Need a business mentor? Try SCORE.

• POSTED ON
• 7January2017

If you’re a budding entrepreneur – or even thinking about becoming one – you’ve got a million thoughts going on in your head. Every day. Every hour. And on top of that – more than a million things to do! You know how highly recommended it is for you to have a mentor. In fact, 70% of mentored small businesses stay in business  5 years or longer (compared to half that for businesses who don’t). But who has time to get one? The truth is – everyone does, thanks to a lovely service by SCORE. You’ve heard of them before, haven’t you? Actually – we’re surprised by the number of entrepreneurs we come across who haven’t.

With ADS being a new agency, we went there ourselves to check out SCORE – to obtain advice and also to see what our equally as new entrepreneur clients would experience should we choose to recommend SCORE as well for mentoring help. We were quite impressed! We met our mentor at the local Chamber of Commerce. You can select a time online for your appointment and even choose your mentor based on the best match possible with your business. SCORE has over 11,000 business mentors who passionately volunteer to help new business owners like you. They represent 62 different industries. With more than 300 chapters nationwide, you’re bound to have one near you.

Not only did our mentor answer our specific question, but he took the time to ask about our background, our interests, when we wanted to retire and how very feasible that was. Our goals? To be able to retire by age 50. “You can do that,” he said. “It’s entirely doable.” And he told us how many millions we would be growing our business to and how we would end up selling it later on. To hear him say:

“You can do anything you put your mind to.”

…may sound cliche, but hearing this retired entrepreneur who travels the world and is living the life say it and believe it about you meant so much.

He also went on to add in more bonus advice on investment strategies that he used which would assist with our goals. Tips from everything on the literature you create for your business to the types of networking you needed to be doing and how many hours a week you should expect to spend pitching your business to new clients. All excellent tips. From a guy who retired with $5 million – we were all ears!

Finally, perhaps the best thing about the meeting in general was the offer he extended to call him or e-mail him any time – whenever we had a question. Because his background was editing and that’s something he enjoys as well, he also offered to edit any literature we produce, our website, etc. as we grow it prior to having anything printed, published, etc. Absolutely excellent. It was clear to us that this is something he truly enjoys doing – helping entrepreneurs get the inside track on creating successful businesses. Why? So you can live the way you want to.

“I do this because I love it.”

While there are many excellent ways to find good mentors, who says you only have to have one? For those entrepreneurs who haven’t found their mentor yet, we highly recommend starting with SCORE. You never know – you might just find a mentor as great as ours.

Andrea D. Smith
Senior Brand Strategist
The ADS Agency