RJ Muto - Business leaders say you should find a mentor to help your business, finding the right business mentor is essential to your success. Period. Great, but how do you find the right business mentor? Here are some ideas.
Should I pay for a business mentor?
Business mentorship, whether it comes in the form of a group coaching program, a professional organization, a mastermind or privately, is not cheap. And it shouldn’t be.
When you hire a business mentor, you are essentially paying for the two most expensive things they have: their time and their brain.
I agree with that statement, but I also understand that a new business or a floundering business may not have the resources to pay for a mentor.
Mentoring is a two-way street, mentors report several important benefits, from gaining new insights and helping their own careers to creating a legacy.
Many mentors also want to “give back,” helping someone else in the same way that they were helped in their younger days. Their view is that the idea of paying a mentor misrepresents the mentoring relationship. It makes it into a service to be paid for, not a two-way relationship that brings lasting benefits to both parties.
So, whether paid or unpaid finding a mentor is critical.
Check & double check, what are their credentials?
In today’s world where literally, anyone can put a website together and call themselves a business coach, you need to be extra careful about vetting potential mentors.
The truth is we’re in a business coaching bubble of sorts. People realized there was money in coaching and the internet made it easy for anyone to get started. The problem is, like I mentioned, a lot of “business coaches” out there don’t really know what they are doing.
As a result, it has now become your obligation to do your due diligence before investing in a business mentor. This is the part where credentials come in:
· Do they have any professional certifications?
· What is their previous work history? (Hint: Running a coaching business as their first business doesn’t count)
· What trainings have they done?
· How did they make their money before becoming a business mentor? Was it from a business?
· What is their social proof?
· Do they have any referrals?
All of these are potential questions that need to be answered before you decide to work with them.
What kind of help do you need, specifically?
Just like you can’t expect one contractor to do everything in your business, you also can’t expect one business mentor to be an expert at everything in business. This is especially true for the digital age when things change very rapidly.
That’s why it may be beneficial to determine the specific area where your business needs improvement. For example, maybe you’re a great manufacturer but you’re terrible at marketing. As a result, you need to find a business mentor who can help you set up sales & marketing, so you can make money.
Maybe your issue is about mindset. Believe it or not, there are business mentors out there who focus specifically on helping their clients change their mindsets so that they experience more success in business.
What kinds of results are they getting for clients?
The last thing you’ll want to make sure you look at before investing in a business mentor is their results. More specifically, you’ll want to see what kinds of results they are getting not just for themselves, but also for their clients.
Any business mentor worth their salt has video testimonials of their clients explaining the kind of ROI they got from investing with them.
Do you like them?
As a final step, consider whether you like your prospective business mentor. There must be some synergy between the two of you so that the communication will flow. For mentoring to work there must be symbiotic trust and respect between all parties.
Final thoughts
Do not be afraid if you pick someone and you find out you don’t gel. We are all professionals here and sometimes we do not have the same vision. Separate respectively and return to the search. There is someone out there that can help.
RJ Muto Lendio WNY p: 585.332.2415 https://www.lendio.com/local/wny/
