5 Mentors Every Successful Entrepreneur Needs

The fastest way to become the best is to learn from the best. But there's more than one way to reach new levels of success. That's why you need more than one mentor to help you along the way.

I recently reached out to Nadine Dumas, a former accountant who later became a swimsuit model and fitness expert. As someone who's career took such a sharp turn, she knows the importance of mentors firsthand. 

Dumas is a self-made entrepreneur whose work involves providing online nutrition and training programs.  She's passionate about helping others and she's expanding her programs all over the world. 

Dumas says these are the five types of mentors who could skyrocket your career:

1. The established professional

Look for someone in your career who is ahead of you, like a former boss who believed in you before you believed in yourself. "I find that an established colleague has a lot of compassion, because they have 'been there and done that' already and almost see themselves in you," says Dumas.

A mentor who knows the ropes can guide you with their knowledge and teach you how to avoid making the same mistakes they did.

2. The lateral colleague

Find a colleague who is in the similar phase of growth. You can bounce ideas off one another and compare stories.  "I find these types of mentors need to be mentally strong and not walk into this 'relationship' fearing you are going to take their ideas," Dumas says.

When you trust and support one each other, you can push each other and question ideas while also understanding what each other is going through.

3. The outspoken individual

Team up with someone who isn't afraid to offer a pessimistic perspective. This person can remind you of the challenges and worst-case scenarios you might be tempted to overlook when you're really excited.

"They give blunt feedback," says Dumas and sometimes you might need to listen to those things you don't always want to hear.

4. The friend who knew you before you took the leap

Spending time with people who knew you before you ever launched your entrepreneurial adventure can remind you of how far you've come. In talking about her own mentor, Dumas says, "They are not interested in my entrepreneurial skills. We meet up and talk about everything besides my coaching."

This type of mentor can remind you there's a life outside of work. Regular conversations can remind you to separate what you do from who you are.

5. The liaison

Collaborating with a liaison mentor is the key to connecting with valuable people who can help you grow your network. But your relationship shouldn't be about asking for introductions.

"I find that you must be authentic for these relationships to work and it requires a lot of time to build these relationships," says Dumas. You must take time to show them that you offer value to your industry.

CREDIT: James Patrick

When a Small Business fails. What to do?

According to Michael Gerber in his book The E Myth Revisted, small businesses tend to be born from a core necessity of its owner. The necessity of independence, of doing what we know and are good at. That´s how we become entrepreneurs. The most common mistake we do: taking the work we love and turn it into a job. Work becomes a chore, among less familiar and pleasant chores.  

The worst part is when business owners become three people in one: the Entrepreneur, the Manager, the Technician. Conflict begins when each one of this personalities wants to take control. 

Don't
 be three people in one

The Entrepreneur turns any trivial condition into an exceptional opportunity, motivated by the creative engine and change. The Manager is pragmatic, a planner, clings to the status quo, sees problems to solve and roots itself on an idea. The Technician is the doer, lives in the moment, does one thing at the time. The Entrepreneur gets into his way with new ideas, which mostly don´t work in the real world, frustrating him, Manager represents a problem by reducing him to a part of “the system”, dehumanizing him.

Entrepreneur vs. Manager vs. Technician

Small Business owners get swamp by all this personalities, trying to be a whole, an individual, a business. Coming from initial exhilaration to terror, and from there to exhaustion and finally despair, with a terrible sense of loss, of purpose and loss of self. 

Most common mistake is becoming one single entity, owner and business together. This might be a good idea at its beginnings, but not viable in a future stage of business. Usually we tend to think “I´ll do it myself, because no one´s willing to work as hard as me for my business”, “no one has my ability, judgement or interest to do it right, so I do it myself” even when having people who are getting paid to do the job. Worse part of it, is getting into a vicious circle, because the more “I´ll do it myself”, the less they´ll do when you interfere with their jobs. But hey! You´re “The Boss”!

At this point you as owner have gone beyond your Comfort Zone, the boundary within which you feel secure in your ability to control your environment and start to lose control. Desperately you abdicate your role of manager and pass accountability to employees, hoping they will bring back control over the business. Really? Haven´t you thought they have needs of their own? They know how to be Technicians, so far they need to know why they are doing what they are doing, what they are accountable for, the standards against which their work is being evaluated, needing to know where the business is going.

