Startup Mentor
Three Things Most People Won’t Tell You About a Startup Mentor
Starting a business is overwhelming these days.
The startup community is competitive, maybe the most competitive business environment. Everyone (and we mean EVERYONE) seems to have a startup idea they want to get up off of the ground. All of these startup entrepreneurs are jockeying with one another to get funding and get recognition. So how do you get your foot in the door?
The right mentor can give you the kind of competitive advantage you never would have had access to before. These professionals are able to not only point you in the right direction towards success in away from failure, but there also able to help you learn to become a better entrepreneur on your own as well.
They’ll be able to provide you with actionable advice, real-time success strategies, and open up a network that you might not have been able to join on your own. The leverage that you get from the right mentor can make or break your success with a startup, which is why you have to be so strategic about partnering with the right people in the first place.
Plenty of guides exist to help you find the right mentor moving forward, but very few are going to tell you the three things we touch on below. Focus on these three key areas and your odds of success shoot up dramatically. Ignore them and you’ll continue to struggle getting the kind of traction you and your startup deserve.
1. Tell Them Exactly What You Want First!
Outline EXACTLY what you want from your mentor in the first place.
There is nothing more repellent to a potential startup mentor the end having ill-defined goals, poorly defined objectives, or absolutely no real specifics that you can bring to the table when you want to work with them.
Approaching a mentor and asking for help without being laser specific about what you need help with is always going to be met with serious resistance. Mentors have learned to see these kinds of entrepreneurs as “clingers” – people that want someone else to handle all of the heavy lifting of building and growing their business for them while they enjoy the fruits of this labor.
Instead, you’re going to want to come to a potential mentor with a list of three or four things you’d like to focus on in specific issues you’d like help with. Going to a mentor for “idea validation” is never going to cut the mustard, so to speak.
Really think about why you want a mentor, how you hope they are going to be able to help you, and who might be a perfect mentor for these specific issues and the entire process becomes a whole lot easier than it would have been before.
2. Search for Specialists, Not Generalists!
While it’s always a good idea to look for mentors that have general experience in your market or your industry, you want to be 100% certain that you are partnering up with specialist and expert mentors – the kinds of mentors that can help guide you through this specific stage of your startup, your growth cycle, or the issues you have at hand.
Generalists are going to give general advice (surprise, surprise) which may or may not be applicable to your specific situation. Sure, that advice may come in handy later down the line, but if your back is up against the wall and you’re looking to blow through obstacles that are stopping your startup from succeeding right now – this very minute – that advice isn’t going to be all that valuable.
Instead, after identifying the biggest problems or challenges you’re looking to overcome (like we highlighted above) you’re going to want to speak out specialist advice from mentors that know how to topple those challenges specifically.
These mentors may not be all that fantastic at helping you in a variety of other areas or challenges, but for the specific task at hand that you are looking to accomplish there isn’t going to be anyone on the planet better suited to helping you.
The kind of specialized knowledge you can get from experts a singular area of the startup cycle will pay significant dividends. It’s always a lot more advantageous to get help from a number of specific startup mentors then to go to a singular general mentor and not really be able to put any of their advice into play.
3. Creativity Is King When Looking to Get the Attention of a Mentor!
The best mentors on the planet are going to be flooded with requests from people in your exact same position, people looking to take advantage of their finite time and focus the same way that you are.
If you are going to rise above the pack, stand out above the noise and the clutter, and gain the attention of a potential mentor you’re going to need to be pretty create with your approach.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to write your pitch with the help of aerial sky writers flying above their business offices (though that may be a way to go), but you do need to come up with something a lot more creative than “this is who I am, this is why I need help, and this is why I hope you will be able to assist."
Keep your pitch relatively short, laser focused, and predominantly tilted towards what the mentor is going to get out of working with you on these issues. If you aren’t able to bring anything of value to the table but are instead looking to get something “for free” from your mentor the odds are pretty good that you’ll find your requests shuffled to the back of the pack and never thought of again.
Look for ways to research your mentor, figuring out what they look for in mentee relationships, what their ideas are about the issues you are dealing with, and what they themselves are struggling with right now. This kind of due diligence will pay off significantly when you approach them with help for problems they have articulated – and that’s going to make them a lot more likely to reciprocate with help for your challenges, too.
4. Make Sure THEY Are Successful
Those who can't do, teach! Those who can't teach become a principal. Haha!
We cannot stress this enough. If you had a broken leg, would you go to a plumber to get it fixed? We think not. So...before you go DM'ing random "big shots" on social media, calling your Dad's best friend Joe, your uncle Bob, or anyone else you can think of, make sure the person you are about to approach is doing what you do to do.
Plain and simple. Just because you have yet to "make it big" does not mean your time is worthless. As a business owner you must value your time above all else. You must value your time and money as your most precious assets. We receive countless emails from prospective clients asking us if we would mentor them. Quite simply, if we said yes to everyone, we would have no time left for ourselves.
5. Remember To Have Patience!
The chances of wanting to connect with you every single week, no matter how brief, are pretty low – especially since most of them are going to be busy with their own challenges and their own businesses and opportunities.
You might have to shuffle your schedule around a bit more than you thought at first to accommodate your mentor.
You might have to start out with an email chain that gives them the opportunity to answer your questions at their leisure. Come up with creative solutions that take all of the risk and all of the effort completely off of your startup mentor shoulders and put it squarely on your own. Own yourself. If you're looking for a great place to start, we offer a list of free startup resources to guide you in the right direction.
Remember, it takes passion, perseverance and focus to make a business thrive!
