From helping you learn about yourself to adjusting your mindset, it’s invaluable to have a mentor in your small business. But mentorship relationships can benefit the mentor as well!
In this episode, Pam and Teri discuss how mentorship evolves over time and through different seasons of a business. We share mentor examples from our own businesses. We also talk about what to look for in a healthy mentorship relationship, when to ask for help, where to find good mentors, and how to make arrangements that benefit both mentor and mentee.
Where are you in your mentorship journey? Are you a new business owner seeking a mentor? Or perhaps you’re an experienced entrepreneur looking to share your wisdom. Comment below and let us know!
The Benefits of Having and Being a Mentor for Your Small Business
Topics Covered
- The value of mentorship for small business [00:00]
- The mentors in our lives [01:19]
- Gathering adjectives: How mentors can help you figure out who you are and who you can become [02:56]
- Seasons of mentorship: How mentorship evolves over different times and segments in our lives [06:57]
- The danger of surrounding yourself with “yes people” [09:28]
- Overcoming ego and asking for help [10:39]
- A happy medium: Accepting guidance without falling into dependency [12:27]
- Where to find mentors as an entrepreneur: Paid and reciprocal arrangements [14:05]
- The joys and frustrations of being a mentor [16:56]
- Different flavors of mentorship [20:35]
- This or that: In-person or video chat mentor [22:29]
Why You Need a Mentor in Your Small Business
- “I don’t feel like I had a lot of adjectives to describe me at that point in my life and I needed those so that I would know my strengths and all the different parts to move forward.” – Teri
- “I think it’s harmful to be surrounded by yes people because you’re not always getting the truth and you’re not always being challenged to find the truth in your own self when there’s someone who’s like, ‘Yeah. That’s right. You’re smart. You know.’ And I’ve seen businesses fall apart because the person at the top is so surrounded by yes people that they don’t even know what’s going on in their business and that can just be dangerous.” – Pam
- “When you have the self-perception of, ‘I can figure it out and I’m competent,’ if you ask for help, that bumps up against your perception of, ‘Wait a second. Now I’m incompetent. Now I’m not smart. Now I don’t know how to do it.’ And it just bumps up against all the things you’ve always believed about yourself. That can make it hard. So that’s a little bit of ego and pride that we have to step through.” – Pam
How a Healthy Mentorship Relationship Looks in Small Business
- “Sometimes what mentors tell you is not the answer. It’s to get the thinking going to drive in your lane, what you need to do.” – Teri
- “I think a healthy mentorship relationship isn’t always about the person telling you what to do. They’re helping you learn how to think and how to dissect options and formulate strategies and solutions. But they’re not telling you, ‘This is what you should do,’ because that becomes dangerous and that develops a power dynamic and a dependency that I think could be really damaging to a business owner.” – Pam
- “I think there’s different ways we can have flavor in this. The way you mentor and the way I mentor are going to look different because we’re different humans.” – Teri
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