If you are having trouble finding a mentor or if you have found a good mentor that does not have the ability to give away their time for free, then it may be a good idea to consider investing in paid mentoring.

Many people still look at mentoring in a very traditional way and imagine a promising young new hire being mentored by a seasoned executive. However, as we saw when talking about reverse mentoring, modern mentoring can exist in a variety of ways. Some people may seem hesitant about paying for mentoring but is it really so odd? Think about it this way, if you know someone who is an expert with Quick Books and you want to have them come teach you how to use it, you wouldn’t think twice about paying them for their time would you?  Is mentoring necessarily so different?

These kinds of transactions are really a form of mentoring in and of themselves. As useful as these transactions are, some people provide this kind of assistance to people in much the same way as a mentor would but do it professionally as what is known as a business coach.

A business coach is someone that can help you develop yourself and in turn, your business. They will hold you accountable and as someone who does this professionally, you can hold them accountable as well. This sort of relationship can also help ease the initial tension or intimidation that may exist in a traditional mentor-mentee relationship, where the mentee may be too timid to ask questions because of the mentor’s position or because they are helping the mentee for free and may find it difficult to ask for more from them.

Just as we have discussed the numerous benefits that mentors can provide in our previous posts, you know that they may be well worth the monetary investment. Even if that great potential mentor that you know is not a business coach and is someone who might be difficult to arrange a paid-mentoring arrangement with, consider buying them lunch to see if you can develop a relationship with them that way. You may very well find that in the long run, these can be some of the best investments you have ever made for yourself or your business.

A mentor-mentee relationship does not have to meet any particular parameters and is always mutually beneficial. Mentoring is really just about investing in yourself and each other to grow personally and professionally, no matter how they come about.

This concludes our series on mentoring as part of January as Mentoring Month, and we hope you have enjoyed it and are either looking for that great mentor, have one that you show your continued appreciation for, are ready to make the jump to star mentoring someone else, or are working to improve yourself as a longtime mentor, with the help of these posts.

If you need legal help with your business matters, do not hesitate to reach out to the Law Office of E.C. Lewis, PC, home of your Denver Business Attorney, Elizabeth Lewis, at 720-258-6647 or email her at elizabeth.lewis@eclewis.com.