Before running a business, of course, you are looking for a lot of prior knowledge. One of the places is to ask the experts and make them as mentors. Mentors can guide us to success, and provide us with many benefits. Then how do I get it?
Here are tips for getting the right mentor to run your business,
Don’t hesitate to approach potential mentors
A mentor doesn’t have to be someone older than us, or a well-known, successful CEO. The real mentor can also be a colleague, friend, boss, or family member, if according to our needs, we are interested in learning more from him, and we believe they can help grow our business.
Don’t hesitate to approach potential mentors to make the mentor-mentee relationship more formal. Maybe you can start from the closest people, such as a former boss. If they have the same intention, we can ask them if they are interested in becoming a mentor. If you are willing, then build a good relationship with the mentor.
In the era of social media, it is increasingly easier to communicate like today, we can even meet and greet prospective mentors via Instagram or LinkedIn messages. You can identify your needs first, and find different mentors, according to their area of expertise and according to your business needs.
Convey wants and needs clearly
Make sure that we are specific and clear about what skills or guidance we want and need. We can also convey how it will be applied later in the schedule, for example, whether a mentorship session via phone call once a week, or a meeting once a month, or more flexibility.
You can regularly interact with the mentor, about once a week or 3 days to contact each other by telephone. Mentors are also parties who invest in our success, so you can ask a mentor not only to be a mentor to share advice, but also as an investor.
Give added value to the mentor
The relationship between us and mentors is not a one-way street. For a more profitable and successful relationship, we as mentees need to also add value to the mentor. Because a good mentor relationship is working in both directions, where our mentors can learn new ideas, strategies, and tactics from us, just as we learn from their experiences and wisdom.
In addition to learning from each other, we can also provide other added values, for example the opportunity for our mentors to expand their networks through the networks we have, to sharing opportunities with the community and society.