At this point the business can take 3 courses of action; shrinking as its beginnings, broke, or surviving by beating employees and customers, ranting and raving at your family and friends because you have to be there all the time for it to survive.

If you´ve encountered this situation or are willing to avoid this reality there´s hope, but most of all clearness: Your business is not your life.

WORK ON YOUR BUSINESS NOT IN YOUR BUSINESS.

By creating a model of your business as a prototype that can be replicated effortlessly as many times as you wish by following 6 simple rules:

1) Provide consistent value, to customers, employees, suppliers, investors beyond what´s expected.

2) Get Simple. Make your business be operated by people with the lowest level of skills as possible.

3) Focus in Order to Stand Out.

4) Document all the work done in Operation Manuals.

5) Provide a Uniformly Service to the Customer.

6) Seek uniformity in the use of color, dress and facilities.  

Your Business is NOT your Life

BUILD A BUSINESS OF YOUR OWN AS IF YOU WERE BUILDING A PROTOTYPE.

Building a prototype of your business is a continuous process, we refer to it as the Business Developing process, founded in three main integrated activities: Innovation, Quantification and Orchestration.

INNOVATE- THE WAY YOU DO BUSINESS

Innovate - The way you do Business

Innovation has to do more than with a creative factor with the way a business does Business essentially. A mechanism for finding and keeping customers in a differentiated manner, where the business is the product, putting itself in the consumers mind by how it interacts more than what it sells. 

Innovation might be slight changes to your business that don´t require much spending, such as the way you greet or interact with costumers or the way you dress. Always counting in the customer’s point of view and always simplifying the operations. Everyone can be involved in it by asking which would be the best way.

QUANTIFY - ALWAYS

Innovation has to be paired to quantification, if not it would be a lost effort.

Your business may be lacking the process of quantification when it comes to innovation and this should be done at the outset of the Business Developing Process by beginning to quantify everything related to how you do business, going from how many customers do arrive in the morning to the afternoon, to how many people call your business each day, how many of your products are being sold to which days of the week are the busiest. This is a good way of diagnosing the health of your business, to know where you are and where you are going to.

ORCHESTRATE – SAME RESULTS EVERY TIME 

When innovating a process and quantifying the innovation´s results you will be ready to orchestrate your business, this means eliminating discretion or choice when operating.

You´ll be able to plan and anticipate by creating order instead of chaos, producing a consistent, predictable results every single time, no matter what business you are in.

Giving your customer what he/she wants every single time in your unique way will project the perception you want for your customers to become loyal to your business.

The Business Development process is dynamic, looking for the world´s changes and adapting to them. You may call it differently; Reengineering, TQM, Kaizen or Excellence. Nevertheless a way of doing something, quantifying it and orchestrating it, will take you necessarily to improvement.

Orchestrate - Same Results Every Time

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

This will be the step by step process in which you transform your existing business into a perfectly organized model for thousands more just like it. Building your prototype.

First of all you have to find yourself, by deciding who you will be, how you will live, what your expectations are. Once you come out of your comfort zone, once you decide your PRIMARY AIM, what makes you tick, you may go on with the next steps:

STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE

This is a clear statement of what your business will do for you to achieve your Primary Aim. It is the vision of a finished product. Remember that your business is a vehicle to enrich your life rather than one that drains your life. It´s a product of your life plan, as well as your business strategy and plan (they provide the structure within which your business is intended to operate over time to fulfill your life Plan).

BUSINESS STRATEGY AND PLAN

Shapes the direction where your business is going to, how it will get there, specific benchmarks it will need to hit to be able to work. Also it will be useful for marketing your business with bankers, investors and alliances in the business community. Designed for implementation, it is a template for your business, to make certain that the time you invest in it produces exactly what you want from it.

You´ll have to answer specific questions such as:

How much money is your business going to make for you? Your vision translated in gross revenues, gross profits, pretax profits and after tax profits. Answering this questions will serve to your Primary Aim. How much do you need to live the way you wish, to be independent of work, to be free. Your business needs to provide you a return of investment. 

