Non-Executive Director | Entrepreneur | Mentor
My last cohort of entrepreneurial women finishing their mini-MBA course with Breakthrough Women
I keep getting asked to be a mentor by other female entrepreneurs and I mostly say no. But in the end, I’ve given in as Deborah Turner and Sue Hainsby just wouldn’t let it go because they believe it’s desperately needed. They run the incredible Breakthrough Women events and masterclasses and as I started it in the first place, what can you say?
So, I am launching this mentoring service. But let me explain . . .
Business mentors and what they promise
There are lots of female business mentors of course, so why would you bother using a 63-year-old grandmother who, as one person put it, appears to be immaturing with age? Or as a journalist once remarked, is “the unthinking man’s Carol Vorderman”.
The problem that I have with most female business mentors is they all look too damn good to be true. Flawless white teeth, an obvious waistline (mine went somewhere else decades ago – elasticated waistbands anyone?) and expensively cut hair. Photos (usually in black and white) with shafts of light streaming through an open window while they’re flower arranging or holding a perfect smiley child with a handsome, slightly blurred-out husband in the background. Gives you the impression that you can have it all – which sadly you can’t.
Then there’s their promise to “give you a powerful system and structure for a lifetime of business success by mastering the one hundred and fifty-seven pillars of business in a minimum of three months.” Or some such bullshit. In other words, a template that will be applied to you no matter what your circumstances.
The real issue though is a lot of mentors have never actually owned a business where they’ve employed people, because a one-person consultancy is not essentially a business, it’s a freelance job. Absolutely not the same thing. What’s your experience as a business mentor or coach if you’ve never financially succeeded as a business owner yourself? Granted you might have read a lot of business books or got fairly high up the corporate ladder in a company that someone else owns, but again that’s absolutely not the same thing.
Owning a proper business means that you worry each month if you can pay your staff, let alone yourself. Your so called best client hasn't paid their invoice for 3 months. Getting new business is critical but it's hard to find time to get new customers. It’s exhausting and confusing because business is hard, tough and relentless. Let alone the added issue of juggling child responsibilities and sorting out your mum, who’s just fallen over for the third time this week but won’t go into sheltered accommodation.
In my experience, there’s not much time for doing a spot of flower arranging or gazing out of windows having ‘a think’. Even less time to work out how someone else’s ‘system’ applies to you and how you’re going to wedge yourself into it.
You need specific and detailed advice on your situation and the issues that are holding the company back. Or an objective external view that will give you an experienced perspective when you have some difficult business decisions to make.
My background and ethos
I used to be a university lecturer at a business school teaching on an MBA course for three years so I do have a background in business education and entrepreneurship theory. But I left that to go into industry a long time ago.
To show off a bit – since then I’ve started three businesses and the last one, was where I really decided to properly go for it. In five years and entirely on my own, I went from zero to selling my company to a multi-billion-pound international blue chip and it made me lots of millions. You can read the boring story here, but in essence I worked out how to get it right. Not all the time, but in the end.
I feel strongly that I need to help other women to try to replicate the same journey and most especially avoid the bigger problems that I fell into and had to dig my way out of. I’ve been doing lots of voluntary advisory work to all sorts of business groups since I semi-retired in 2022, but it’s left me a bit dissatisfied. When the advice is free, people can take it for granted or undervalue it and in these group sessions it just doesn’t go deep enough for the individual.
So, I still want to pass on all the things I’ve learnt before they go out of date. But I only want to work with British women who are serious about the next step, except they just don’t know how to get there.
Individual advice
If that is you, and you would like some highly specific one-to-one mentoring then check out how it works below. But please understand that I will only ever take on a maximum of 20 mentees at a time and I won’t be your mentor unless I think I can really add value . . . oh yes, and I will also be brutally honest with my advice (in a nice way) and you need to be able to deal with that.
Read my cv (use the button at the bottom of this page) and check out this website first. Sorry there are no airbrushed photos of me gazing out of windows or looking very intelligent while pointing to a computer screen. That’s just not me.
The deal
What next?
To be considered and to find out more without any obligation whatsoever – just email me here and I’ll get back to you within two working days. We'll then arrange a quick 10-minute intro chat so we can both decide if this is right for you.
On another note, if you don't want to take that step yet and you live in Kent
you really should attend one of the Breakthrough Women events – an inspiring and genuinely supportive network where you’ll feel right at home. It's good fun too. I’m usually
at their networking events if you want to introduce yourself. Alternatively, there is also my free audio book on Spotify or Audible and free on Kindle too which has honestly helped many entrepreneurial women.