5 Ways to Benefit from a Mentor
And how to choose one..
Are you a Start-up Founder or a Business Owner, trying to tackle several business problems simultaneously?
You are probably trying to connect with investors, secure clients, partners, attract and retain talent, in an unpredictable post Covid-19 market .
Or, are you a Corporate Executive or professional now looking to transition to full-time entrepreneurship in the post Covid-19 world?
As more data points and projections emerge around limited to broad re-opening of lock-down , many new and transformed businesses appear to be taking shape in the low-touch, more digital and caring economy.
Innovative founders and owners are experimenting new ways to reach the consumer. Attract and engage employees. Create stakeholder and societal value. They can benefit from encouragement and support to think and execute new strategies, in pursuance of conscious capitalism…
As I reminisce in my book, Achieving Success by Failing More, most ideas need time to crystallize. This time can be called an incubation period. This period is important because, it allows your hunches to connect with other people’s hunches. A mentor can be sounding board to help crystallize your hunches.
A mentor is someone, who has walked the course you’re about to take and has experience and knowledge , that could help re-orient and grow your start-up business, notwithstanding the challenges. S/he can help you overcome challenges and provide solutions to current problems that will see your venture not only grow but, as Jared Hecht says in Next Avenue, “…survive past the five-year mark — nearly twice the rate of non-mentored businesses”.
“A great mentor is someone who offers objective advice, provides counsel from a fresh perspective, is willing to collaborate, listen and learn, as well as helping you stay focused on your goals, your purpose and what you’re working so hard to achieve”, according to Amy Zimmerman, Head of People Operations at Kabbage, Inc., a global financial services, technology and data platform.
Starting-up and running a business all by oneself without a business mentor is like traveling on an unfamiliar path towards a desired destination, without a map showing how to get there. With the change in customer journey and stakeholder attitude after Covid-19 dissipates, the challenge and the opportunities get bigger.
A business mentor is one who has achieved success in related areas, where you are striving and has himself learnt from mistakes along the way.
So why would you need a mentor for your business? Here are 5 benefits..
1. Helps maximize your time and resources
As an entrepreneur, we all like to make our own mistakes and learn, but it is not smart to attempt to learn’ everything’ from trial and error, as it would take a long time in this rapidly changing environment and perhaps burn more resources. Our chances of making mistakes reduce, when a mentor outlines the impact of potential outcomes, offering the opportunity to learn from your mentor’s past experiences and mistakes. This saves you time and resources.
2. Make it easier for you to access a wider network
A successful mentor has a network of successful people relevant to your business and s/he creates connections for you as a mentee. This helps you tap into a wider network of potential partners, employees, clients, investors and other stakeholders, who can open doors and share much needed perspectives.
3. Helps get you into a Culture of Accountability
A mentor can help you set specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound (SMART) objectives and measure yourself and your business performance against these. Accountability in achieving business objectives leads to better performance and business success. Having a mentor encourage you tactfully, to pursue a culture of accountability– enables create a work environment with a high level of ownership. This in turn helps the team to think and respond better in pursuance of business objectives.
4. Provides much needed encouragement, when the going gets tough
A Kabbage report brings out that “20% of small businesses fail in their first year, 30% of small businesses fail in their second year, and 50% of small businesses fail after five years when their financing or enthusiasm, or both, dry up.” There are times when problems do not come alone and business owners need to speak with someone with a perspective, who has a stake in our success but is not solely dependent on it. As an entrepreneur, you may become discouraged when you are unable to meet your business goals. A mentor helps you look ahead of these hard times, extract the learning and encourages you to keep pressing on towards your business targets.
5. Improves your chances of Success
A research has brought out that mentor-ship enables new entrepreneurs to better build a thriving business. Endeavor, a non-profit organization that supports high-impact entrepreneurs across the world carried out an analysis and results showed that businesses/start-ups, whose founders were mentored by a high performing entrepreneur are three times more likely to become highly successful entrepreneurs themselves.
Many of the famous and top performing entrepreneurs today had mentors. Mark Zuckerberg was mentored by Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs himself was mentored by Mike Markkula (an early investor and executive at Apple) and Larry Page & Sergey Brin of Google were mentored by Eric Schmidt.
If you are briefed and/or trained for an experience, it generally goes better. Think guided tours to historical sites..
So, do you think you are significantly better off having a mentor for your business?
If yes, the next logical question becomes ‘what’ to look for while choosing a mentor?
Choosing a mentor is not an easy task. Based on experience in mentoring start-ups and helping emerging businesses, here are 5 aspects to consider. while choosing one..
#1 Look for people who are doers first and trainers then: leaders who have built businesses themselves…..
A mentor who has actually built and grown businesses preferably from a scratch before s/he got into mentoring or coaching or, training can help with practical wisdom, that comes from doing.
Having hard experience in business building enables the mentor to pass on that knowledge and expertise beyond the training/ consulting aids that need to be used to add value to your start-up business.
#2 Look for leaders who have experienced significant Change and thrived
Another aspect to look at, according to Snehal Shetty of Amrita TBI, is a mentor who has been in the industry, made mistakes, taken risks and thrived. A mentor needs to be a person, who has actually experienced changes in their career and environment, has overcome challenges and failed. You will then benefit from their experience in handling failures and crisis
#3 Those with diverse exposure in various industries mentor better..
A mentor with deep knowledge in the very same industry as you are in, could help with a lot of conversations about how things got done in the past…could that frustrate your attempts at ‘disruption’ or changing the status quo? Whereas a mentor with a good understanding of varied businesses or someone, who has dealt with different ownership structures, could bring in critical cross-industry thinking and help you spot trends and risks earlier
According to Foti Panagiotakopoulos in start-up-mentors, you should look for and establish a relationship with a person who understands where you are currently and one who understands the different business environments and stages of evolution of a business. This way, s/he can help you navigate the minefields your start-up business may need to pass, before scaling and stabilizing.
#4 Look for people who can summarize their learning and communicate well
Your mentor should be a person, who besides possessing relevant knowledge, experience and network across the business life cycle, is also be able to communicate his/her learning in a manner that you and your team can connect with. This goes for all modes and channels of communication, which you and your team may be comfortable with.
#5 Look for problem solvers and life-long learners with a great network
A start-up business will continue to face multiple and unique challenges post Covid19. You need to look for someone, who is able to point you towards discovering creative solutions to the diverse problems that would test your start-up business. As Rubik hub states, “The right one should help you find creative solutions to existing problems happening in your start-up business, and look beyond the conventional to make reasonable decisions.” For this the mentor must be a learner by himself/herself, so that s/he is familiar with the current ecosystem and can help adapt solutions from other industries.
A start-up business can grow and scale if it finds the right mentor. Whereas finding the best fit mentor for your start-up business could be an arduous task, finding the right one could give you the jump start needed to take your start-up business to the next level.
You are possibly thinking, how do you get one person, with so many unique characteristics…and what about this other criteria..
But, who said that you need to have only one Mentor?
Happy hunting!
Have posted an earlier version of this article on Medium.