Is it an opportunity worth pursuing? Does your business has a realistic chance of achieving those standards? If you assume that it can it is worth pursuing.

Who´s my customer? You´ll need a Demographic Model, to answer who would be your most probable customer, defined by age, sex, income, family status, education, profession. This will help you determine why your customer buys and who she/he is, how many opportunities you have (your customers demographics) and how successfully you can satisfy the emotional or perceived need (your customer psychographics).

ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGY

Creating an Organization Chart has a profound impact on a small company more than any other Business Development step. It will help to give direction, purpose and style of the business, which will be balanced, interacting and progressing with each other toward a cohesive whole marked by the strategic Objective and the Personal Aim on the top.

Organization should be around accountabilities or responsibilities more than around personalities. Make sure you look for:

• Defining the Position Contracts. 
• Thinking as shareholders with employees, always done as a corporation more than as a partnership.
• Prototyping the position by replacing yourself with a System that distinguishes the following from each other:

1.      Tactical work; the one that technicians do.

2.      Strategic work; the one that managers do.

• Working on the system as working in it. Create manuals.

Create the blue print of your business

MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

Creating a management system will be your management strategy. This means solving the problems provoked by the unpredictability of your people, through the process of management development which will give you marketing results by finding and keeping customers through efficient and effective processes described in operational manuals. It´s important to have a clear picture by hearing your clients.

PEOPLE STRATEGY

How do I get my people to do what I want? A question that small business owners continuously ask. The answer: By creating an environment where “doing it” is more important to your people than non-doing it, where it becomes a way of life. Creating a workplace culture is essential to the business. Work is a reflection of who we are inside, it´s an idea, if positive your business will reflect that optimism, if negative it will reflect that as well.

By creating a clearly defined structure of acting in the world, people will work for you not just because it excites them, but because of this structure through which they can test themselves and be tested, like in a game. They will buy into your game on how well you communicate it at the outset of the relationship. It´s communicated through beliefs on what your business needs to become -for your customers, for your people, for yourself- it needs to be more than just a place to go to work.

The hiring process is the medium of communicating the workplace culture, the idea and the beliefs. This first relationship has to be not a dehumanizing experience, but quite the opposite. Hiring, developing and retaining people should require a strategy built on an understanding of people completely foreign to most businesses and the system should be the solution.

By setting a Management System all managers are expected to produce results and inspire people to commit to the standards that are set by the business, from and for the business. You want people who want to play your game, not those who believe they have a better one.

MARKETING STRATEGY

The marketing strategy starts, ends, lives, and dies with the customer. Keep in mind that what your customer wants is probably significantly differently from what you think he wants. Define his needs by looking at who he is -demographics- and why he buys -psychographics will help-.

Ask your customer. Make a questionnaire. Ask the colors they prefer, shapes, words, brands of perfume, food, restaurants, automobiles, clothes, jewelry. Match brands and commercials that sell them, what messages are being send to them by companies who are successfully selling to them. 

Make a list of those customers who fit your Demographic Model in your geographic perimeter where your customers mainly live or work.

In small businesses you can´t afford to spend the money big companies do, but you can afford to spend the time, the thought and the attention on the same questions they ask.

Source: The E Myth Revisted by Michael E. Gerber.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership. An Exclusive Interview with Ambassador of New Zealand Clare Kelly.

By Heidi Putscher

Profectus Business Consulting Group met, in an exclusive interview for our blog, New Zealand´s Ambassador in Mexico, Clare Kelly, to talk about the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement or TPP, which took place in the city of Auckland, New Zealand, on February 4^th, 2016.

The signing of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is the culmination of a long process of negotiations (see timeline) that ended last October in Atlanta, United States. Signatory members represent the 12 Pacific Rim countries: United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Australia, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam.

The TPP will cover a market of 800 million people and represent 40% of the world´s GDP. Net earnings are estimated at 295 billion dollars a year.

Particularly, the TPP will represent for Mexico and New Zealand, a new relationship in trade between both countries and the other TPP members, enabling preferential access to the most important economies in the world.

Here, the first part of a two part exclusive interview by Profectus with her Excellency the Ambassador of New Zealand in Mexico, Clare Kelly.

