Business Mentor: Where & How to Find?

Identifying the right mentor involves aligning your objectives with their expertise and approach. Seek mentors through industry events, networking, and online platforms, ensuring they possess insights relevant to your field. The mentorship relationship should be built on shared values and mutual respect.

Business mentorship come in various forms, offering specialized guidance for specific needs or entrepreneurship endeavours. These platforms provide structured frameworks for mentorship, often pairing you with mentors who are experts in your field. When selecting an avenue, similar to finalizing an investor, here too consider your goals and the availabilities to ensure a meaningful match.

To make the most of mentorship, maintain an open mind, actively seek feedback, and be willing to take calculated risks. Implement the advice you receive and incorporate it into your strategies. A strong mentor-mentee relationship is a two-way street, built on collaboration and trust. Business mentorship stands as a potent catalyst for professional advancement. It empowers individuals to reach new heights by tapping into the wisdom and experiences of seasoned professionals. Whether through online platforms or structured programs, the journey to finding a mentor is a proactive step towards success.

Where to Find a Business Mentor
a) Close to home: you may already know someone that has the skills and traits you are looking for in a mentor. Make a list of the close acquaintances, casual contacts, social media contacts and see if anyone stands out or meets your criteria.

b) At work: an obvious way to find a business mentor. Everyone has to start somewhere and asking for assistance and business advice from a coworker or manager is not a sign of weakness or failure.

c) Online: There are many online mentoring services that connect small business owners with mentors. You might meet with the person over a video conference or even by email. Just because the person is not in the same town or city as you does not mean they are not a valuable resource. In fact that is a blessing in disguise, as by learning about different local markets, you might open yourself up to new opportunities in different parts of the globe.

Why You Need a Business Mentor

The general perception about entrepreneurs is - they are individuals toiling away at their desks to create new products by "themselves", but seldom are the most successful businessmen, individual contributors or hustling singled-handed go-getters. The most common practice of business professionals who are new to the game or veterans like serial entrepreneurs spend a significant amount of time bouncing ideas off of colleagues, teammates, friends and family members.

More times than not, sustainable businesses are created by motivated and educated people that gain these traits through experience. This is where the mentors come in, whose insights help in impacting business practices, ethics and, eventually business success. They have lived through the journey and learning from their mistakes and successes, can impart some of the valuable lessons they have accumulated over the years.

The Value Add of Mentors

a) Knowledge: A mentor who has been in the industry for a while or are ideologically congruent to how you envisage to run your own enterprise can help with the business plans, budgeting tactics and even the day-to-day operations.

b) Objectivity: Mentors can give you an honest review of areas in your business that need improvement, as well as point out the areas that are doing well. So you need a mentor who is honest with you and who knows how to offer constructive criticism.

c) Discipline: A business mentor on the trek ensures accountability in goals and re-circling to check-in how well are we aligned or digressed in the process. A strong work ethic and a drive to succeed can make or break an entrepreneur.

d) Network: Although knowledge plays a significant factor in the success of a business, networking is a critical element and spoke of the wheel that lets the business roll on smoothly. Mentors often introduce you to their own professional networks, expanding your connections and opening doors to collaborations, partnerships, investments as well as help specify your target audience. “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know."

Nava Paath of Nava Durga

Goddess Durga offers life lessons that inspire a wealth of meaning for the management world. Navaratri worships Goddess Durga in various forms of power. The nine forms of Goddesses, which are popularly known as "Nava Durga" signify the conquest of the dangerous demons which draw their parallels and meanings as per context – personal, professional, business and otherwise.

Goddess Shailputri

Significance – Introspection, Strength, Courage, and Composure. Helps in guiding us in our journey to explore and discover our purpose in life Helps to understand the struggle related to the initial years of setting up a business and focus on its successful continuity by evaluating the business goals.

Goddess Brahmacharini

Significance – Confidence, Competence, and Perseverance. A balanced state of mind, immense willpower, desire for success, and confidence are the most important qualities that help us in the most challenging times in the lives of entrepreneurs and businessmen.

Goddess Chandraghanta

Significance – Grace, Knowledge, Bravery, and Vigilance. With supreme bliss by being vigilant regarding any changes in policies and regulations, one must learn adaptability and upgrade technology to maintain relevance and fit to add more value to the business.

Goddess Kushmanda

Significance – Energy, harmony, wealth, and power. To create customer centricity and wealth in your business you must focus on your financial well-being and emotional well-being, which contributes positively to your business.

Goddess Skandamata

Significance – Intelligence, and compassion. A compassionate leader inspires all the team members through coordination and collaboration. This enables the leader to focus well on the business goals.

Goddess Katyayani

Significance – Knowledge, Courage, and Power. Modern businesses are dynamic with policies, trends, and competition and the business must adapt all these accordingly.

Goddess Kalratri

Significance – Happiness, Knowledge, Wealth, Perfection, and Purity of heart. As an entrepreneur or a business leader, one needs to communicate regularly with the employees and stakeholders on the plan of action to overcome the challenges.

