Like the word Google, mentor started life as a noun and morphed into a sometimes noun, sometimes verb word. Google the noun is a proper noun and google the verb is used lowercased. In this spirit, the noun version of Mentor is hereby assigned status as a proper noun. Here’s why a small business Mentor has such royal designation:
- Mentors lend their expertise, time and insight to the benefit of their charge.
- Mentors are not paid for their advice and consult.
- Mentors have been there, done that and often mentor from a competing, yet more established business.
The verb mentor has a special place because it’s an action item. It’s symbolic of making things happen. Consider sharing. You help advance your industry and your profession when you share your authority and in return you learn about your business on a different level, feel good about yourself and create lifelong associates. Here are some ways to get started:
- You can mentor someone through a formal assignment within your company to help a new hire get acclimated, for example.
- You can mentor a colleague through an informal relationship due to your specialty, marketing for example, or your status in a common industry.
- You can mentor someone through a recognized mentoring organization, such as SCORE.
Be the Mentor you wish you had.
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Terry Toomey, a Certified SCORE Mentor talks about the qualities of a good Mentor in this clip from The Marketing Mojo Show.
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