Success through mentoring - Entrepreneurs supporting each otherWhen leaving for the Trojan War, Odysseus asked his friend Mentor to look after his son Telemachus and to be his teacher, adviser, educator, and friend. This request of the legendary hero was the beginning of the mentoring model; an elder supporting and guiding a beginner.
The Women's Enterprise Agency mentoring model builds on the practical needs of the newly started entrepreneurs; the mentor will support the mentee, the newly started entrepreneur, with his or her knowledge, experience, and contacts. With the help of the mentor, the newly started entrepreneur will avoid the typical problems of starting an enterprise and be able to concentrate on the most crucial points of an entrepreneur's life.
Goal-oriented development
The mentor and the mentee meet regularly to discuss the mentee's business. The goal of these confidential discussions is to promote the entrepreneurship and business of the mentee. The mentor guides and advises the mentee in the light of his or her experience, but the mentee always makes the decisions and acts upon them. To be able to measure the progress of the mentee's business, the mentoring process always starts by determining an explicit set of goals for the discussions.
Confidential interaction
A mentoring process requires an open mind and confidentiality from the parties involved. To profit from the mentoring process, the mentor and the mentee should be compatible; this is achieved by applying psychological tests when matching them. Age is not an issue: the mentor is always more experienced, though sometimes younger in years than the mentee.
Co-ordinator's help available through the process
The Women's Enterprise Agency mentoring co-ordinators make sure that the mentoring process builds on the entrepreneurial needs of the mentee and that the results of the process are measured in the light of these needs. The co-ordinator is ready to help the mentor and the mentee in all the practical questions of the mentoring process.
Commitment with a reward
The mentee should be committed to work towards the progress of his or her business and the mentor to share his or her time, experience, and contacts with the mentee. The mentors will not be paid but what they will benefit from are new contacts and ideas for running their own businesses. Ideally, the mentor and the mentee will be able to achieve business synergy. Sharing ideas with the other mentoring teams is also a good way of finding new ideas and business contacts.
Entrepreneurial success through entrepreneurial mentoring
"Unlike businessmen, businesswomen have lacked the old boy networks that they can always rely on. The Women's Enterprise Agency has done an enormous favour for women entrepreneurs by creating a mentoring network like this," says Ms Sikke Sumari, one of the voluntary mentors.
Entrepreneurship runs in the Sumari family. Ms Sumari's two, Italian-style "Tony's Deli" restaurants, which she also runs a catering service from are among the most popular in Helsinki. Ms Sumari is also responsible for the restaurant services of the Jumo Jazz Club, and once a week she hosts the Ready Steady Cook TV show ("Kokkisota" in Finnish) on the Finnish Channel Three.
The most rewarding aspect of working as a mentor for Ms Sumari is the chance of being able to help her mentee's business succeed. "Helping others is natural for humans. Noticing that I've been able to help makes me feel good."
In her work as a mentor Ms Sumari concentrates on practical support for her mentee, who is a young, newly started caterer still struggling with her studies. "In spite of my busy schedule I've promised to be available for my mentee at all times if she's in need of advice or a second opinion. When I was beginning my career, I would've liked to consult a more experienced restaurateur, all the more as I had no training for the restaurant business," Ms Sumari says.
When the mentor and the mentee work in the same business, it would be easy to say that the mentor is educating a prospective competitor. Ms Sumari does not think so. "My aim is to educate an expert in the restaurant business. We operate on a different scale, so I don't have to fear for competition. On the contrary, there's a chance for additional profit from the mentoring relationship; I could for example employ my mentee."
Improved entrepreneurial skills by mentoring
Ms Anja Pelkonen decided to start a business of her own when she had changed jobs and felt there was no sense in working for somebody else. Ms Pelkonen's firm Vi-Sel specialises in designing exhibition uniforms and business gifts for trade fairs. Ms Pelkonen's mentor Ms Irene Mäkipää is the managing director of Inspirit Consulting Ltd.
