Executive Summary Only 5% of businesses survive past 5 years. Almost no women make it to CEO in their company. What is the one thing that successful businesses, and successful executives, have in common? Mentoring.
But how many small business owners, how many female executives, can actually find a high-flying mentor to smooth their way, lead them through the shark-infested waters of today’s business world? It’s not easy and it’s probably not the best solution anyway.
This report explains the nuts and bolts benefits of mentoring, and discusses why peer mentoring in a mastermind group, a simple process to organise and benefit from, is in most cases vastly superior anyway.
Business Mentoring is Not the Same as Coaching Many people benefit from personalised life or business coaching, appreciating the individual time spent with a coach who is able to guide them in achieving greater levels of satisfaction from what they are doing.
Business mentoring, on the other hand, is not so much about you as about your business or role. In business mentoring, you want to deal with the nuts and bolts of running the business so that you maximise profit, by working smarter not harder, and by minimising mistakes and wasted effort.
Benefits of Business Mentoring through Your Mastermind Group A good mentor is someone with extremely deep and broad experience and expertise in your industry. Such a person can quickly facilitate your own knowledge and expertise, with a strong focus on strategic thinking. Having an “expert in your pocket” helps ensure success and dramatically decreases risks.
Case Study Paul was an experienced accountant and had run a sole practice for 15 years. He considered himself to be successful because he had all the clients he could handle. However he wanted to grow and realised that to do that quickly and yet safely, he needed expert help.
Barbara, a senior partner of a major accounting firm, became his mentor. She guided him through strategies to both build staff and win business, including monitoring systems to ensure good quality control.
Without Barbara’s help, Paul could not have proceeded to his “end game” which was the point at which he could actually work on his business instead of in it.
Why Peer Mentoring Beats Individual Mentoring, Hands Down!
Late in the ‘80’s, when I did my TQM and Quality Systems training, one thing that really rocked me was the ability of a group to outperform just about any individual. Our instructor pointed out that even in the SAS, even in survival situations, a person in a group had a better chance of living than any individual, regardless of experience or level of knowledge!
And when you think about it this does make sense. An experiment we often run with our groups is to do a count of the number of years of combined business experience in a room. Quite often, especially when you throw in the baby boomers, it adds up to over 250 years of impressive experience of all kinds of businesses and business situations.
Wouldn’t you like to be able to tap into that any time you wanted!
Your Own Peer Mentoring, Business Mastermind Group Some people find they prefer a live meeting format for peer mentoring and the following is what I suggest to ensure success for everyone concerned:
• Meet once each week – any less and you’ll find people dropping off, lagging, or just not doing what they committed to doing.
• Be specific about what you actually want from the group and elect someone to ensure all discussion stays “on point”.
• Keep records so that you can see whether real progress is being made or whether that is merely wishful thinking.
• Be strict about action points. Schedule them and follow up.
• Remember that each person has the right to accept or reject any and all suggestions. They are the one carrying the risk.
The Advantages of On-Line Peer Mentoring or Business Mastermind Groups Maybe the most obvious advantage of on-line peer mentoring is that you save a lot of time! Here are some even more important advantages:
• There’s no travel, and you “peer mentor” at your own convenience. No need to commit to set meetings.
• Many more people are available to share their experience or knowledge.
• The structure is already there. You can work through particular steps to success, and you can also simply put your hand up and yell “help” if you need to.
• The same forum provides a whole lot of other business resources as well.
• The quality relationships formed in these on-line working groups lead to streams of referrals, naturally!
How to Access On-Line Peer Mentoring The good news is that you can not only easily experience on-line peer mentoring, and it’s absolutely FREE! As a free member of My Speed Business Network, it’s all at your fingertips and available 24 hours a day via our on-line member forums.
Just go to www.speedbusinessnetworking.com and click on “Take Me to My Speed Business Network” at the top of the page to join today.
Then come and join us on the member forums and start taking advantage of structured business brainstorming to leverage your own skills, abilities and knowledge, or open your own private mastermind club and invite people you’d like to join. It’s that easy!
Your Mastermind Group What You Dont Have One - To learn more about this author, visit Christine Sutherland's Website.
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Christine Sutherland
(Visit Christine's Website)
Christine Sutherland is an Australian
entrepreneur, clinical researcher, author
and trainer, and the founder of My Speed
Business Network, an interactive business
community with a vast array of free
business development resources. There is
currently no charge for membership.
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