Joanne Hession, author of "Don't Get a Job, Build a Business" and Johnny Ryan, head of innovation at the Irish Times talk to Bobby about the benefits of a mentor. 

Joanne's Notes

Mentoring

This week on the Down to Business Show Bobby and I discuss the topic of mentoring for start-ups. Questions start-ups often ask are:

• What are the benefits of having a mentor?
• Where can I get one?
• Do I need to pay for mentoring?
• What should I look for in a mentor so that I don’t waste their time or mine?

A significant and much utilised component of the "soft" support intervention of County & City Enterprise Boards / Local Enterprise Offices is their mentor programme. This particular programme seeks to match up the knowledge, skills, insights and entrepreneurial capability of experienced business practitioners with small business owners who need practical and strategic one-to-one advice and guidance. The mentor contributes independent, informed observation and advice to aid the decision-making and action planning functions of the client but does not become involved in the day-to-day management of the client's business. Assignments under the programme are normally short-term and are governed as to duration, confidentiality, etc. by contract between mentor and client. The specialist fields for mentor engagement typically include general management, financial structuring, production planning, marketing, distribution, corporate organisation and strategic planning.

The mentor's role is to:

• Listen
• Help identify problems and areas for improvement
• Suggest solutions and assist in drawing up a Business Plan
• He or she contributes independent, informed observations to aid a company in its decision-making process. 
• Areas of involvement typically include:
• General Management
• Financial Structuring
• Production Planning
• Marketing
• Distribution
• Corporate Organisation
• Strategic Planning
• Business Process Reengineering 
• The mentor will:
• Outline guidelines to be followed - Point out strengths and weaknesses in proposed projects
• Act as a confidential sounding board
• The Mentor is not a professional consultant and, under the terms of the programme, may not become actively involved in the day-to-day management or assume the role of executive in the company.

There are many ways to get free/inexpensive mentoring as a start-up. Aside from directly appling for a mentor directly through your Local Enterprise Office as mentioned above, there are many organisations and start-up business programmes and incubator programmes that also offer mentoring. Check out the different mentoring offerings from the organisations mentioned in week 1 of this Start-up series such as the QED Training Momentum Programme (www.QEDtraining.ie), Bord Bia (www.bordbiavantage.ie), Crafts Council (www.CCoI.ie) New Frontiers Programmes (www/enterprise-ireland.com), Wayra (ie.wayra.org) and many others. Vodafone has launched a free Smart StartUp Network designed for startups and small businesses (www.vodafone.ie/startups) which has monthly events around the country offering start-ups free mentoring and the chance to learn from experts on topics such as social media, e-commerce and business productivity.

Mentors often use mentors themselves and really value the process. They need to be extremely experienced but it is not their role to have all the answers, just all the right questions to make you think through issues and help you strategically plan to achieve what needs to be done. Some mentors can be a great source of contacts and the best mentors ask excellent questions.

We often work with terrified micro enterprises that are embarrassed about being judged for their lack of income and lack of experience/ business skills. A good mentor makes you feel positive about what you have already achieved (even if its only coming up with an idea and some basic research) and gives you the encouragement and focus to take the next steps. A successful mentoring session should be open and completely honest (warts and all) and get to the true heart of what the client probably has not even identified as the core problem. Often mentoring clients we see have misidentified the real issues in their business and are so relieved when the session helps them unravel the issues so they can be dealt with one by one.

The session should end with the mentee writing a list of clear specific actions (with deadlines) all aimed at moving the business (and sometimes life issues) forward in a very specific direction making the client feel in control and confident about making change happen.

Don't just take someone one as a mentor just because they arrive ready packaged via a government-sponsored scheme. Respect and trust are vital components of a business mentoring arrangements and they have to be the right fit for you and your business. Also, don’t assume you can only have one mentor.
While we are on the topic of mentoring, start-ups should consider the wider topic of having a Sounding Board for their start-up and growing business. Having a Sounding Board is vital for us all as we can’t do everything ourselves, but we need to be clear of what we are trying to achieve before we ask anyone to help us out to make sure we get the right people. It’s worth keeping an eye out for the right people right from the start.

