Being an entrepreneur brings with it many ups and downs that one sees during the formative years of laying out the business. Challenges of a different kind await you when you are more stabilized. When you are a fairly large company, you don’t know when the next big obstacle is going to be in your way. All in all, as long as you are an entrepreneur, challenges and obstacles are parts you can’t wish away completely.
How do you deal with these? Who do you go to for help? Do you think it is okay to ask for help in the first place, or you feel it is all for you to handle and move on?
Most of us turn to friends, clients and associates for help at different stages of our business. How many of us actually have mentors for our business? These are people or fellow entrepreneurs who have been around long enough to gather rich experience in the world of business that they are able to help new businesses and struggling businesses overcome obstacles.
Your business could have more than one mentor at a time. Depending on the skill you are relying on them for, in terms of what kind of help you seek, mentors can come from different areas of expertise – like finance, strategy, business development, operations and so on. It is a good idea to have different mentors at different stages of your business to get a more holistic approach towards problem solving in your business.
The dictionary defines a mentor as an experienced and trusted adviser. To expand the meaning beyond this realm would be fair to them. Mentors are those people who come into our life by chance or by choice, who uplift our self confidence and believe in us when the world does not. Sometimes they believe in us even when we don’t. They see the road ahead and beyond the bend, which in our myopic vision seems to be a dead end or filled with uncertainty.
Mentors are those who are the wind beneath your wings who help you fly from being mediocre to getting excellence in all that you do. He stands by you and reasons out with patience when you are ready to close the argument and do it your way, he helps you see advantage where you sometimes don’t, and his vision for the road ahead is far more clear than ours is.
To me a mentor is that person, who carries you on his shoulder, so you too can he see the road ahead as he does.
So do you think your business could do with a mentor? I bet it would!
