BMI works with economic development organizations, industry associations, and members to create opportunities for entrepreneurs to benefit from the experience of successful business leaders. Business mentorship puts you in a position to accelerate your own growth.
Build competence in engineering your own solutions.
Identifying opportunities is only the first step. Making the most of them is where entrepreneurs stand out from the crowd. Not surprisingly, experienced entrepreneurs know better than anybody the value of learning.
Optimal learning occurs when we are in a position to discover the consequences of our actions but are spared losses. Comparing a mentor's experience to your own provides you with that opportunity. In the real world, the price of failure is high. Only 20 per cent of new businesses survive the first two years.
A mentor does more than spare you losses. Mentorship is a process that lets you teach yourself to truly innovate. Your mentor's attention and success inspires you to persevere until you do.
Learn from the best.
A good mentor knows what you should remember: The best is you. You just do not know it yet.
Business knowledge is available everywhere. What is hard to come by is wisdom in applying it. Mentorship does not provide all the answers, but it puts someone in your corner who is there to help.
Mentorship is also a process that increases your own self-awareness. This helps you to build upon your own genuine competence at making business decisions. In other words, it helps you to bring out the best in you.
Expand your network.
It is not what you know, it is who you know. One of the biggest challenges an entrepreneur faces is finding out who are the right people. It can be difficult if you do not know who to talk to and harder still if you do not know what to talk about.
Find your blind spots.
The greatest value of a business mentor can be summed up in two words: sounding board. A mentor will not give you advice on how to grow your business. That is not a mentor's job - it is yours. Instead, business mentors inform and guide problem solving by listening attentively, asking thoughtful questions and sharing their own experiences. Mentors represent invaluable opportunities to increase your own capacity for self-awareness. In learning to find your own blind spots, you become the most qualified person to address them.