Business mentors

I have worked in as a business mentor in both an official role with a mentoring organisation and as a friend helping out those I have known for years.

The best and worst thing about business mentoring is that it is free. This is of course great for the mentee, who typically has a small business with little money to spend on small business support.

However, because they  have not parted with money, this includes my friends I have helped over the years, they are not motivated to work. Many years ago I invested close to £10K in small business support for my business – I have never worked so hard in my life.

In addition, many mentors I have encountered over the years have little experience to help small business owners they work with. Often, they are pulling on their own experience from the one business they had, which may or may not have been a success. To make it worse, the business is nearly always in a completely different sector to the mentee’s business.

I also find that the mentors have very few skills around coaching, teaching or mentoring. Meaning that time spent with their mentee can be painful and unproductive.

And there are more…

I could go on to talk about business advisors, business trainers, life coaches and more. Again and again there would be a long list of reasons why they fail.

However, if I was to sum it up in one point, it is this; they are all too one dimensional.

As a small business owner the small business support you need has to cover many things to meet your complex needs.

Your Small Business Support Needs

Anyone who is supporting small business owners with small business support has to first understand what your needs are, before jumping in to help you.

Over the years I have identified what the small business support is that small business owners actually need. Have I got them all here, probably not, but I am constantly reviewing this list to better understand your needs.

Expertise in your area

Small business owners first need someone who is an expert in their area. They have got to have experience in your sector or industry, and they must understand first-hand the pressures of running a small business.

With this, they will know the pressures your industry is facing with changes to technology, legislation or the impact of macro-economics for example. They will know what it is like to lie awake at night worrying about staff problems or the pressure of closing a large contract.

Someone to get stuck in

Although this list is in no particular order, for me this is the one need I hear from small business owners tell me is the most important. Like most small business owners I am sure you are busy, very busy. For this reason you will probably welcome an expert to roll up their sleeves and support you with some, non-technical work in your business.

Having someone, not on the sidelines, but on the pitch doing the things you either don’t have time to do, don’t have expertise to do, or don’t enjoy doing. Imagine that.

They come at a fraction of the cost of a full time employee, better qualified and each piece of work is carefully monitored to ensure outcomes are delivered as agreed at the outset.

Support when you need it

When you run a small business you might need a little extra support in addition to your once a month meeting! What about the employee who is causing you sleepless nights, or that 5 figure sales meeting coming up this week or a major change to legislation in your sector.

When you are looking for small business support you want it when you need it. Waiting  weeks until your coach or mentor returns is not good enough.

In the past I have lost clients not knowing that it was because I was not supporting them enough. As a small business owner you have mini crisis or a real opportunity every month, if not every week. When these crop up you need someone to speak with there and then.

This does not need to be a 2 hour Zoom call, often a text or a short email does it. But equally, occasionally, if a face to face meeting is needed that week by the small business owner, it is needed that week.

Blended learning

Many decades ago, in a galaxy far, far away… I was a school teacher. Something I learned all those years ago is that everyone learns in different ways. Some love reading, some like analysing statistics and some love “doing” for example.

We are now in a remarkable time with the advancement in technology allowing small business support to be delivered in a whole host of ways. This could be face to face, online meetings, videos, interactive documents, SaaS systems and more.

To ensure your small business support is delivered in a way that meets your learning needs there must be a blended approach. You should be able to choose the ways you like to learn to ensure that find success fast and pain free. And, for many being able to learn at a time that suits you is important.