The buzz about having a mentor!
Is it true? Does it really do what they say? Well, I will give here my personal experience of it. Yeah, this article is all about mentoring, what a shock.
Firstly, I would like to say that there are two types of mentors: the official and unofficial. What I mean by unofficial ones, I mean people in my life who have served to me as a mentor, but without really labelling it. Persons like family members who have encouraged me to have a leap of faith and open my business. My dad, who has unofficially mentored me to always seek knowledge in books. That created a concept in my mind that reading is like a beautiful crown around my head and every book I read is like a jewel added to the crown. There are also many unofficial mentors in my life, like colleagues, business partners, etc.
Today, I will focus on the official one. Let’s start with how we met. I won the UK Tech Hub, a program from the UK embassy in Albania, with my business and got introduced to some business owners in the UK to collaborate by David from True and North. From those meetings, the only meeting that genuinely served me was the meeting with my current mentor. She can fill the room (Zoom call in this case) with her smile and her energy is contagious. After discussing work and our lives, Elle offered to meet me again and guide me in my new startup. I was impressed and did not believe that she would be so open and available. Furthermore, I have to clarify that I was living in Albania, while she was leaving in London. That meant a gap in some aspects.
Now let’s dive deeper. There wasn’t a single moment when I felt like in a lecture, where my role was of a student in a classroom. I always felt I had in front of me a person who had hands-on and collaborated with me every step of the way. It helped me find clarity and do the work. Now, don’t misunderstand me; it was me who had to carry on my own things, while it was carefully explained what needed to be done. This collaboration keeps me on track and makes me deliver every two weeks, like a sprint. She covered wonderfully fundamental aspects like dedicating time regularly to the mentorship, delivering professional and personal values, and guiding me to envision my business.
I also learned a crucial lesson from her that I will summarize with a quote from Toni Morrison. “When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just grab bag candy game. I read this quote in the book “Lift as you climb- Women and the art of Ambition” by Viv Groskop, a book that my mentor Elle gifted me.
To sum up, I do believe that having a good mentor really makes a difference in you as a person and in your business. Thumbs up for everyone out there having a mentor and being a mentor.
