Investing in your business with a mentor
There’s no such thing as treading water in today’s market — either you’re moving ahead or you’re falling behind.
Increasing job complexity and the ever-present threat of disruption means that decision-makers are required to keep an ever-expanding number of plates spinning. Between day to day team management, maintaining client relationships, monitoring your profit and loss, and chasing new business, decision-makers quickly have their days taken away from them.
This makes it hard to find the time to undertake focused and strategic work that helps your business grow.
Without this crucial work, a business can simply be adrift in the market, responding and reacting rather than leading and innovating.
Becoming that leader means being informed of your operations and key metrics (both financial and non-financial), and making the necessary business improvements to support your success.
A great business mentor will help you:
- objectively monitor your business’s growth and performance
- benchmark your business against others in your industry
- provide the critical feedback needed to help you achieve your objectives
- identify strategic initiatives that can add real value to your business
- expose you to new ideas and fresh ways of thinking
- shorten your learning curve by sharing freely their experience and expertise
- provide you with a better understanding of business fundamentals, including costs, overheads, and other financial considerations
- quantify the value of your business
- help you develop an exit strategy or succession plan, if needed, and
- share your frustrations and celebrate your successes.
If you’ve never worked with a business mentor before, it is something worth considering. A broadly experienced outside perspective can help you identify the bottlenecks and pinch-points that keep your business from flourishing, helping you lay the foundation for future growth.
Potential financial support
There are many grants available to businesses in Australia and New Zealand that embark on business improvement initiatives, often providing funding that can help contribute to their business mentoring investment.
Your eligibility for these funds can depend on your market, your geographical location, and the composition of your leadership team.
Should they meet the criteria, organisations in industries as diverse as defence, agribusiness, aged care and fast-moving consumer goods, can potentially access funding to retain the services of a business mentor. Specific programs — such as Australia’s AusIndustry’s Entrepreneurs Programme — are generally geared toward strengthening businesses, including those that have experienced any of the recent extreme weather events or natural disaster.
Choosing the right partner
Choosing a business mentor is a significant decision. Your mentor needs to be someone you can trust, has the experience and expertise to help you grow your business, while also helping you to grow as a leader.
The MBA Partnership’s business mentor will empower you to take control of your business, benchmarking your company against competitors and taking a data-driven, financially-geared approach to your challenges. We provide you with the reinforcement you need to identify opportunities and develop strategic initiatives that move you meaningfully towards your goals.
Business-owners are learning on the job every day, but imagine what you could have achieved a year ago knowing what you know now.
One of the most significant benefits of partnering with an experienced business mentor is shortening your learning curve, helping you learn more in less time, and making you a more effective and forward-thinking leader.