Your Sounding Board

The company you keep really matters. It is a mistake to think that you can do everything yourself – no one has all of the skills, never mind the time and energy. The people you surround yourself with have a great influence on the success of your business. The better informed you are the better the quality of your decisions. Owners of small busi¬nesses can be very isolated – having good people to consult with and to challenge you is essential to success.
Ask Yourself

• Are your mentors/advisers good enough to take you and your business where you want to go?
• Are your mentors/advisers as good as your competitors’ advisers?

Assembling a ‘dream team’ of professionals
Ultimately it’s your business, but you don’t have to do it all alone. There are lots of people who can help in any industry. No matter how good you are at what you do you will need expert help from time to time. If you are committed to making your business grow and succeed you should surround yourself with a ‘dream team’ of professionals who can assist you with expert advice and help in making decisions about your business.

And you need good people. Winners work with winners – you need people who are winners in their own professions. You also need a team. Professionals and experts are often jealous of each other’s expertise and influence. You need them to work together in the interests of your business.

Depending on your business you will need one or more of the following from time to time:

• accountant
• legal adviser
• risk adviser
• tax specialist
• investment adviser
• succession planner
• business consultant
• business broker
• marketing consultant
• HR consultant
• IT consultant.

Get a heavyweight

No matter how good you are at what you do, or how hard you work, you cannot expect to be an expert in all the areas of expertise that your business may need. You will need to access external advice. And you need good advice – when the going gets tough you need to be able to call on a heavyweight in the appropriate field.

If you don’t already have a team for your business, you should start to build your team of advisers as soon as possible. Just as with a medical professional, you don’t want to be meeting these people for the first time on a day of crisis. Neither do you want to be selecting them from the phone book – rather you want to build a team by reputation and reference from others you trust. Winners do work with winners – ask the best you know in any field to recommend those in other fields. A good accountant can point to the best legal adviser. A good general busi¬ness consultant will be able to recommend the better marketing and HR professionals.
If you think dealing with a professional is expensive try dealing with an amateur …
The level of professional you need depends on your business and circumstances. If your business affairs are very straight¬forward a junior or inexperienced person may be competent enough. Always remember, however, that your business is competing with someone who is getting good advice! The problem with cheaper/less experienced people is that they do not know what they do not know. Remember that poor advice is the most expensive money you will ever spend. It’s not what you pay, it’s the value you get that matters.

Professional fees

Business people often complain about professional fees. However, there are several things you can do to minimise professional fees:

• Keep your advisers informed so that they don’t spend lots of time (and your money!) finding out what they should have already known/been told by you.
• Get organised. Make sure that all of the documen¬tation they need is available and that they can talk to the people in your business that they need to see. Be available – you’ll be charged for wasting their time.
• Do what you can yourself. For example, many businesses use accountants to do things they could easily do themselves (e.g. VAT returns, cash flow forecasts). Often the professional is adding nothing that you don’t know – except their time and that costs!
• Negotiate a preset price. It is perfectly acceptable to ask for a quote or to establish a cap on fees for an assignment or to contract only on a stage-by-stage basis. You could also negotiate an annual fee for specified services and meetings. This makes your budgeting and cash flow easier to manage.
• Don’t assume you always have to go to the traditional sources for advice: some associations and bodies repre¬senting your industry can provide very valuable advice to add to the mix (some examples include the Small Firms Association and ISME).

Get them working as a team

Success is a team game and you need to make sure that your group of advisers work together in the interests of your business. First you need to assemble the team you need; then you need to get them to work together. All too often advisers have a relationship only with the owner/manager. They can tend to countermand each other’s advice and compete with each other for the ear of the owner.

