Are mentors a waste of time?

Jun 19, 2020

Hi all.

This week we're going to talk about mentors.

Are mentors a waste of time? Yes, if you do it wrong. But the reality is there are people out there who know more about your industry than you do. What is hard for me (or anyone) to understand is I don't know what I don't know. So it feels like I don’t need a mentor but know I do at the same time. There is a wolf hiding behind a rock and happy little ME is skipping along unaware that I’M about to be devoured. But there are people who've been there before who can see the wolves hiding behind rocks. Usually these mentors are willing to help for free.

I recently had a good experience where I signed up for a SCORE mentor from the US government. I thought for sure something from the US government couldn’t possibly be useful but I tried anyway. I received two mentors, one helped me raise a grant for my own business and the other told me the tricks of how to win government contracts. (His company won the contract for the USAID logo and tagline "from the American people", a logo we've all seen many times before.)

Getting a mentor something you can start today and here are three places I recommend looking:

SCORE. All mentors are based in the US, but you can be from anywhere in the world and get their free advice. They are mostly retired businessman and women. Here's the trick to use them: You can search based on geography so register for a geography that has a lot of expertise in the industry you care about. Let's say you want to get advice on agriculture so you should sign up in Iowa. If you want advice on tech sign up in San Francisco. If you want advice on healthcare sign up in Boston. If you want advice on government contracts sign up in Washington DC (which is what I did).

VC4A. This platform connects you with mentors in Africa for free. I just signed up and hopefully I’ll be paired with a good mentor.

Mentor Capital Network. If you were doing social enterprise in the US connect with them and I’m sure they can pair you with a good mentor, even outside of their funding cycle.

The challenge with mentors is if they're not a good fit then they're not very useful and you waste your time. So how do you find mentors who are a good fit? The first thing is to know what you want. I identify the top five things I know I don't know. How will we build the software? How will we attract governments as customers? What kind of financing is available? Once you know your key risks, find one mentor for each area.

Where have you found good mentors? Comment below please :D