Small Businesses Mentors to be Rewarded

Small business owners are today being given the opportunity to reward and recognise the contribution that mentors have made to their success, with the launch of a new national award run by not-for-profit social networking site horsesmouth.co.uk, and sponsored by international directories business, Yell.

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Designed to celebrate the important and often unsung role that mentors often play in helping small business in the UK flourish, the Yell Small Business Mentor of the Year Award will highlight the individuals who have been making a difference.

The winning mentor will receive £1,000 cash, plus a private mentoring breakfast with a business hero of their choice.  Potential ‘Prize Mentors’ supporting the award include Dame Mary Perkins, founder of Specsavers and  Sahar Sashimi co-founder of Coffee Republic. Dame Mary is offering to fly the winner to Guernsey for a day for a tour of her head office and a personal mentoring session, as well as a visit to St Peter Port.

horsesmouth and Yell are calling for entries about inspirational mentors, who can either be formal mentors or supportive colleagues, peers, family, or even helpful strangers, like those on the horsesmouth site. To nominate a mentor, small business owners and managers should log onto horsesmouth.co.uk and complete the entry form.

The judging will be based on  a combination of the three key attributes identified as being key to successful mentoring relationships:
friendliness – being approachable, non patronising, non judgmental and empathetic.
helpfulness – providing useful, valuable advice and support
timeliness – being flexible and respectful of the “mentees” time and commitments.

Final judging will be conducted by a panel of business and coaching experts, including Maxine Benson, co-founder of Everywoman and MT (Mary Teresa) Rainey, founder of horsesmouth, Helen Stevenson, chief marketing officer at Yell, and Professor David Clutterbuck, co-founder of the European Mentoring Centre and one of Europe’s leading writers and thinkers in this area.

Rainey went on to say that, “running a small business can be incredibly rewarding but it can sometimes feel a little lonely, as small businesses don’t have the same support networks that larger organisations would naturally provide. Horsesmouth offers an easy way for small businesses to access a wide pool of expertise, advice and support from many different volunteer mentors on the site who have had similar experiences.  We are seeing a huge increase in this topic on the site as people discover that it’s easy, safe, enjoyable and often incredibly worthwhile – whether you’re the giver or the gainer.”

Helen Stevenson added: “There are many thousands of people out there mentoring and supporting small businesses – either formally or informally - and we want to celebrate that as small businesses are at the heart of our business. horsesmouth is a really innovative way to scale the effects of mentoring and allow many more people all over the UK to participate and benefit. ”

The Yell Small Business Mentor of the Year Award follows the successful January launch of horsesmouth.co.uk , an online social network which enables users to profile their experiences, publish their stories and mentor each other one-on-one in a safe, hosted online environment. This award is part of a wider joint initiative called the Yell Mentoring Works Awards.

Small business users on horsesmouth can mentor each other on virtually any topic.  Anybody seeking advice on how to set up a business, change career direction, or build better working relationships, need only type in a few words to the site’s search engine to find a range of matched and approved profiles of suitable mentors who have been through similar experiences.  They can then conduct one to one email conversations with their mentors on the hosted horsesmouth platform.

A key principle of the site is that everyone has something to give and something to gain from being there.