It’s incredibly exciting to be an entrepreneur and to fly solo, heading off into the unknown and making a success (hopefully) of your new business. Yet the reality is that while this is indeed an exciting idea, it’s unlikely to happen – you will need to find out how to run a business as well as simply having a great idea that you know will sell. This is where a business mentor can be extremely useful; having someone on hand who understands business and who can guide you is invaluable if you want to be the best. Read on to find out why.
Information And Knowledge
When you first start out in business, it’s possible you really have no idea what to do. It is possible to learn as you go along, but this will also make the process a much longer one, and it will be very hard work. If you speak to a business mentor, they will be able to advise you from the start, ensuring that you are aware of things such as:
- Budgeting for business
- Writing a business plan
- Making the right decisions
- How to run a marketing campaign
- How to handle the daily administration processes a business needs
If you have someone who can give you the information you need from their previous business experience, you will be able to set things up more quickly and efficiently in the right way, and that will give you more time to work on the business itself.
They See Improvements
If you are running your own business, you will be very close to it. You will feel protective of it and you will be buried in the work all day, every day. Because of this, you may not see when there are improvements that can be made to make things better (and possibly easier for you).
Your mentor will see this. They will be able to take note of what you are doing and how you might do it better to produce the best results. They know how business works, so if they see something that can be improved, they will tell you and you should think about changing to line up with their expectations. It might be that they want you to make your website simpler, or that they can see how your advertising campaign can be made stronger. They might suggest gaining additional knowledge such as a computer science online degree Canada program or let you know it’s time to hire your first employee. Listen to what they say.
Motivation One of the most important areas that a business mentor can help you with is motivation. When you see what they have achieved, you can look up to them and try to reach the same heights in your own business. Having this kind of motivational person around you means even when you feel as though nothing is going right, you will still be able to keep your head up and keep going because you know what you want to achieve is entirely possible.
You don’t want to exactly copy your mentor, but use them as inspiration for the journey ahead. They should pose the right questions and push you in the right direction without taking over. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing control of your business. Make sure to strike the ideal balance.
Goal Setting
We all know that it’s hard to run a successful business, but there are certain things that are always going to make it that much harder. One of these is your goals. It’s great to have goals – you might even say it is crucial to the success of your business. Without goals, how will you know which decisions to make and what direction to go in? Yet these goals can also be detrimental to your business if they are not realistic.
In order to be something positive, any goal that you make should be SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. If your goals don’t adhere to this principle, you can easily find them overwhelming, and because you’re not able to achieve them when you think you should, you could give up on the idea altogether.
Your mentor will help you to create SMART goals so that you can move forward step by step. It may be a slightly slower way of working, but it will mean you get everything done in the right want and in the right order without causing you too much stress.
Sounding Board
Have you ever had a business idea that sounded great but that didn’t actually work out because you had missed out on some components and hadn’t been able to think it through accurately? Most of us have been in this position. With a business mentor by your side, however, this is much less likely to happen.
When you have a new idea for your business, you can use your mentor as a sounding board, asking them to hear you out and then give you their opinion. With their wealth of experience and knowledge, they will be able to point out whether the idea is something you should pursue or not, and either way, they will be able to offer information about how to improve your plans. This way you can be more successful from the start, rather than come across obstacles you hadn’t considered.
It’s Free
Having a business mentor is usually free, and as such, is even better value than you might have thought. You will generally find your mentor through networking and connections, and rather than pay someone a lot of money to check your business over (which is something you can do if you want to) you can simply align yourself with the right person or even people and get the advice for free.
Why do mentors do it if they’re not getting paid? It’s for the satisfaction of helping another business person grow and thrive. This means you can trust them to really be there for you and to have your best interests at heart rather than just being there to collect their next check.
