We've had close to 3,000 volunteer mentors, and I have yet to meet one I wouldn't want as my own mentor. They're really wonderful. The new head of Purolator moved from Vancouver to Toronto and he said, “I was one of your mentors in Toronto and I can't wait to start again”, and he has started. These are really great people, and the fact that young people have access to them is huge.
We have a reputation for mentoring around the world. Organizations look to us for how to develop their own mentoring programs. We train our mentors. We don't give a young person their money until they've met their mentor. They do an online orientation together, which we designed, actually, with the help of Lavalife. It says, “What do I need to know about you?”, “How are we going to work together?”, and all of those sorts of things. They get this really good foundation for working together, and the mentors love it. They often say that they get more out of it than the young entrepreneurs do.
By word of mouth we're able to attract mentors, and then we work with chambers of commerce. Often large companies will recruit their staff who want to be helping in the community. It's a great way to use their skills and expose them to young entrepreneurs who have these crazy ideas and to spark them in their own lives. But obviously we need to recruit more mentors, and that's part of my job. Part of having a more distinctive name is to recruit more mentors. It's not been an issue for us and they seem to love doing it. In fact, they tell us they want to become better mentors, so we've developed a program to help them. It's called the art of mentorship, and we did it with Ryerson University, so mentors can actually improve their own skills.