Forfatter: MentorGuru

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Holding seminar in Trondheim-Norway this weekend

This weekend I am going to Trondheim to train in their mentorprogram for Young Enterprice Norway. On saturday I am going to train all the students the whole day, the seminar is akind of lifeplanning. We are looking at their strenght, their weeknesses and their possibilities, and final some SMART-goals.

On sunday is it mentoring seminar for all the mentors. Learning and training «The Big Five» and prepare them for the task.

And not only that but I am also going to help them in the matching process as well.

This is going to be so much fun, I am very excited.

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“The Big Five”

Right now I sit and work at my mentoring seminar, called the big five. That relate to the most important mentoring tools you can use as a mentor.

The five tools are:

  1. Active listening
  2. Effective questions
  3. Feedback
  4. Be responsible
  5. Recognition

And for the next week I am going to conduct the seminar both in Oslo and then in Trondheim in Norway. At the seminar in Oslo I have help from a good partner Kai Roer. You can learn a lot at his blog at www.bebetter.no about training. He is a very active trainer across europe.

The Big Five is also in my book for the mentors.

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Success history 5

Today a funny thing happened to me when me and my wife where visiting some good friends of us. They were selling some of their big sized teddy bears online and a potential customer where coming this evening for buying them. Boy was I surprised when a previous adept appear at the door. When he saw my face at the house he was stunned, and happy to meet me again. And he told me that he have started in a new job at his mentors company. He had had several offers but the mentor “won” and he don`t regret the choice he did.

Because he had known the mentor in about a year he could say a lot about the company that she was working in. And they have hit it off so the choise was pretty easy he said.
Way to go Morten and Elisabeth.

By the way Morten bought the big sized teddy bears and went to a small girls birthday party with some big presents, she was going to be very surpriced…

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Who’s Mentoring You?

I found this Youtube clip  searching the web. The clip is a good «AHA» moment saying that Tiger Woods using help to get his goals so why shouldn`t you.

A very good question, why shouldn`t you? We have to stop thinking that mentoring is only for the sportsmen, to get good you need a mentor. You can`t say it enough, don`t think you can do everything for your self.

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Who needs a mentor? (Idea + Mentor = Start Business, Part 2)

You could read about Cloe Holding, the founder of www.habinki.com, earlier in my blog and at www.thenextwomen.com. In part two she was talking about some details in the adept/mentor relationship that I found important to put out here. Many are a bit scared to get a mentor because of all the spotlight and commitment, better to try to do it alone when no one watching, they think. But this can be said over and over again, do it! Get a mentor and you will work smarter, faster and maybe even get better results.

Read about Cloe Holding and what she says, and especially the last sentence. Thank you Cloe!
 
How did you find the response for the request for a mentor?
“I found the mentoring trial interesting, but also incredibly time consuming and I have found it hard juggling a lot of priorities at the moment.”
 
What did you get from the mentorship till now?
“I think that one gaines a lot of experience and information from every conversation that one has. Certainly just hearing about people out there who have done something similar and lived to tell the tale is incredibly valuable. I certainly enjoyed hearing about other entrepreneurs and the businesses they have managed to establish.”
 
Are you in contact? How, by phone, text or in person?
“I do think that to build a lasting relationship you need to meet people and connect with them on a personal level. So I don’t know if I will keep in touch regularly with any of the mentors that I emailed, although I would definitely keep in touch now and again when I wanted to seek some advice or if I encountered a problem in the field of expertise that they were specializing in.”
 
Can you recommend it?
“Anyway, I did enjoy the process and really appreciate being able to be involved – it has taught me a lot!”
 

 

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Updates and changes

Edit: Updates are done, and I have installed an Archive of the blog! It may not look very impressive now, but over time, the archive will make it easier to find information posted in the early days of the blog!

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I am currently doing security updates and some minor functionality changes on this blog. There may be some minor problems occuring during this weekend.

Thank you for your understanding!

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Success history 4

The adept I told you about in success story 3 told me the other day that he got his classmate in shipping an job interview at his mentor working place.

He was convinced that the classmate would get along and fit in at his old mentors work. He applied, got an interview and he was offered the job.

