I am often asked how does mentoring actually help someone in business. How can anyone else possibly know my business better than I do?

Well…. mentoring is like having your own private fan club right there at your disposal, but a fan club that helps YOU to get the best out of both you and your business! A mentor has been in your shoes – they have owned and operated the same type of business and have faced your kind of problems before so they really understand the problem, probably better than you do. Your mentor knows how you got there in the first place.

Let’s face it; running a franchise can be a lonely business! Funny how you can be lonely when you are surrounded by soooo many people. Your staff, your operations consultant, the Franchisor – yet when it comes to making the BIG decisions, the decisions that put food on the table, pay the school fees, take you on that holiday, you are usually left to work it out by yourself. You are generally sitting all alone in that little office, either late at night or early in the morning and there are very few people that you can talk the decision through with. Sure there is your Accountant and there is your friend, but neither of them has run your kind of business at the grass roots level. Who is it that you can run that certain scenario over with? Nobody better than your mentor!

A mentor looks at your business with fresh eyes and without all the emotion. They see a scenario that is, to them, black and white. They have a clear head that hasn’t been clouded with bank manager requests, franchisor demands, staff wants and needs – a mind that is not fuzzed with lack of sleep! A mentor focuses on you and your lifestyle and what solution is best for you! Sure they have to take in the constraints of Franchisors, bank managers and industrial relations, but they have been there before and the tips and tricks they have picked up have come from living the real life not just reading some business management book.

Your mentor, believe it or not, is just as excited as you are when you hit a goal that you have both been working on for some time and trust me, having your own private cheer club is the secret to getting your passion back. You want to feel that same excitement you had when you first bought your business and all that opportunity lay at your feet!
And let’s face it you bought the business to have a life, not the other way round!