bored, etc. to pursue it? I do, if it’s not one of the money ideas!

Either deal with the above, or tell the right people & you won’t have to deal with any of it until your idea has come to fruition.