Ms Mäkipää who has a career in communication consulting is familiar with the wide range of problems that entrepreneurs can run into. "The mentoring project gives me a chance to share my experience and to help other women entrepreneurs. I also get new contacts and learn about new, interesting areas," says Mäkipää.
Ms Pelkonen is happy to learn about things that are not usually conveyed in an employer-employee relationship. "Marketing is the most important point in our co-operation. I'm working on an explicit marketing plan and I'm happy to be able to discuss it with Irene. We mainly concentrate on topical issues but also work with long-term goals," says Ms Pelkonen.
A community of entrepreneurs created by mentoring
A need for belonging to a community of entrepreneurs is a common factor for Ms Hanna Hentinen, a landscape architect as well as a supplier to landscape gardeners, and Ms Ritva Hämäläinen from the fencing producer Kruunuaita Oy (Crown Fence Ltd).
"With the mentoring project I've had a chance to develop and discuss my business with a community of women entrepreneurs. The lectures, seminars and other events with the other mentoring teams are rewarding," says Ms Hentinen.
Ms Hämäläinen emphasises the fact that a mentor is not a consultant who will solve all the mentee's problems. The mentee makes the decisions, but the mentor will help the mentee to work his or her way forward.
It is especially the new ideas provided by the mentor that are valuable for Ms Hentinen. "I've been too busy to have visions of the future of my business, but Ritva has given me valuable ideas that I've been able to work on."
Encouragement through mentoring
What used to be a dearly beloved hobby and pastime has become a way of making a living for Ms Leena Kallio. Known also by her stage name Amina, Ms Kallio specialises in teaching Oriental dance, which is popular in Finland as a form of in-company physical training arranged to maintain and improve the working capacity of employees. Ms Kallio's mentor is Ms Anja Ström, a business consultant and lecturer as well as an information specialist, who has also recently included alternative therapies in her business.
Ms Kallio joined the mentoring project to learn about the hard, economic facts of entrepreneurship. "My mentor has also been a great encouragement to me," she says, smiling happily. Ms Ström emphasises the holistic nature of entrepreneurship. "A new entrepreneur is in need of professional mentoring, but he or she also needs encouragement in all respects. The mentor is responsible for inspiring the mentee with self-confidence."
Ms Ström and Ms Kallio have agreed that confidential, constructive dialogue on positive as well as negative matters is the best form of interaction between the mentor and the mentee. The mentee is allowed to be incomplete in his or her growth towards entrepreneurship; the mentor does not have to be superhuman either.
Partnership through mentoring
A famed ceramist based at the Fiskars artist community, Ms Nanna Bayer says it is difficult for an artisan to live up to the demands of business life without experience in entrepreneurship. "I've reached the culmination point of my entrepreneurship where I need to set new, cost-effective goals. In the mentoring project the mentor helps me to analyse the situation and to broaden my views," says Ms Bayer.
The co-operation between Ms Bayer and her mentor Ms Liisa Kotilainen, a textile designer from AINO-Skandika, is highly effective. Originally, they meant to meet once a month during the mentoring project, but that has not been enough for them. "The mentoring process has helped me to adopt new production methods as well as marketing policies," says Ms Bayer.
Working in the same field, Ms Bayer and Ms Kotilainen might even have possibilities for a business partnership in the course of the project. "When Nanna establishes herself properly, she'll have lots of contacts through me. She can for instance make test marketing of her products in my shop," says Ms Kotilainen.
The Women's Enterprise Agency, founded in 1996, works to promote entrepreneurship and networking among newly started entrepreneurs. It is one of the Finnish Jobs and Society Enterprise Agencies and is financed by the European Social Fund, the Finnish Ministry of Trade and Industry, and the Finnish Ministry of Education as well as by private enterprises and business organisations.
The Women's Enterprise Agency provides
- information on the procedure for starting an enterprise
- individual advice
- classes on the different practical aspects of entrepreneurship
- entrepreneurial training courses
- training for business consultants
- entrepreneurial mentoring