The Mate Mentor.
I’ve held out on launching my own business for quite some time now. There’s a load of excuses I could throw in here to explain why, having children, busy with work, not enough hours in the day, blah blah… but at the end of the day that’s what they are; excuses.
So I finally bit the bullet and decided to put my self-built website out there in the scary public eye (plug: www.activedigitalconsultancy.co.uk ) I’m not sure what I was expecting, I was nervous, apprehensive and a little worried I’d get shot down with some harsh feedback.
Well I’m glad to say that I didn’t get any harsh feedback, just some really nice positive words and some constructive feedback from friends in a similar line of business… great!!!
Well kind of great, but at the same time who gives a sh*t. Stripping it back all I’ve done is come up with an idea then published a website with the idea laid out in text. I now need to do the hard bit, I need to put my money where my mouth is and start running this business as a business. I need customers, I need a growth plan, I need to be pitching for work, I need to be tapping up all my resources for work to use as case studies to attract new business. The list is endless, but in reality this is the hard part. This is the part that sorts the men from the boys.
So…
**small tangent** My longterm friend, David, and I were out having a beer the other week. He’s currently in a similar position to me with a few side hustles on the go that he’d like to push further. He’s always been the brains of the operation and whilst studying for his MA he mentioned about being held to account for starting projects (or businesses) and running with them. He had to this as part of his Masters, he said it was motivating to have a push to finish things.
A few more beers down and David mentioned about having a mentor, which kind of sunk in. It took a few days, maybe a week until I came to the conclusion that I needed that push too, I needed a mentor. Not a mentor in the sense of an expert in the industry, more of a mentor that’s going to tell me when I’m being a lazy sh*t, asking difficult questions and basically giving me a hard time.
After a few text exchanges, David agreed that we would be mentors for each other.
So we set some basic rules:
Set goals to track against each month.
Meet a least once a month to present progress against goals.
Send a bi-weekly report of progress, key updates etc.
Feedback to each other; be constructive, be truthful, be positive.
Have a laugh…
This is the initial set of rules we have set up to get going, they will probably evolve over time but you get the idea.
“This time next year Rodney”
So there you have it, there’s our template for a mate mentor. I’m hoping this will give me the push I need to put more focus into my new business and to keep moving forward.
I’ll keep you posted on progress with this mentorship programme and share any learnings.
Hopefully this might inspire you to do something similar.
If it has caught your interest and you’d like to chat further then get in touch, I’d be happy to help (or even mentor)…