The benefits of mentoring

As part of our philosophy at Tigerfish PR to ‘put something back’ into the business community, we do mentoring, and pro bono work for good causes, like Women in Logistics. Most recently, I’ve mentored the incredibly talented John and Cassie, who head up Animal Pastels.

Over our weekly meetings, we covered an wide array of topics which included:

• Marketing- review the “Ps” of marketing.
• Plan/do/review
• On-line recommendations
• ‘Owned’ v. ‘earned’ publicity
• Guest blogging
• Networking
• Mail shots
• Creating the ideal pitch/elevator pitch
• Social media – building on-line equity
• Linkedin
• Using social media for focus groups
• Creating USPs
• Topics that make a great news stories
• Questions to ask at focus groups
• Stakeholder analysis

.. as well as business plan overview and critique of what had gone well and what could be approached differently.

I’m confident there were real benefits to Animal Pastels from this mentoring, but what was in it for me?

Firstly – I enjoyed starting with a ‘clean sheet’ with a company. Thinking ‘oh, what would I need to know if I started again’ was really beneficial to my own business.

Secondly – It’s really easy to take for granted the stuff we know. It’s common to be lulled into thinking that everyone knows the things you know. But they don’t. So that was really revitalising

And finally – it’s part of my DNA to want to help others succeed. It was the motivation for creating Tigerfish PR back in 2001, and it’s certainly a formula that’s working.

For me, there’s a real feel-good factor helping others shine. If you mentor, what motivates you?