It happens to the best of business owners. You hit a point when you have a few directions by which to steer your company to greatness or stare at what seems to be a brick wall standing in your way.
The old adage “lead, follow or get out of the way” still holds true. Another alternative: find a mentor. In Kansas City, the alternative is easier than you think.
Our city’s business community is teeming with organizations and programs to mentor and support those entrepreneurs whose employees’ and their families depend upon for their livelihoods.
The Helzberg Entrepreneurial Mentoring Program (HEMP) was founded for this very reason. For 21 years, HEMP has made good on its promise to “strengthen entrepreneurial leaders through excellence in mentoring.” HEMP’s dynamic mentoring network focuses on seasoned entrepreneurs and accepts up to 20 mentees each year from submitted applications for the three-year program.
Through events, education programs, retreats, and “field trips,” the mentoring program fosters networking and learning opportunities for the nearly 200 CEOs participating as mentors, mentees, counselors or members of the Society of Fellows.
Since its founding, The Helzberg Entrepreneurial Mentoring Program participants have contributed $748 million to the local economy. Participants have also increased their revenue growths by 43% and employee rosters by 30%, according to its website.
Though HEMP is just one example of the many programs available, the statistics proving that participating in such a group offers clear advantages, ranging from revenue growth and increased employment to even the entrepreneur’s personal growth.
People Who’ve Walked in Your Shoes are Your Best Resource
The mentoring relationship is the core of Helzberg Mentoring, opening access to an invaluable resource, the best people. “We work really hard to get that relationship right,” says Christina Dreiling, HEMP’s managing director. “We want to create a confidential space, where leaders are not alone, where they can be real.”
Dreiling says mentors and mentees are matched based on connection and chemistry, not industry ties, ensuring a fresh, outside perspective for the mentee.
Put Your Worst Foot Forward
It’s an unexpected mantra, but one of which HEMP is proud. “I don’t know what I don’t know. I have to admit that,” says Mindy Corporon, CEO of Boyer & Corporon Wealth Management, LLC and a Helzberg Entrepreneurial Mentoring Program mentor. “My participation in Helzberg Mentoring forced me to evaluate how I saw our business from a vantage point of a consultant rather than from on the ground, in the weeds.”
As a participant, you’re challenged to offer up your failures, mistakes, insecurities and to see them as necessary and instructive. This vulnerability gives way to genuine collaboration and problem solving.
Work on You, Not Just Your Company
The one-on-one mentoring model deeply impacts the person, not just company. Deuce Livers, president of Livers Bronze Co., started as a HEMP mentee in 2003. Since then he has served on the board and as a mentor.
“I’m a different kind of boss now,” Livers says. “The people I met through HEMP opened my mind and helped me see the overall impact I could make because of me, not just my business. They taught me to be more of a mentor than a boss.”
Corporon, Livers, and several other of EAG Advertising & Marketing clients have taken advantage of the wealth of knowledge and experience available through HEMP and other mentoring organizations and programs. Over the years, these EAG clients have grown their businesses and overcome hurdles common to many small business owners.
As Kansas City’s only advertising and marketing agency devoted to small businesses, we have an innate understanding of entrepreneurship and weave that into the strategies that we recommend and execute for our clients.
Outside our own offices, Paul Weber, EAG Founder and Chief “Entrepreneur” Officer, has been a mentor and coach for programs like the Kauffman Foundation for Entrepreneurship and UMKC’s Bloch School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
We see firsthand how mentoring makes a difference. Participating in HEMP and other mentoring programs is not only an investment in your business, but also it is an investment in you with returns coming in the form of growth, revenue and sustainability.