How having a mentor can help your business

Why use a mentor?

93% of SME’s acknowledge that mentoring can help their business to succeed (Nationalmentoringday.org) and 94% of SME’s relying upon external support have seen benefits to doing so (Department of Business Innovation and Skills). At X-Forces Enterprise, we have always considered mentoring crucial to ensuring our startups have the best chance of success.

For me, having a mentor means not undertaking the journey of business ownership alone. A mentor is someone who can act as a soundboard, someone who motivates and reassures you and someone you can seek advice and assistance from in times of need. For me, that invaluable support has come from The Rt.Honourable Lord Young of Grantham who, from the outset, has been a keen advocate of X-Forces Enterprise and is still someone I turn to for guidance. This relationship of trust and support is something which I have sought to recreate with the X-Forces Enterprise mentoring team and our beneficiaries.

Overcoming barriers to mentoring

A report commissioned into mentoring for SME’s found that barriers to mentoring included: 29% who felt they had no need for a mentor at that time; 20% had not thought about it before; 17% thought it may be expensive, 17% were unsure where to find a mentor; 10% felt they did not have enough time to use one and 9% were unaware of mentoring schemes available (Department of Business Innovation and Skills).

We believe everyone should be able to benefit from mentoring services and so have sought to break down these barriers. Once you have launched your business, we will email you and clearly set out our mentoring provision and how to reach the team. Our mentoring team and ready and willing to help whenever you need them; we do not charge for our mentoring support; we regularly hold mentoring and networking workshops and these are clearly advertised on our website, Eventbrite and newsletters so you know what is going on and when. Our mentors are flexible and will work with you in a manner which suits your needs best, be that via phone, email or skype.

What our mentees say about us:

Our Mentoring and Knowledge Manager Dax Gearing has a wealth of experience so whether you need a soundboard for decisions you’ve got to make or guidance on how to further grow your business, your mentor will be someone you can rely upon. As said by Steve Cooke, MD of cleaning services business Gutters2Glory Ltd:

Having a good business idea sometimes isn’t enough. It requires teamwork, knowledge, experience and most of all what helped me was the confidence Dax gave me to turn a piece of paper into a reality. Without X-Forces & Dax’s help, we would not be in a position to further expand today.

Former Army Veteran, Steve Witchwood-Green of Hawkeye Aero launched his aerial photography and videography for surveying land and property, as well as search and rescue applications business. We were able to support him with funding to obtain state-of-the-art equipment, with which Steve can capture footage of hard to reach locations within a fraction of the time, and with considerably less impact than traditional surveying methods.

“Dax Gearing and the team at X-Forces have helped me through every step of the way.  Now I’ve established a client base in property surveying, I’m looking to move into Agribusiness and how drones can help farmers improve their crop efficiencies.”

To launch your business, or for support with growing a startup which has been trading for under 24 months, to see how X-Forces Enterprise can help you with a startup loan of between £500 – £25,000 per applicant and benefit from our free business support, workshops and mentoring, contact us now: https://www.x-forces.com/contact-us/