December 5, 2012
How to Find & Work with A Mentor
Many new entrepreneurs equate mentors with “good fairies”, selfless, magical and impossible to find. The truth is, mentors can be found almost anywhere. If you’re having difficulty finding people with influence and authority who will help you grow your business, its not because they don’t exist it is because you don’t understand how they decide who to support.
Mentors aren’t selfless. Contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, most mentors are not selfless. In fact they tend to be ambitious which is how they have become influential enough to be of use to you. Their success has come from who they know and what they know and how hard they work. If you want to merit an investment of their time and attention, you need to care enough about them to know what their ambitions are, what their personal and professional needs are, and you need to know how you can be of benefit to them.
The first step in establishing a mentoring relationship almost always comes from the one being mentored.
You notice that another entrepreneur, far more successful than you at the moment, has a need for information, resources or access to people that you can meet. You meet that need without asking for payment or reward of any kind. This gains the attention of the mentor and lets them know that you understand the quid pro quo inherent in most successful business relationships and you’re smart enough to understand how you can be of use to them. From this they can perceive a concrete value in helping you and your business.
Asking a mentor for a favor before you’ve fully and completely demonstrated your value and commitment to them is always a serious mistake. In some cases a mentor may have seen, through past exposure to your work, that you can be of mutual service to one another.
When that happens they may make the first move by offering you a connection, or some advice, but that’s certainly the exception not the rule.
Mentors aren’t magical. A mentor can’t give you or your business success. You may think that being mentored by someone at the top level of a given industry is a path to instant prosperity, but the truth is that their position is secured not by “reputation” but by the work they do day in and day out that gave them that reputation. In short, they work very hard. If you’re going to be successful, you’re going to work hard too.
A mentor may be able to connect you to people who can give you a contract or offer you some free advice, they may be able to suggest ways to get what you want in less time with fewer resources, but they can’t, and won’t, climb out on a limb to help you and your business if it will harm their own.
Asking a mentor to do do something difficult almost always a mistake, and sometimes it can cost you the relationship you’ve worked so hard to establish. It makes you look unwise and grasping. That makes them think twice about introducing you to anyone else they know with whom you might make the same mistakes.
Mentors aren’t impossible to find. If you are building your business correctly you are in contact with lots of people who can become useful mentors regularly. You’re working with suppliers or service providers that create the products and services you sell. You’re reaching customers through fairs, trade shows, resellers. You’re working with other companies in your industry who could be potential competitors except they don’t really want the work you want to do. All of these professionals are in a position to provide you with insight, guidance or contacts that would make it easier for you to sell more of your work more profitably.
So, the first step in finding one or more good mentors is simply to be aware of who you’re meeting as you work. You can collect business cards and look up people on LinkedIn to learn their professional histories. You may even be able to look up recent articles about them on news.google.com. Bios for important people often appear in Wikipedia or on their website.
If you know you’re about to meet someone who could possibly help your business by taking an interest in it, take time to learn about them before you come face to face. Be prepared to say something interesting and complementary about some of the work a potential mentor has done. If you meet someone you think you’d like to be mentored by unexpectedly, look them up after the meeting and fire off and email, card or letter that says something kind, true and interesting about their work then tells them some piece of information they might find useful.
The second step in finding a mentor is to connect to them briefly, after you’ve met, in some pleasant and useful way. After that, let them take the lead in how fast things move and what they do for you. They aren’t your employees or friends.
Mentors & Good Fairies Do Have One Thing In Common . . .
They can be transformative. Mentors are often twenty years or more down a road you’re traveling along. Their way of perceiving you, your competitors, your customers and the future can be inherited and it can show you how to go from where you are now to where you want to be. In most cases the greatest gift a mentor can give you is their insight, and that’s something they often offer for free. Finding out what they think, what they read, how they invest their time can have more of an impact on your business than any contact they ever give you or any recommendation they every write.
