Describing a Mentor
A mentor is a person who you can speak to about your business trials and tribulations. They will possess the personal experience to be able to suggest fresh options, alternatives or ways of delving deeper into issues that will broaden your frame of reference.
A mentor is a sounding board for your thoughts and ideas. Their role is to help you find perspective by exploring the issues you face critically and objectively to avoid them being clouded by personal views and circumstances.
Some people believe a good mentor is someone who listens to all aspects of your life, including personal matters. Sometimes this may be so, sometimes not; whichever way, it’s important to know that your relationship with the right mentor may take more than just an initial phone call to understand. In the end the right mentor for you is your decision to make.
When you’re struggling to cope with the lack of sleep, the isolation of being solely focussed on your dreams and the rejection that can come when you start your own business, a good mentor will be able to offer some guidance and keep you motivated.
A good mentor will be patient because whether your current course of action works or needs adjustment, they are there to make sure you continue to fight through the doubt and unknowns until you find a path, system, process and mindset to succeed.
It doesn’t matter how old you are, nor how experienced you are – everyone needs a mentor – even Sir Richard Branson!
A Mentor is Not Your New Consultant
A mentor is a guide and someone you can talk to, they are not a consultant who you can tell what to do. Your mentor has experience and knowledge so they’ll often be able to give you objective opinions to help you move forward and our consultants are their to help you work through our training program.
When you’re starting out it sometimes seems that there is too much work to do for one person, you, and you may start asking your mentor to do things for you, but that’s not what they are there for. If you need more people (human resources) then this should form part of your business plan and comes at a cost to your business.
Does a Mentor Cost Money?
A mentor spends time with you and time is money so it’s important to understand and be realistic about where the return is for a mentor. You can liken mentoring to financial advice, in Australia many financial advisers use to provide advice free of charge because they earned good commissions by selling financial products, but it was discovered that these financial advisers often gave the wrong financial advice (only the bad ones of course) because of the high commissions on some financial products.
We’ve calculated a price and made it available for every mentor on our system. It ensures that they remain focussed on their role to help you through your course, but also enables them to do what you want to do – make effective use of their time.
What happens to my mentor after the training program?
What happens with your mentor and you after the training is completely between the two of you. Some members of our academic board are available as consultants to start getting their hands dirty (so to speak) and really get involved in your business, while others may remain available — that becomes a result of the personal relationship between you..
Learn about our mentoring through our Academic Board
How a mentor can help
Information Review
Your business mentor can review the information you’ve gathered, suggest other sources of information and other ways of verifying and presenting it as well as measuring it’s validity and relevance to your business goals.
Phone Support
A lot of communications is going online via support ticketing system, chats, emails etc but in business it’s often much better to have a conversation with someone. You can get your information and thoughts to a mentor in one conversation rather than multiple emails and receive support in that phone conversation.
Guidance
Guidance from someone experience will introduce new ways of thinking, new angle and potentially new information that you’re not aware of or couldn’t find online. When your mentor provides guidance it is based on their experiences so it’s important when you make a decision to own that decision regardless of it’s source.
