Business mentoring for women

Support from an expert can go a long way in helping you overcome the barriers to success in business. For women, these barriers can be even greater than for men - not least because much generic business advice is not tailored to female entrepreneurs.

"Many mainstream advice services tend to unwittingly discriminate against women," says Toni Eastwood OBE, training director for Everywoman, the support organisation for female entrepreneurs. "They don't necessarily have a shared experience, particularly around trying to manage your business and family finances.

"Women have to make life decisions that men don't have to think about in the same way. We have different barriers," she asserts. "To be able to share them with someone else who has been through it is really quite empowering."

Mentoring for female entrepreneurs

Mentoring is becoming well-established as a means of learning from other business people through a blend of business advice and emotional support. Having a female mentor, however, provides an extra layer of understanding.

"Mentoring gives you access to women you can build a long-term relationship with who have been there and done it before," Eastwood explains. "A woman who has been in business for ten years could be a great mentor for someone who has just started up. You can cover all sorts of things, from understanding finance to issues around work and family balance, developing confidence, and so on."

The benefits

According to Eastwood, the lessons of mentoring take hold more firmly than other forms of learning. "Past studies have suggested that mentoring and coaching have five times more impact than training courses," she points out. "It's personal and it's about looking at the issues you want to deal with when you want to deal with them.

"The mentor will use the lessons of their experience to help you to overcome barriers, and they'll put the power of making decisions into your hands," she continues. "It means you haven't got to go through negative learning experiences."

How to do it

Everywoman runs a free online mentoring scheme, which matches Everywoman members with a mentor who can meet their particular needs. Being online, the scheme gives you the flexibility to contact your mentor at any time, and emails can be supported by telephone calls and meetings.

Other organisations run mentoring schemes as well - although not all are free. Business Link can put you in touch with an appropriate mentor, or you can search for your own through the Coaching and Mentoring Network website. If you are under 30, you could benefit from mentoring provided by The Prince's Trust, Young Enterprise and Shell LiveWIRE.

Whichever route you choose, however, remember that the mentoring relationship, whether short or long-term, is for your convenience. "You set the agenda," Eastwood insists. "You're listening to someone else's experience, but actually it's about making your own decision."