PROFECTUS: Liberalization of trade between the TPP´s partners gives New Zealand more access to global markets than ever before. In your opinion, into what extent?

CK: The TPP means that for the first time, we have a free trade agreement with some of our biggest export markets, United States and Japan. Traditionally these markets have had very high tariffs barriers to imports of agricultural products, so the fact of having been able to negotiate reduction and or elimination of tariffs on our key export products to those markets is very significant to New Zealand.

We have a very strong free trade orientation, much like Mexico, because we have a small domestic market. We rely on our export markets to generate growth, being a very important part of our economy.  We have FTAs with all our key Asian markets.  We are the first developed country in the world to negotiate a free trade agreement (FTA) with China and since that agreement came into force in 2008, our trade with this country has quadrupled.

Before the TTP, 60% of our export markets were covered by free trade agreements. With the TPP signed, the proportion of our exports that are covered by tariff reductions or elimination will go up even further. We´ve also recently commenced negotiations with the European Union, an objective we´ve been working towards for many years.

The TPP is part of a long term strategy to make our exports as competitive as they can possibly be in the world market.

PROFECTUS: For New Zealand this FTA is the first one between United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan and Peru. It is a strategic way to gain access to the United States and Japan markets. Wouldn´t there be a competitive disadvantage, for example, when talking about domestic subsidies to American, Japanese or even Canadian farmers in contrast to New Zealand´s farmers?

CK: The New Zealand model of agriculture is extremely competitive. New Zealand removed export subsidies and domestic support for the farming sector in the 1980´s, continuously and deliberately, in order to make the sector as competitive as possible.

Dairy and meat exporters have been competing for 40 years in a very difficult market; virtually every country in the world has barriers to trade in agriculture products. New Zealand has a very long history of export of agriculture products, we have been exporting them for 130 years, since refrigerated ships were invented in the 1870´s.  We have been doing this a long time and we have always competed in a market that put on extensive barriers on agriculture products, so our industry has become very good at producing very high quality products as cheaply as possible and for tailoring them to what the customer demands.

Also, we are lucky because of geography and nature, New Zealand is a place where rains quite a lot, therefore we are able to transform grass into animal protein in a very economical and efficient way. We are already competitive in those markets and relative to the domestic and local industry the TPP will only make us more competitive.

PROFECTUS: The US decided to tag along to the regional FTA in 2008, called at first the Pacific Three Closer Economic Partnership, which comprehended New Zealand, Chile and Singapore. Later on, it was known as the P4, with Brunei´s addition. Now, the American Congress will have to ratify the Treaty and apparently it won´t happen before the US Presidential Elections are being held. Many things may happened on the way. Does your Government has a Plan “B” if the Agreement doesn´t come into force, due to failure of the American or the Japanese domestic legislatures to ratify the agreement?

CK: Well, our government believes that it will be ratified. It would be extraordinary for the United States and Japan to put in the tremendous effort that they have, the resources they have invested in this agreement, if those governments did not think that it would pass domestic ratification process.

In terms of the Plan “B”, or maybe it is more accurate to call it Plan “A”, is always the World Trade Organization (WTO). New Zealand is a very active participant in the WTO. We were a very strong proponent of the Doha Development Agenda. New Zealand´s ideal way to achieve the kind of market access that we want, that we believe global trade needs, is through the WTO, because it´s an agreement of 155 countries, all of whom are agreeing to abide by the multilateral trading system. So, that is always a plan for New Zealand. But, over the last 10 years, it´s been extremely difficult to work through the WTO or to advance through the WTO agenda, though last year there was some very important breakthroughs. The trend has been instead to negotiate plurilateral regional agreements, because you have a smaller group of countries who have a strong political interest in concluding the agreements.

We think the TPP will enter into force within the time frame. That´s Plan “A” and “B”, but we will go on negotiating through the WTO and we will go on negotiating other trade agreements.

PROFECTUS: It has been said that China is waiting to see the outcome of the TPP and that it is preparing its own FTA for the region, if the TPP isn´t ratified by at least six signatories, who will represent 85 percent of the total GDP of the 12 original signatories.

