A mentor does not buy, sell or negotiate. A mentor provides a service. In essence, mentoring is simply helping someone else play their cards right and become successful in their home business or other endeavour.

Thus defined, mentoring has been a business practice for a long time. Recent estimates indicate that a large majority of successful people have used a mentor as a standard business practice. Mentors choose to help others reach their goals for various reasons, the most common reason being to gain support and help for their own projects and from a true desire to assist others. After all, what good is information if you don't share it with someone who needs a mentor?

Many mentors help a peer or friend move up the ladder in order to achieve personal satisfaction and develop friendships. Also, you've probably experienced a friend saying, "I helped you, and now I need help too..." Basically, being or having a mentor is an exchange of services and friendship.

One reason mentoring is popular, especially in today's economy, is that it provides free training that normally would be provided at special training classes costing a lot of money. Mentors willingly provide this service, as it is simply the bottom line method of training with little or no cash. In times of little or no cash flow, mentoring is a highly desirable commodity, and mentoring is becoming even more widespread. Mentoring offers a way to hold onto cash while continuing to get advice and training.

In addition to saving costs, mentoring can improve cash flow and liquidity by avoiding the high cost of formal training. For anyone who is starting up a home business, this is vitally important. For the individual who is lucky enough to have a mentor, it makes it possible to save existing funds for those purchases where cash is necessary.

To successfully become a mentor, you must think in terms of a trainer, a financial expert, and a technical advisor if you want to help someone start their home business. After all, that is the precise reason for mentoring - to bring together an individual with success. Your first task is to determine exactly what the individual hopes to accomplish. As a one-person training staff, you will need to know everything about the potential home business as well as get to know the personal hopes and dreams of your protégé. In effect, you are providing your expertise and/or time to help another person achieve their goals for success.

Having a mentor to help you successfully start up your home business is a stroke of luck if you are on the receiving end. You explain your wants or needs to your mentor and he/she will provide you with suggestions based on their past experiences. You will be wise to listen to these suggestions, as they are mostly methods that have already been tried, tested and proven to work. Your home business mentor can help you with advice on start-up costs, technical advice, and guide you through the process of establishing sales leads, getting the funding you need, and most likely provide you with the names of others who are specialized in their respective fields.

Why go it alone, making the same mistakes that have already been made by others? Let a mentor help you on the road to success by giving you the benefit of their experience.

Copyright © Ian Canaway

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Ian Canaway is a home business entrepreneur and the owner of http://www.asuccesfullhomebusiness4u.com and also a home business blog at http://www.ahomebusinessblog4u.blogspot.com; providing high quality information and resources.