What is a Mentor?
A mentor is someone with more entrepreneurial / business experience than you who acts as an advisor on business and sometimes personal matters over a period of time.

How to choose a Mentor:
The first question you need to ask yourself is this.

Why would a mentor want to work with ‘me’?

This question is more fundamental than actually choosing a mentor.
There are plenty of people willing to be mentors, but they usually pick and choose their students (aka mentees). Good mentors may be in demand and already have several mentees. Make your proposition stand out from the rest, using enthusiasm and initiative.

Mentors come in many shapes and sizes and all have different and unique attributes.

Examine your exisiting network - friends, former employers, sports coaches, online networkers. From this group, whom do you admire / respect? Have you already been assisted in some way and wish to develop a formal relationalship with?

Choose a mentor from an industry that is complementary to yours.
Identify niche skills that you wish to develop and ask your mentor if they can help with those.

Ensure your mentor has no ulterior motive (ie a product they simply wish to sell you, and not provide any business support to you, the mentee)
Qualify that your mentor is not after financial compensation for their services. Mentors are often rewarded in many other ways - in particular, their teaching skills are improving. their strategies are evolving, or they may wish to use you as a case study for improving their own consultancy.

Top Tips:

• You can have more than one mentor
• Don’t agree to work with a mentor (or share any personal details) without meeting them first
• Check for any possible conflicts of interest
• Establish rapport with them - identify their wider interests
• Don’t be too ambitious - Richard Branson is unlikely to take you under his wing personally
• Thank your mentors frequently - not financially, but a bottle of wine/Scotch doesn’t go astray from time to time, particularly if you have been helped to win a large contract or helped through a challenging period.