In any case, New Zealand already has a FTA with China, which is one of your most important trade partners. Some say, that the international rules for the Asian-Pacific international commerce are being set by two parties, the United States and China. Does New Zealand has to choose between them, or stay outside either bloc as some people may think? What is your opinion on this?

CK: Both China and the United States are members of the WTO. The rules for international trade are determined by the WTO. Those rules have been in place for long time now, both China and the United States abide by those rules. Free Trade Agreements usually add further disciplines on trade, than what’s already in the WTO agreements, because otherwise there wouldn´t be a point to them; you can go further and faster on those smaller negotiations than you can go through the WTO. There is already a frame work of rules, so I am not sure where those comments come from or what is actually meant by them.

New Zealand doesn´t have to choose between the United States and China. We have our FTA with China since 2008, also with Hong Kong and Macau and now with the US.  We have been WTO partners with both countries for a long time, so the question of choosing between one or the other does not arise.

PROFECTUS: Ninety-three percent of tariffs on exports to United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico and Peru will be eliminated according to New Zealand´s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT). 

The reduction of tariffs and non-tariffs barriers will raise New Zealand´s competitiveness exports according to the Ministry, but Professor Tim Hazledine, of Auckland University´s business school, in an interview with the New Zealand Herald, argued “that the kinds of models used to try to quantify these effects” referring to competitiveness “depend on crude assumptions about how real-world markets function and their results are very sensitive to errors in these assumptions." He continued on saying that he suspects the effects will be asymmetric: "Large-scale overseas companies with close connections to their consumers will find it easier to tap into New Zealand resources than small New Zealand companies will find it to develop relationships with overseas consumers."  

Do you have any opinions on professor Hazledine´s comments?

CK: Predictions of how trade will be affected by FTAs are not a perfect science. One has to look at what patterns of trade are and make assumptions from that is on how trade will continue once some very obvious barriers to it are removed, such as tariffs. None of us can predict the future with total accuracy. 

When the government makes these assumptions, it looks at the outcome in previous free trade agreements and again, I will refer to the China FTA. With the China agreement, it was assumed that the agreement would add NZ$100 Million Dollars of GDP growth once it was entered into force. I don´t have the exact figures in my head, but I understand that actually the impact has been four times what it was predicted.  China is now our biggest export market and the FTA has had an enormous impact on our ability to export our products.

I am not sure about the points that Professor Hazeldine is making about exploitation of New Zealand´s resources by overseas companies. New Zealand has, like most of the countries in the world, a framework of law around investment that has not been compromised by this agreement in any way. We have restrictions, for example, on the purchase of certain sizes of land, certain types of land, such as coastal land. Of course, it´s true that large corporations have more resources than small ones, we know that, but because New Zealand is already open to foreign trade and investment, the TPP doesn´t really make it much difference to the status quo.  Companies that want to invest in New Zealand have always been able to do that.

In negotiating trade agreements the government is looking to increase economic growth.  For New Zealand, trade is an important way to grow our economy – 30% of our GDP comes from trade.   

PROFECTUS: Statistics released by your government have shown a saving in exports up to 259 Million a year once TPP has fully been implanted, while there will be only a revenue of 20 Millions in tariffs a year on imports. Isn´t it a small number in comparison to exports?

CK: The reason why we will benefit under the TPP more than some other countries from the removal of tariffs, is that New Zealand has already unilaterally removed most of its own tariffs. This was a process that started in the 1980´s as we thought to make our economy more competitive and more globally focused.  Essentially, New Zealand only retains tariffs in some sectors which are arguably sensitive to imports. More and more New Zealand is part of a global supply chain and our imports are often products that contribute towards our exports, so it makes very little sense for the New Zealand tax payer to be taxing themselves to produce products for export. Only 30% or 40% of imported goods are subject to a tariff and the tariff is either 5% or 10%. 

New Zealand has not relied on tariff protection to close its market to the world for many years, quite the reverse, we deliberately opened our market to international competition, because for a small country like New Zealand, for a tiny domestic market, it´s a sensible policy to follow.

Go to Part 2 of the Interview.

Sources: NZ Herald, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of New Zealand, CNN Expansión. 

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