Goddess Mahagauri

Significance – Cheerful demeanor. A leader needs to make first impressions with all stakeholders of the company with a pleasant cheer.

Goddess Siddhidatri

Significance – Knowledge, and Wisdom. As a businessman or entrepreneur, one needs to have a thorough knowledge of the business and focus on constantly building new skills and strategies that will help the business grow.

If the entrepreneur, or businessperson focusses on the above 9 important lessons from Goddess Durga, one can take the business to new heights.

Happy Dussehra!!

Money, More Money, Even More Money

To some people, money is power. To some money equals status and prestige, while for others it means security. For some people money allows them to get the things they want in life. Others just want to have enough to meet their needs. How important is money and what role does it play in your life?

While money allows you to function suitably in a capitalistic world, many people do not associate positive emotions with it. Money is associated by people as something that belongs to the future and is supposed to make it secure. This makes a lot of people go through a guilt-trip when it is spent, which eventually leads them to compare themselves with their peers. This induced peer pressure spirals into self-doubt, negative self-talk, and messy future thoughts. Despite all this, there is something that binds all our thoughts, apprehensions, and plannings - everyone is very emotional about money.

The psychology behind our relationship with money is very underrated and there is a great deal of undercurrent to the confusing emotions many of us feel when it comes to our finances. Our feelings are always unrelated to the financial decisions we make and indicative of something much deeper.

Anything important in our lives is emotional. Our relationships are emotional, our work is emotional, and so is our money.

Startup Growth Mantra

India has rapidly moved ahead on the path of economic growth in the last few years, and the startup ecosystem has been playing a crucial role in this exponential growth. The various district-level, state-level, and country-wide initiatives on the ground have created an entrepreneurial buzz that has enabled the country to rapidly attain pioneer positions globally in terms of the number of startups and number of successful unicorns.

Statistically speaking about 15K startups got registered in the country in the last fiscal year alone, which as compared to only a half a decade back was merely ~1000. Having said that, we cannot overlook the fact that about nine out of ten startups fail within the first 3-5 years of inception despite getting funded (by friends, family or third-party) and/or being able to generate early revenue. From the perspective of most entrepreneurs, the top needs they identify besides funding, are access to the right market and simultaneous access to the right guide to take them forward. Let us dive a little more to understand how these may help any startup survive, sustain, and grow in the market.

Funding – paramount at every stage of the startup in technological spearheading, acquiring and retaining talent, strategizing go-to-market activities, product development, business operations et all. The simultaneous need for working capital also grows to build and scale up infrastructure. A brilliant idea may still be at the desk and fight it off for proof of concept and never be able to reach the stage of proven market acceptance irrespective of how effective it is, due to the lack of funds.

Market Access & Fit – Howsoever good an idea may be and be strategized for bridging the gap, achieving market fit for the product or solution is extremely important and critical stage for any startup. When a business is started, it is done with a clear objective in mind to address a market gap that the entrepreneur identifies. However, at the very foundation to actually strive and cater to the objective lies various factors like timing to the market, flexibility & adaptability, credibility, and usability much before the product is even introduced to the market, the needs of which are very volatile and dynamically changing at every stage of the startup. May a times, the well-audited, segmented and tragetted audience might expect a solution that is different than what is being offered by the company. So, it is paramount to develop the product with as much dynamism as possible and be suitably backed by the other mentioend need, that is of funding. Thus right ‘Market Access & Fit’ is an important aspect in every startup's journey.

Mentoring – Mentoring is one of the most important yet neglected, least talked about, and probably the least emphasized need for business growth. An entrepreneur might come up with a brilliant idea, and if it is worth its' salt, pitching it to investors is likely to give access to money as well. However, there are many steps and other challenges faced by first-time entrepreneurs at every step of their entrepreneurship journey. In the absence of right mentoring, a lot of founders get their calculations and strategies wrong, eventually burning cash on things that could have been avoided and leading to a scenario where they are left with no money to sustain or scale the enterprise.

Guidance or mentoring from industry experts or successful entrepreneurs in the domain can give the right direction to the entrepreneurs. They can get inputs on aspects such as compliance and taxation, technology, hiring, procurement, sales, and marketing etc to build more robust and sustainable businesses. Most of the mentors are also people with the right industry connections and can help startup founders get the right exposure or opportunities to network with other important stakeholders such as investors.

It is not easy for first-time business founders to find all these discussed aspects catered to under one roof. The challenge is even more daunting if the startups are in Tier-II, Tier-III, or Tier-IV cities. That’s the reason why setting up of a networked ecosystem is extremely important for extracting the true potential of the talent India offers.

For India to truly become a global startup super-power enunciated not just in numbers, but in terms of economic and employment growth, there is a need to prioritize cultivating this ecosystem across the country. The governments as well as the other stakeholders including universities, colleges, and B-schools have to collaboratively materialize this effort, remove the barriers, and pave the path for speedier and widespread growth for the Indian startup ecosystem!