Mentor Insight No. 4 - David Barker
This month David Barker, who has volunteered his time through Dorset Business Mentors since the end of 2018, offers a compelling insight into his role as a business mentor and references the ways his client businesses have navigated a challenging year with his support. David lives in Bournemouth and originally heard of the Dorset Business Mentors programme by word of mouth. Like all our mentors David offers, and draws on considerable experience. He is refreshingly candid and serves to highlight that experience isn’t just about all that you learn from success, it is also what you learn from failure and how this translates to helping others avoid the same pitfalls or at least move forward with ‘eyes open’ and awake to risk.
David writes:
“Somewhere in a coffee bar in Bournemouth……
The Mentor sits back, ruminating on the business conundrum they have just been thrown. The mentee looks on expectantly, hesitatingly , waiting for the mentor to pronounce their verdict and deliver a business solution that will transform their life forever………some amazing turnkey solution that will guarantee success……some fantastic easy to adopt idea that will make millions.
My view? Nope, never going to happen. Sorry to burst your bubble there.
But if the mentor is not going to solve all the business woes of the world what will they do?
My Story
In the 18 months since becoming a Dorset Business Mentor I have been lucky enough to work with businesses in 9 sectors covering:
Hairdressing, Restaurant/Hospitality, Yoga, Nutrition, Accountancy, Business Coaching, Relationship coaching, Online training, Mid-life counselling,
I am also lucky enough to be ‘practicing what I preach’ in that I am Chair of a Healthcare training business and run my own eLearning business.
Oh yes and I also volunteer as a Groundsman at Highcliffe Castle!
So, what can a mentor like me offer this widely dispersed group of businesses, all at different stages of growth and establishment.
In a word…experience.
Experience in my case has been forged through a lifetime of business with an almost equal amount of business success and failure.
Most of the time the application of this experience involves not predicting what is around the corner for the mentee but rather helping them see what could be around the corner. Not predicting what will happen but what could happen, not what they should do but discussing the range of things they could do. Encouraging and helping rather than directing decision making.
All this is couched in terms of what happened in my own experience as I struggled with some of the same issues , setting up , creating a business plan for the first time , negotiating finance , facing technology change, managing risk , personal ambitions and motivation, defining success , managing growth and employment all the way through to selling businesses and ‘cashing in’. I am lucky enough to have tried (succeeded and failed) in all the above.
By way of example I floated my ‘life’s work’ on the stock market only to see it evaporate within 5 years as the markets crashed, but have also built a business from an idea dreamt up around my kitchen table to employing 130 staff and selling it to a venture capital company …….so experience has been hard taught!
What I have found most interesting is that every business I have ever spoken to thinks their challenges are unique to them. They believe they alone are going through their own unique situations.
I believe this perception is key to understanding what a mentor can do for a business. Helping mentees to understand they are not alone in thinking this but that most things that could happen have happened in business before. Recessions, technology change, clients not paying, staff problems, setting up for the first time and a myriad of other challenges have all happened before. So, lessons can be learnt, experience of the mentor can be applied to help in decisions. Not to direct but to support and not to advise but to help discover and discuss options.
But what about Covid you may ask surely nobody has experience of that?
In that exact point you would be right. We have not experienced anything quite like this before. However, the challenges that spin out of Covid can be overcome and experience from previous crisis can help:
For example, amongst my mentees and my own businesses Covid drove a rethink:
1) A media / presentation training business is transforming into a ‘zoom meeting’ professional training business. Moving from training professionals in face to face presentation skills and TV briefing to running professional Zoom calls.
2) The classroom training business has moved from 40 classroom training sessions per month pre Covid (February 2020) to an amazing 92 webinars in September 2020.
3) The restaurant moved to a takeaway solution that has boosted sales to pre Covid levels of profitability whilst retaining many of its staff.
4) Opening a hair salon longer hours with fewer staff during those hours - boosted sales beyond pre Covid levels, meant retention of staff and has enabled expansion of an unused area to sublet and create another revenue stream.
5) Cancellation of some group sessions for one mentee, drove a switch to more individual based work has led to growth in ‘virtual ‘1:1 training and support.
For others it has led to a rethink of careers and direction leading to one mentee retraining to find permanent work with a large employer in Bournemouth. Yet another has refocussed their business onto a slightly different market and is beginning to increase their sales. Yet another has become a financial consultant /advisor in financing during Covid.
In all cases the Mentor (me) was not the driver of change, not the creator of the ideas but the facilitator. I cannot and do not claim any credit for the work these guys have done…I merely helped, supported and offered my experience.
An honest arbiter, a consistent supporter and above all a business friend with no vested interest other than helping them find their road to success in whatever form that takes.
At least that’s what I hope I am……”
You may enjoy another perspective on the mentor/mentee relationship by reading or watching two of David’s clients as they discuss their experiences.
Click here to read a case study written by Liz McCormick of McCormick Accounting Ltd or to watch a recorded discussion between her and Charlotte Bowater of Dorset Business Mentors.
And/or watch the recorded discussion with another of David’s mentees Katherine Baldwin below.