The Importance of a Mentor
Being an Entrepreneur you have your own vision of how you want to build out your venture. You tend to want to do things your own and put on blinders to what everyone on the outside has to say. While this may have many benefits, there are many negatives that come with this. A big mistake of having blinders on when your climbing the entrepreneurship mountain are mistakes that people have faced before you. One of the biggest assets to being an entrepreneur is learning and avoiding the mistakes that people have made before you. This is where having a mentor is very important.
A mentor is a support system to a young and new entrepreneur. It is like an advisor for a college student. This advisor has been through college, has made mistakes, and is here to make your experience better and keep you on track during your collegiate journey. A mentor will allow you to learn things that you can’t learn on the internet, a book or classroom. Their real world experience is invaluable to an entrepreneur. Another plus to having a mentor is the networking opportunities you’ll gain from them. An ideal mentor has been through things you’ll eventually face and they want to make your journey better/easier than theirs. They’ll introduce you to doors you’ll never reach without them. Lastly, research supports that having a mentor allows you to have a higher chance to succeed. Sheila Eugenio from Entrepreneur.com wrote “In a 2013 executive coaching survey, 80 percent of CEOs said they received some form of mentorship. In another research by Sage, 93 percent of startups admit that mentorship is instrumental to success.” This shows that having a mentor brings many positives and can only help your chances to success.