So something which at first glance was not the best mentor (because of the branch), become a success. Just by using your network…

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Ryan Blair an entrepreneur and mentor

At Oslo Innovation Week in Oslo, Norway I went to a seminar yesterday with Ryan Blair (www.ryanblair.com).
Ryan having launched his career as an entrepreneur in 1998 – at the age of twenty – he has since earned a reputation as a technology pioneer and expert marketer, creating six successful companies and investing in several others the last decade.

Ryan is a passionate writer and speaker. His first published work was released in June of 2006, featured as a contributing author in the Power of Mentorship Vol. II. Ryan is presently working on a book about his life story entitled Faith of the Dots.

So he is a eager spokesman for mentoring, saying that a mentor more or less saved my life. Getting my to write down my goals in early years and learned me to go after it.

Hearing him talking about how important his first mentor was for him is huge. Setting goals he had to be able to visualize and then have the belief in yourself to manage your goals.

Something he talked a lot about was «give more than you receive». Meaning that you can`t only ask your potential mentor for his time and good advice. And not giving anything back, everything from washing mentors car to give shares in your business.

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Usher and Quincy Jones

Since 1990, MENTOR/National Mentoring (http://www.mentoring.org) Partnership has been working to expand the world of quality mentoring. They especially work with mentoring for children mostly because MENTOR believes that, with the help and guidance of an adult mentor, each child can discover how to unlock and achieve his or her potential.

MENTOR is widely acknowledged as the America’s premier advocate and resource for the expansion of mentoring initiatives nationwide. As such, MENTOR works with a strong network of state and local Mentoring Partnerships to leverage resources and provide the support and tools that mentoring organizations need to effectively serve young people in their communities.

MENTOR recognizes that, although nearly 17.6 million young Americans need or want mentoring, only 3 million are in formal, high-quality mentoring relationships.

That means more than 14.6 million young people still need mentors. That unmet need constitutes what we call the «mentoring gap.» MENTOR works to close that gap.

And here you can see a video where the world famous Usher and Quincy Jones telling the importance of mentoring. Usher even say that «You are not succesful until you are able to offer and give back. That is strong word, and right word. It is important for mentoring as an business to get good known people to marketing our work.

To use the word of Usher: «Share what you know»

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Idea + Mentor = Start Business

Chloe Holding is the founder of the very early stage startup Habinki (www.habinki.com).
At www.thenextwomen.com she talks about her start-up and why she needs a mentor.
(In Part II you can find out what happened after this interview).

As many of you know there a lot of questions coming up when you are starting your own business. This is a intervue of a smart girl, because she got here self a mentor to help her.

1. How did you come up with the idea of your start-up?
It was more a question of ‘What did I want to do with my life?’ than finding a new business idea, and starting up a bikini/travel company was exactly what I wanted to do. I had always wanted to set up a business and I had a passion for travel and retail, and it just took a little bit of inspiration to figure out how to make that into a great business.

2. How far are you with the set up of the start-up?
I have secured funding via a loan with the Small Firms Loan Guarantee Scheme backed by the government, I have incorporated the company, developed the branding, and begun marketing and selling my brand. The bikinis are on their way from Brazil to arrive in June and the website is currently in development.

3. What is your goal with the company
I want to create a brand which young people associate with and are inspired by. I can see many opportunities in the future in terms of developing new product lines and focusing more on the travel industry, in terms of places to go ‘in your bikini’.

4. What was your biggest challenge during the development process?
Without any doubt the biggest challenge so far has been to make the decision and find the strength of mind to do something very different, which your peers, friends and family may not understand or support. It was about realising that I wanted to do this so much that it actually didn’t matter what anyone else thought, or what advice people gave me, and that the faith and passion I had for building businesses was strong enough to set out on a path on my own. I think part of the definition of being an entrepreneur is to do what everyone else says ‘will never work’.

5. Who are your advisers?
My close friends, a core group of girls (and a few boys) who have shown a real interest and passion for what I am doing. They have offered advice, often on a daily basis, on some tricky issues, and I hope that in the not-too-distant future some of these people will come and work for the business.

6. Why do you need a mentor, for which activities and for which period of time?
I would like someone who has been through a similar experience of setting up a business from scratch, and who has been successful. I would be interested in any kind of communication that would be convenient for them. Even an email exchange every couple of weeks or once a month would be great, or even just to have the opportunity to talk on the phone for half an hour as a one-off, so that I could talk through some core-issues. I think about raising capital, and how to expand, or…. recover from a major business crisis. It would also be useful to gain recommendations of advisors, software, consultants to use.