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Are You Paying For Business Mentorship? Make Sure It Has This

Things to look in a mentor, especially, in business mentorship, are plenty. Chances are that you are planning to take a plunge in fascinating world of entrepreneurship. Perhaps you are a software wizard who has come up with an unbeatable solution to an industry problem. Or may be, you are a financial wiz-kid who knows the world of finance inside out, and wish to use to knowledge of finance to bankroll a project. The situations might be different, but all of them have a common thread passing through them.

In all these cases, you are an aspiring entrepreneur who has an ace up your sleeve and believe that you can change the way the world functions. However, you are awfully ignorant about other aspects of running a business. A business is economically feasible if and only if it caters to some requirement of consumers in a cost effective way. This definition is simplistic, to the extent of being misleading.

Ask a person who leads a business team, and she or he will tell you that a business organization is a complex web of cross-functional activities, and encapsulates a whole range of responsibilities. Right from human resources (you need a dedicated team of achievers, don’t you?), to finance, marketing, operations, legal, technology and many others.

The landscape of entrepreneurship is an unforgiving one, and business mentorship will guide you through the wild wild wasteland of entrepreneurship. If you are a first time entrepreneur, you perhaps are unaware of the hurdles that strew your path. A few months after you start, you may just realize that your distribution is ill equipped to maintain a steady flow of supplies to your retailers. Alternatively, perhaps, a back of the envelop calculation will tell you that your financial ratios are shooting out of the roof, and needs urgent attention. Who helps you identify, or better still, forecast these problems - your mentor.

Now perhaps you know what things to look in a mentor. He or she should be your friend, philosopher and guide, and more importantly, he should have an encyclopedic knowledge about the domain, in which you are operating. Getting down to details, please make sure you identify a mentor who complements your strengths. If you are good in managing finance and cutting down costs, get a mentor who knows marketing inside out. If you are the master of manufacturing, get a mentor who can guide you through the legal or commercial aspects of the business.

Finally, get a mentor who can shout at your face – “mate, you are wrong”. The last thing you will require a mentor to be is a “yes-man”.

Aspiring or first time entrepreneurs generally face from one common problem - they tend to be blindly in love with their idea and tend to overlook glaring mistakes and illogical assumptions in their business plans. The mentor is supposed to be a sounding board for your ideas, and he or she should be able to tell you what seems great and what does not. Business mentorship can be your key to success, if you know exactly which the things to look in a mentor are.