Edward GeorgeYou have received mentoring at some point in your life, fact. Whether in business or in other areas of your life, it is usually invaluable to gain the advice of others and receive training in areas you are unfamiliar with. Starting a new business is not easy, whether you are a prodigal genius or average Joe. Having input and advice from someone removed from the day to day running of the business can prove to be invaluable. Mentoring is by no means a shortcut but instead a catalyst, encouraging you to achieve more from newly learnt skills and carrying out existing tasks more efficiently.
As a young entrepreneur and a recent founder of my own start-up I realised this pretty quickly. I decided early on to make the most of all of the free or low cost mentoring resources available to me. Luckily it happened that a local university had partnered with the government to give free growth support to local businesses. So here I am with 3 fantastic mentors, but what have I learnt which I didn’t know before?
You may well have already realised that anybody can be your mentor. As long as they have a basic understanding of business and marketing then most of your ideas will come to you by simply talking about what you are doing. Below are the three things which I have learnt from my mentors and feel have been invaluable to my start-ups success.
Time Management
This is the most important thing I have learnt in business so far. As a start-up you are often balancing a huge workload to keep costs as low as possible. But as I found when I first started, a huge workload can overwhelm you very quickly. When it does you get often get demoralised, stressed and lose your drive. All of which are crucial in avoiding should you want to maximise your chances of success. Prioritise your tasks in order of which is actually going to make you money and allocate set time limits to all of these tasks to avoid procrastination.
Sell Yourself
You are interesting, the chances are the product or service you are selling is not. People love people and that’s not going to change. Self-branding is a relatively underutilised marketing technique by many entrepreneurs, yet is a fantastic way to engage more potential customers and build an interest in you and your offering. Individuals are far more likely to trust your company if they know who’s behind it, they want a personal service and they are often curious to know more about you, so give them just that!
Don’t try too hard
You are probably a little puzzled by this one, but bear with me. This is one thing which took a while for me to grasp. I used to spend hours and days frantically dashing around trying to do a million things at once. I would become impatient and stressed when things did not happen when I wanted them to. This stress and never ending work drove me into the ground and I was flat out exhausted. Beyond time management I learnt that many things in life you simply can’t force. I started taking a step back and suddenly everything became easier, I had more patience and energy and before I knew it things just happened. Taking a step back in business allows everything to take its natural path and instead of wrestling your way through it, you can instead gently guide it.
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