Oprah had one person she could call any hour — Maya Angelou, who Oprah calls "the greatest mentor I've ever known." By her own account, there's no Oprah without Maya.

Most of us don't get a Maya Angelou. Most of us just get a bus.

If the bus you're riding in looks like a clown car, everyone's gonna stare. You're the one stuck inside, assuming it's something on your face. That's a blind spot, and you're structurally the worst-placed person on the planet to see it yourself. Your boss won't tell you either. Asking your boss how your career's really going is like asking a car salesman whether you still need to be driving to work.

A good mentor does three things nobody puts in a LinkedIn post: they read you your own bus, hand you the shortcut that cost them ten years to earn, and stand close enough that you finally believe you can pull this off.

What we get into:

• Why you're the one person guaranteed to miss your own blind spot — and why your boss is the wrong one to ask about it

• How Bugra Kaya stopped busting his ass on a metric nobody else cared about, got pointed at the one the whole company was already chasing, and walked away with a raise and equity

• Why Andre Barbosa's revenue had to get cut in half before it climbed from $50K a month to $500K a month in eight months

• Four exact questions to screenshot and bring into your first mentor conversation

Somebody out there can already read your bus. Go find them this week.