For the first year of business, many people have a question they should need a mentor or should only follow their instincts and gut feelings. Because most successful tech titans have founders who had mentors.
Like most of them, I need a mentor. Because a mentor can guide me while I run my business — but it is better than nothing. Having been in business for more than six years, I have realized the importance of having a business mentor.
Here are five reasons having a mentor is so important for business.
1. Helping gain experience (In books don’t have) and network opportunities.
Experience is a so expensive asset — yet it is important to your business success. There is something about a person’s experience you can gain from books. It is an unstated truth that most authors don’t feel comfortable revealing everything about themselves in books. A mentor is one guaranteed way to gain experience from others.
Moreover, aside from the fact that investors trust a new company who is recommended by their friends, a successful mentor has an unlimited network of people who can benefit your business. Because they are already helped in your success, it only makes sense for them to let you tap into their network of people when the need arises.
This is an opportunity you can not tap into if you don’t have a mentor.
2. Reassures you.
Some research has been proven that a quality mentor has a powerful positive effect on young businesses.
A mentor guides you and shares your worries with you — often placating your fears by their years of experience and they keep you reassured that your business will be more successful.
Self-confidence is so important to success as a business. Mentors can help young businesses tap into their self-confidence and see every challenge as an opportunity.
3. Mentors will help you stay in business for so long.
When you imagine the number of businesses that fail, you would wish a lot of business owners had mentors. According to some statistics, 30 percent of new businesses can not survive past the first 24 months, and 50 percent of those can not make it past 5 years. However, seventy percent of mentored businesses survive longer than five years.
4. Mentors will help you develop so stronger EQ.
Does maturity bring about a higher EQ in businesses? Emotional intelligence is crucial to a business’s success. When young businesses have more mature and successful mentors who advise them, they are likely to have better control over their emotions.
We all know that a quick way to make a business fail is to mix it with emotions or they make crucial decisions based on emotional feelings. Situations like this can be curbed by mentors will help show you how to react in given instances.
5. Encouragement development.
Enduring the consequences of a mistake on your own can set you back and impact the productivity of a company. In hard times, a mentor will help you keep your head high. Young businesses often deal with depression when they are unable to meet their goals and expectations. The impact of depression on business is often underreported. But businesses without mentors bear the brunt the most.
A mentor who has experienced the highs and lows of running businesses is in the perfect position to give positive and soothing words of advice to your company when things refuse to go your way. And not only do they have the right words to share, moreover, they would also have ideas to help you navigate your business to success.
And as you move up in your business, don’t forget to give back. Mentors make you a better person and you can continue to grow professionally business.