Mentoring Matters

I’ve been reflecting on the powerful difference a mentor can make in a person’s life. An incredible mentor can give a mentee an unfair advantage. But it’s a mostly selfless act for the mentor, as the mentor is giving time, but not necessarily seeing their impact for years.?

Don Frey was that in spades for me.???

As a college sophomore, I was working two jobs trying to get by. One was exciting as heck.? I spent my afternoons at the Chicago Board of Trade coding trading algorithms for one of the largest derivative traders in the world. The other job was the opposite – washing dishes each night in a fraternity house (which covered my room and board there).?

I loved math, econ and history, but was longing for something more tangible, so I signed up for an intro course at the engineering school. One course became three, and three became five. Engineering opened up a whole new world of advanced stuff, and I loved it.

My junior year, a new engineering course caught my eye? – “Entrepreneurship. Creating something out of nothing.” It was taught by a guy named Don Frey. And the description was that he had been an executive at Ford. That was it.?

About 10 of us enrolled in this class. On day one, we showed up for class to find a dark engineering lab. In the middle of the lab sat a sparkling Ford Mustang. Professor Frey, who insisted we call him Don, opened the class explaining the history of the car in front of us.?

Don had been both bored and frustrated with the bureaucracy at Ford. He felt like the designers in that era were way too conservative and they weren’t making the kinds of cars he and his friends wanted to drive. But, he was buried in the engineering department, on the receiving end of the lackluster cars the design teams were churning out.?

So he grabbed a few of the best engineers and a sales guy and pitched them on “going rogue.” ? Don had a plan to design a muscle car. He needed their help. They would work together in secret, in a separate, almost abandoned building, and they agreed that they would show no one their work until they were absolutely in love with what they had built.?

When they finally showed it to executives, the CEO went ballistic. “How could you waste company resources and time like this? I’ve got a mind to fire you all right here.”??

The sales guy stepped up and said he’d save him the time – they’d all quit on the spot unless Ford agreed to produce the car.???

Eventually, the executives relented and the Mustang they had designed and built in secret was released. It was an instant hit and became the best-selling car of all time.?

The sales guy turned out to have quite a career after that – his name was Lee Iacocca. So did Don Frey. He went on to become Ford’s Chief Engineer and after that, CEO of Bell + Howell, an innovation powerhouse under his leadership.

But in the classroom in the basement of an engineering building, Don was a mentor. He had a sparkle in his eye. And he still loved the idea of “going rogue.”

For the better part of six months, he drilled us in creating world-class product, building business plans, attracting great people and building teams. But most of all, he taught us how to set a high bar. Don chased mediocrity out of the room. He pulled us and pushed us to do more than we thought we were capable of. We had no idea at the time how lucky we were to be around Don – a world-class CEO who had chosen to spend his retirement years teaching in a dark, dusty engineering building.?

Don spent extra time with the 3-person team I was on because he liked what we were working on – a universal connector for machines on factory floors. A grad student on my team had worked at General Motors and had seen the complexity that each custom machine brought to keeping the lines up and wanted to create a solution.?

Don loved this guy and, in turn, took an interest in the rest of us on the team. Several times during the course, he asked me to meet him in his office. In those sessions, he told me he saw real potential in me –something no other professor had ever said to me (for good reason!). He asked about my work outside of school, and was genuinely interested in what I wanted to do with my life.???

Then he began to mentor me – “try this with your team, they need leadership to help them focus” and “you need to be more vocal, trust your gut on the designs, speak up – they will listen to you.”??

At the end of the course, Don wrote me a note. All it said was: “Become an entrepreneur Jon.? The world needs it.”

Between that course, his mentoring and that note, Don planted a seed in me that changed the course of my life. Years later, when I returned to Northwestern to teach in that same engineering building that housed the classroom that changed my life, I told the dean of the school how much impact Don had on me and he put us back in touch. Being able to thank Don was one of the most satisfying moments of my life.