James Blackwell describes practical, relationship-focused tactics for finding and attracting business mentors: proactively asking business owners for coffee/meetings, equipping yourself with business and financial knowledge, offering value in conversations rather than only absorbing advice, gifting thoughtful (inexpensive) books as thank-you gestures, and reciprocating by recommending mentors to others, passing leads, or promoting their brands on social media.
So at the start, when I started my business, I used to ask quite a lot of business owners in the northeast, could you meet us for a coffee? Because I had so much energy, enthusiasm, people enjoyed meeting me. So that works well with the personal development side as well. So reading a lot of books, being self aware in terms of business and the financial part, and actually having knowledge yourself because that, that enables you to have an asset and a conversation with that mentor. Because I always want to make sure that I'm giving my side of whether it's going for a meeting, for a coffee or lunch. I'm not just absorbing loads of information from them, I'm giving value as well. So one of the tips I used to always do is take a book along as a gift or gift just to say thank you. And it might only be like 5 or 10 pounds, but it's amazing how much that mentor or advisor really appreciates the fact of thanking them and picking out a thoughtful book that I thought would be interesting. So that's worked really well for me as well as bringing along like a book or a gift to a mentor, someone that gave me some advice also, what can I do for them? Can I recommend them to other companies? Can I pass them on some leads? Can I? Even if you're just starting out, but you've got a good social following, help promote their company or brand and give them a recommendation. All of these type of things will help you attract the mentors that you need.
