Business mentoring is a great endeavour you should take to help others better and achieve more success. It’s rewarding and at the same time, challenging.
Business mentor is both an advisor and friend for someone – you need to be able to relate your experience with someone you mentor. You also need to be able to help him to cope with entrepreneurship challenges.
As a business mentor, you should also be able to motivate others and present challenges for them, having them leaving their comfort zone and start to take action.
Unlike what others think, I believe that mentoring others doesn’t take any formal educations.
Sure, you need to know what you preach – you need to have the experience, expertise and the “been there, done that” things; otherwise, you can mislead others. Teaching others something you haven’t done is obviously not recommended.
What’s needed is your passion to help others and your willingness to give back to your community without expecting something in return.
Of course, business mentoring can involve money and can definitely make a good business, but what I mean here is business mentoring as a non-commercial activity.
How can I mentor others?
There are many ways you can mentor others, according to your business experience and expertise – here are some of the most common ones a business mentor should be able to help someone with:
1. Personal development
You can help someone to go through struggles in his entrepreneurial journey; you can also help someone to be better at taking on business and life challenge, maintaining work-life balance – all in all, helping them to see glass half full instead of half empty.
2. Business operation and management
If you are experienced at managing people, you can offer advice on, for example, how to win your employees and help them to be more productive and motivated.
3. Business startup phase
Business mentors most typically help a budding entrepreneur in his new business startup; helping him to have a good start.
How to make yourself available for business mentoring?
The easiest way is to let others know that you are open for business mentoring. If you own a business website or blog, you can let your site visitors know that you are available.
You can also join business mentoring forums and associations, networking with like-minded business mentor as well as making yourself available for business mentor seeker to reach you easily.
I’m available for business mentoring!
I don’t have plenty of time, but I am available when you need it. I don’t have 20 years of experience under my belt, but in my 6 years in entrepreneurship, I have gone through many, including starting and running franchise units and online businesses, making a living online and building web businesses, executing business exit strategy (going out of business, selling a business) and going through near bankruptcy phase.
How many people have you helped today?
I personally help a couple of business owners and I do want to help more people out – hence the offer above :)
So, here’s a question for you: How many people have you helped today? Are you a business mentor yourself? If so, what’s your experience in business mentoring? Please share your thoughts by leaving your comment on this article.
Ivan Widjaya
Business mentoring rocks!