1. Share how you can help
Mentoring a small business owner is a great way to give back to the business community and to develop your own business, teaching, and leadership skills. Here are a few tips for getting started.
Think about what kind of mentoring you want to provide.
Maybe you’ve got a wide array of business skills and want to help an entrepreneur get his or her business off the ground. Or, maybe your skills are more specialized, and you want to help someone with a marketing plan or finances. Whatever you have to offer, there are entrepreneurs on MicroMentor who will benefit from it.
Create a profile that describes your experience and skills.
Your MicroMentor profile is a combination business card and résumé. It announces that you want to help and describes how your experience fits that role. Always be honest in your profile, and make sure to feature the topics that you want to help others with. This will improve the quality of the connections you make with entrepreneurs.
The best profiles include the following:
- Detail: By providing more detail about you, you help others to assess fit in advance to save everyone time from trial and error. Detailed profiles attract more and better quality responses.
- Personality: Don't be afraid to let people get to know you as a person before they reach out to you. A good personality fit is as important as a good skill fit, so do include information about what motivates you and what makes you unique.
- A Profile Photo: Entrepreneurs want to work with real people, not faceless avatars. When you include a photo, a prospective mentor will connect with your business idea more personally.
