As the first person in my family to attend college, I walked into law school with plenty of enthusiasm, but without much of the inside track that many others had. Within the first week, I realized that my ambition, work ethic, and thirst for knowledge could only take me so far. After all, I was surrounded by intelligent, driven peers, many of whom had access to much greater financial resources, influential connections, and mentors that would help them navigate the university and law school experience. To be frank, I’d grown up in a series of small country towns in rural Australia, and I hadn’t even interacted with a lawyer before my enrollment. Talk about jumping in at the deep end!

Not fully appreciating the need to start building key networks, or how, I worked a retail job and as a cleaner in a bakery while in law school – neither of which was condusive to acquiring many of the connections or professional knowledge that many of my peers had. But, like most things, there was a silver lining to this. Once it became apparent that I was out of my depth and in need of catching up, I set about acquiring the skills and strategies that I’d need to succeed. The result was that over the 15 + years that followed, I met a British Prime Minister, judges from the Australian High Court and U.S. Supreme Court, privately toured the Pentagon, and found mentors in the business and national security communities.

After starting my legal career in Australia, I decided to head to London, England after having spent much of my youth longing for international experience. I distinctly remember telling one of my very senior colleagues of my plans. His initial response was to laugh, citing the financial crisis (this was in 2009), my lack of ties to the U.K., and his own failed experiment at transferring his skills overseas in the 1990s which saw him return home after six months. To drive home his point, and with a touch of distain, he wagered me a steak dinner that I’d return home, jobless within 6 weeks.

I wasn’t going to let his own failures deter me, but that 6 week deadline did loom large in my mind. As the deadline approached and my funds started to run short I decided to start making preparations for my back up plan. Through friends I had made before heading to England, I had arranged for job shoveling manure in a northern England chicken farm. This was a far cry from my desired role in a major London law firm, but it make my last few weeks of job searching especially urgent!

As luck would have it, and with a week to spare, I secured a position at a London firm and vowed to make myself indispensable. At the time, requalifying as a lawyer in England involved a year of supervised work and exams, which basically meant doing the work of attorney for half the salary, but it was my foot in the door. In addition to localizing my skills, this allowed me to fine-tune my approach to networking and professional development not only in a new country, but with people from all over the world.

In 2013, I relocated to Texas to pursue a Master's degree at Baylor University where I spent much of my time working with undergraduates. By 2017, I was overseeing the school’s pre-law program. Leveraging my personal experience and deep understanding of the unique challenges facing these students, I provided advice on legal careers, law school admissions, and careers in national security and diplomacy. It was during these pre-COVID years that the challenges faced by Millennials and Generation Z started to become immediately apparent.

The challenges I saw these students facing was only made worse by the outsized impact that COVID-19 had on the professional readiness and soft-skill development of many students. In 2022 I founded law school admissions and career consulting firm PreLawPro LLC which helped to address these needs within the Pre-Law community but it was soon clear that there was a much broader need.

With The Mentoring Guy, my goal is to bring these benefits to other industries. I want to give the next generation the coaching, support, and guidance required to nurture their talents, realize their full potential, and achieve long-term professional success.