I am delighted to have been accepted as a Boost & Co partner.
I set out 18 months ago to help businesses learn and apply process improvement techniques to enable profitability and growth. Like everyone else I have bills to pay, but I wanted a way to help small business owners learn about continuous improvement. The Boost growth mentoring programme enabled me to do just that.
It has been a pleasure and a privilege to help small business owners understand the most effective ways for them to grow their businesses, whilst managing the amount of time they must devote to working in the business. Along the way I have helped business owners to do the following;
- Reduce their working hours whilst increasing capacity through a 30% increase in productivity
- Identify the vital few actions required for their business to grow and thrive
- Implement world class manufacturing techniques normally found in large multinationals into a small engineering company
- Identify the right investment questions to ask when looking at growing through acquisition
In each case the business owner really knew the answers, what they needed from me was structure and a ‘sounding board’ to enable them to sense check their plans.
I believe the key to successful mentoring lies within each mentor. If you are focused on how to directly gain from the mentoring programme and transition the mentee to a paying customer you will not deliver their needs. The key is to focus on delivering value to that mentee as if they were a paying customer. Be generous, give freely of your skills and knowledge with the aim of truly helping. The return may not happen for many years, but I believe that every mentee I help in the right way is another link in forging a reputation for capability and reliability. With each session you get to know each other better and develop a relationship that leads to trust.
When you have established trust, you set the foundation for future recommendations. It is those recommendations that will deliver the return on investment. Mentoring is about ensuring that manufacturing businesses thrive so that there are consulting opportunities in the future. Delivering today’s mentoring at high quality with added value builds tomorrows reputation and income streams.
So with that in mind, I am ‘paying it forward’ delivering high added value mentoring that has a positive impact on quality, cost, and lead time in my customers businesses.
If that sounds like something you need, get in touch, let’s have a conversation.