Some ways to get them working as a team include:

• Get them together from time to time, e.g. when you are planning or have a big issue to resolve or even for a social occasion.
• Encourage them to deal directly with each other, e.g. suggesting to the legal adviser that he have a word with the accountant about some matter without you needing to be in the middle. You can authorise this in writing if any of the parties have professional scruples about discussing your business in your absence.
• Insist that they keep each other informed – don’t allow them to use you as an ‘in-basket’. Ensure that commu¬nication flows in all directions as in the diagram.
• Circulate pertinent information to all of them – give them no excuse to be uninformed or to play off against each other.
• Be clear in your expectations that they work as a team in the interests of your business.
• Don’t hesitate to remove an adviser who is not a team player. Everyone will respect you for this and take the team approach even more seriously.

Ultimately you are in charge. You can hire the best and delegate authority to them. But it’s your business and you can’t assume that advisers will now take care of everything. You will need to be firm in your expectations of perfor¬mance in order to get the best from your team of advisers.
Are you getting the best?
How do you know what to ask for? We often only understand the value we have received in hindsight. It can be very difficult to work out what you should be able to expect from the different professionals and advisers you use. The table below is a guide to the types of services that can be expected. You should use it to evaluate what you are getting now and to plan to get the most from your team of advisers.

Tips for choosing advisers

• Use your network to find people who will suit you, your business and your issues. Word of mouth recommendations from people who you know and can trust are always best.
• Reference check the people you are considering. Speak to other clients and check what kind of work they have done. Be sure to ask about their people skills as you will want them to work as a team player.
• Interview prospective advisers and try to establish how well they understand your type of business and business issues. Check how up to date their information is in their field – are they keeping up with their profession by reading, attending seminars and participating in professional networks?
• Find out if they are ‘strong’ enough for you. Most entrepreneurs are strong willed and used to running the show. But you don’t need an echo! Check that the adviser has the competence, the professional integrity and the personal resilience to challenge you when it is needed. Are they good enough to tell you when you are wrong? That’s what you are paying for.
• Ask about their fees and how they are paid. This is also something to check with referees. High hourly rates will not be a problem if you are dealing with somebody who is competent and efficient and who actually delivers. You can establish how you wish to pay and on what basis right from the start.
• Help them be great
• It’s in your interest to make sure that it is as easy as possible for advisers to give you what your business needs. Help them get it right:
• Brief them well. Be clear about the results you want. If possible commit your expected results to paper.
• Give thorough information about your company background. Give them as much information as you can about the company and the relevant issues.
• Be specific. Set targets and deadlines.
• Use a dashboard of performance indicators – a good adviser will be happy to set them up together with you. 
• Have regular meetings. Be available for consultation and ask for interim reports.

Do you need a Board (formal or informal)?

Your business does not have to have a formal board of directors unless you are taking it public which let’s face it is usually far from the mind of the start-up entrepreneur. Many small businesses choose to have a board anyway in order to introduce the disciplines that a board can bring. Your board can include appointed directors (who have legal powers, duties and liabilities under the Companies Act, 1963) or could consist of a group of advisers, professionals, other family members and friends who act as an informal sounding board for you and the business. Board members may or may not be paid. The advantages of having a board (formal or just a sounding board/advisory board) include the disciplines of:

• regular meetings
• minutes
• setting agendas
• reporting to the group
• exposure to a wide range of informed and interested viewpoints.

It is very easy for a small business to bypass these disci¬plines – there never seems to be enough time and you are often only answerable to yourself. A board, however informal, is a way of instituting some better business practices. People are usually flattered to be asked to be part of a sounding or advisory board for your business and it’s a great way to avail of the knowledge, experience and wisdom of people you know. Depending on your business you could consider some relatively young members (to get different generational viewpoints), people from a different industry, politically astute people or those who are well connected in the community. Many retired busi¬nesspeople and professionals would be delighted to help in this not-too-onerous capacity.

Although most CEOs of small businesses don’t appoint a formal board, serious consideration should be given to selecting and appointing what we term ‘The Board You Can’t Afford’. This is a group of six to ten entrepreneurs who can challenge and advise you in your business in a confidential setting. We facilitate many of these boards and have seen this work extremely well in practice and it can provide opportunities in the following ways:

• Huge learning opportunities for the participating businesses
• Increased networking
• Sales and new business opportunities
• Peer to peer mentoring for you and your business
• A trustworthy sounding board, the like of which would be difficult to afford on the open market.