Step 17 - Choosing a Mentor

When you start your own business, you definitely will not know absolutely every thing about what it entails to be successful and I would encourage you to get as much help and advice as you can.

You may need financial, marketing, sales, business development, legal or employment advice and for specialist areas I would encourage you to seek advice from the experts.

However there will come a time however when need someone who is way ahead of the game from you, maybe knows your business or industry and has connections where they can make introductions for you.

Formal mentoring is a powerful development tool that will accelerate the launch, take off and expansion of your business.

I struggled for the first few years of owning Essentials for Health, believing I had all the answers, that the golden egg was around the corner, that I hadn’t done it “properly” unless I’d done it all myself and that I would more proud of my achievements because of my struggle to defeat the odds! Phew what a waste of years! How naive and how foolish could I be!

Talk to any successful person in business and they’re likely to have not just one mentor but several!

Given that 70% of businesses will fail within their first 3 years and Essentials for Health was nearly one of them be sure that you set yourself up for success by getting the right help and advice. 

Choose a mentor who:

• Has huge amounts of business experience
• You like
• You admire and respect
• Would like to be more like

Mentoring works best when you have one or more of the following:

• Some questions to ask
• Problems to solve
• A dilemma to discuss
• An issue to resolve
• An opportunity to consider
• A project to plan for
• A direction to decide

Use a mentor to help you:

• Clarify goals, set targets and ensure you stick to them
• Evaluate your successes and failures
• Stay on track
• Keep on a even keel- the road to success is bumpy and full of trials and tribulations, talking them through with a mentor will turn these challenges into real nuggets of learning and a springboard to move forward from
• Develop your business skills and confidence
• Keep moving forward
• The principle of modelling
• Mull over projects/ tasks and provide you with a sounding board

Free Mentoring Trial

Gill Tree provides telephone mentoring to complementary therapists. Call 01628 476100 for details and a free 10 minute mentoring session.

Here’s what some of Gill’s mentees have to say:

“Thank you very much, Gill. I really appreciate the extremely useful advice you've given me! It's definitely something to get my teeth into... I graduated in 2009 and things haven't really kicked off for me yet in terms of my massage business, my only clients being friends. I am still working full time as a Secretary and am desperate to get out of the office… my purpose in life is becoming clearer and I now realise more than ever that I have been put upon this earth to help people and make them feel better. However, I do lack a little confidence in getting myself started as a therapist, so the support gives me the confidence to put my passion into practise.” Anna Smeeton

“Thank you for today’s consultation - I found your thoughts and answers to my questions really useful - I feel much clearer now about where I want to take my business and felt really inspired after our call - I've already made an action list!! It really helped to have a conversation with a professional and someone with experience which has helped me feel supported as a new therapist”.  Polly Field

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