Do You Have a Business Coach or Business Mentor ?

Do you run your own business - that’s hard enough to push things along yourself - lack of direction, lack of clear thinking, procrastination, you name it, we’ve all been there.

So have you ever thought about having a business coach or mentor. Or even a mentoring group?

I have just joined a group of 12 other internet entrepreneurs and met with them in Chicago last week. From what I have experienced so far it’s going to be the best investment I have ever made in any thing.

These guys (yes guys, no galls) were great. The way it generally works is we have a 2 day meeting. It’s run by the person who organises these groups and he provides an update into the latest workings in say the search engines or for information that is new and works on improving conversions etc.

The rest of the time is thrown open to us ! That means we have each about an hour and a half to present a business problem we have with a business. For example, how to grow a segment or examples of new business ventures we are thinking of going into. The rest of the group then provide their feedback on what they believe the person presenting should do.

Now, if this was with struggling business owners or with MBA students the answers would have been extremely poor. But I got 10 or so real actions that I hadn’t thought of doing from this conference. My head was literally buzzing after I had finished my slot but I knew exactly what I had to do with my internet business. There was a slight re-focus on one of them and changes to the way I was promoting my products on another.

These were clear actions. And this just shows that working with a team of bright and successful people is really the way to move forward. Getting access to such a team is hard because you do not know who to trust. But if you know a small group then go for it.

One of the things with this group was trusting people with your business thoughts and ideas. This is a major hurdle for a lot of people because most people won’t just say exactly what they are thinking — but I was able to say how much my business was earning, the conversion rates and the exact issues in the knowledge that that information wouldn’t be copied or used to others’ advantages.

Phew - go and do it yourself - get your mentor or business coach (but not some slimey MBA, get someone successful)

I’ll keep you up to date with progress in this !