5 benefits of a business mentor 

Navigating unprecedented times can be a lonely experience. 

While most people have family, friends, or colleagues they can look to as a source of motivation in times of need, few have someone they can turn to for expert guidance.

Having a business mentor can provide entrepreneurs with invaluable insights and support that can ultimately transform business performance.

Often we think of a business mentorship as a formal or out of reach prospect, but actually, a business mentor can be someone you catch up with over a coffee and a video call as regularly as you like, for a casual one-to-one chat.

Read on to discover how a mentorship could benefit your business.

A sounding board

Hearing first-hand experiences from a business mentor can often be the reassurance you need that you’re not alone. Mentors will not only listen to you, but they will also offer advice when asked, providing important learnings from their own mistakes and successes that can steer you in the right direction, and help you make transformational developments and improvements within your business.

A catalyst for new ideas

As an experienced individual, your business mentor is there to bounce ideas off. Mentors love to open up and share stories from their own business experiences that can often inspire new ideas or alter your way of thinking, helping an innovation come to life.

Open up doors

Your business mentor will be someone who knows your industry inside out and most likely has a network of long-established contacts whose introduction could be mutually beneficial to both you and the mentor.  By having regular meetings, it’s natural that names will be dropped and the inner workings of prosperous partnerships may form, opening up some amazing opportunities!

Overcome challenges

At times of crisis, a mentor’s insights can be invaluable, offering you recommendations and advice that you may not have considered otherwise. Their expertise may point you to funding or short-term help that can prove highly beneficial to business continuity, helping to strengthen your resilience as you take the necessary steps to move forward during the pandemic.

Develop your skillset

As a business owner, your skills are constantly developing. Turning to a mentor for support is a great way to add to your skillset and discover how to improve your approach in a number of areas, be it leadership, marketing, or speaking; your mentor will be able to provide one-to-one support that focuses on the specific challenges at hand.

How to gain a mentor?

To help you navigate through these uncertain times, not-for-profit movement, Be the Business, have designed a government-funded 12-week Rapid Response Mentoring Programme, built with business recovery in mind.  Experience has shown that their mentoring programme is most effective for businesses that have a turnover of around £1M and more.

The free programme matches you to a business leader who understands your challenges and will help guide you over the next few months. As a sounding board for those difficult decisions ahead, they will help to equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to develop the right strategies as you move forward and recover.

To find out more or to register your interest, click here.