Mentor Small Business Founders
Use Your Experience
To Mentor
You have accumulated a wealth of experience while building your career.
You can use all that experience as a volunteer small business mentor
for the next generation of business owners
How Does Mentoring Work?
Who are Mentors
Mentors are volunteers. They have had successful careers themselves and now want to help the next generation of business owners.
About Meetings
You meet when you like; and up to twice a month. You mutually agree the time and place. To cover Qld, many meetings will use Zoom.
What Workload
We expect mentors to have at least 3 mentees. Meet a maximum of twice monthly and generally less frequently once the mentee settles in.
Four Easy Steps to Get Started
Register Your Interest
Complete the registration form. It has a self-test to see if you meet our guidelines for 7 years business management experience, available for 3+ mentoring sessions per month, agree to 2 hours of online training and 3 months of probation with trainer, and have suitable internet video equipment if remote mentoring. Note that we are a volunteer organization so you are not paid as a mentor and can’t charge mentees a fee; now or in the future.
Initial Interview
We have a phone interview to get to know you better and for you to ask any questions about how the mentoring process works.
Start Mentoring Experience
If both parties decide to progress, you will be paired up with experienced mentors initially so you can get a feel for the process. There is an on-line training component for up to 2 hours and 3 months probation / training doing actual mentoring
Continue as Experienced Mentor
Once your training period is completed, you continue as an experienced Mentor.
Need More Information?
No Problem! Ask Us Anything
If you would like to discuss small business mentoring further, please register for a no-obligation meeting or email your questions to reception@backstop.business
No you don’t. Mentors must only give general assistance and feedback. This is a requirement of all our mentors. For specific advice always have the mentee contact the appropriate specialist advisor.
To some extent. We let mentors know when we have new mentees. You can express interest at that point. We then allocate mentees firstly on the mentor’s existing workload (minimums apply). There may be 1 or two mentors per mentee.
Many of our mentors travel for extended periods or may have personal leave. To permit this without disrupting the mentee, we generally have two mentors / mentee. If you are not available for an extended period, we might suggest replacing you with another mentor.
We do have insurance cover providing you follow our policies. Mentees sign a Liability Waiver form when joining.
Mentees can be Mentored as long as they like providing the process is working well. We have a minimum of 4 months to get the process started. Most stay for 1-2 years or until the business is operating smoothly.
You are not paid as a mentor. You are not permitted to offer professional services to a mentee outside of the mentoring process in case of unintentional bias.
Yes. Our process is a little like “blind dating”; sometimes it works and other times the parties are not the best fit. Either party can request a change in the arrangements. We will always offer a change in mentors at the end of a year so the mentee can get the benefit of new insights.