Advice to Small Businesses:

• Always network
• Get out and see customers
• Be humble, you never know what you can learn from others
• Have mentors in multiple fields
• Modify the message for the audience
• Focus on closing the deal

Advice to Mentors:

• Let the mentees find their own truth. The Mentor’s path may not necessarily suit the mentee
• Have a process of mentoring based on time, urgency and issues
• Guide them towards critical thinking skills to grow
• Follow the “Nacho Cheese” principle – it’s their cheese not yours
• If a customer does not see a value in your product or relationship, then it’s not a business, it is a hobby

Source: Small Business Mentoring Tips from Champions of Change

Dear Mowgli friends and supporters,

I’d like to give you all a Mowgli update.

A 2011 group of Mowgli Lebanon participants

After a relatively quiet period, we are now running at least a programme a month in Jordan and/or Lebanon, and we hope this will continue and grow, with early possibilities for expansion into Egypt and Palestine, and – of course – re-establishing programmes in Syria when we are able to.  (If you haven’t seen it, you may wish to read our 2012 Annual Review which was a great testament to the achievements of our entrepreneurs and mentors!)

However, as you may be aware, there have only been relatively few opportunities for UK based mentors (and facilitators) to take part in the MENA mentoring projects of late, as we have been developing more and more local mentors (and facilitators) in country to participate and drive these programmes. This is extremely beneficial for the local business community in the countries we work, and exactly the way Mowgli programmes should be developing to have the best long-term sustainable impact. However, these developments have the unintended consequence of a reduction in volunteering opportunities for you.

At the same time as the above developments have been in progress, Mowgli have been looking at how to establish long-term, sustainable UK programmes. As we see headlines of ever increasing unemployment – particularly amongst the young – the need to support SME’s and their leaders is greater than ever. We’ve completed a pilot programme in Manchester, and are now launching in the South West.

We hope that this will be the start of an important initiative which will grow over the next few years into a UK-wide Mowgli mentoring programme. Our business plan for scaling up our impact in the UK in 2012 is ambitious but, we believe, achievable, both with your support, and with the wider momentum of the UK Government’s National Mentoring Initiative (view Mowgli’s profile on the ‘mentorsme’ website here.)

The first Mowgli mentoring programme for the South West will take place from 13 to 15 January, just outside Bath. We are looking forward to putting together the first batch of mentors and entrepreneurs, and giving them the benefit of the Mowgli experience! More importantly, to developing 12 great mentoring relationships, giving local entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs the opportunity to be supported as they develop their businesses and secure employment for themselves and others. And we believe that the experience of being a mentor is a great development opportunity, as well as an opportunity to serve.

If you wish to be involved with our efforts in the UK, please do get in touch with us. There are a number of ways you can support us and in 2012 there will be a raft of exciting opportunities. At the very least, please follow us on Twitter @mowgliuk so that as and when we confirm new projects, you can get involved immediately.

Finally, as ever, we are a charity and we rely on charitable donations to continue our work. If you found your experience with Mowgli worthwhile and you believe in our continued mission, please do click here to donate what you can online and help bring that experience to others.

I look forward to working with as many as possible of you again in the near future.

Kind regards

Ian McKay

Visit the brand new version at http://www.wamda.com

Gantthead: “Five Things My Mentors Taught Me” by Andrew Makar: fail fast, take care of your team, opportunities “pop”, know your craft (the 10,000 hours rule) and money can’t hug you.

Inc: “Are Entrepreneurs Born or Taught?” by Courtney Rubin: the “born or made” debate applied to entrepreneurship.

Gaebler: “The Importance of Having a Mentor” by Chukwuma Asala: nice and succinct article as part of a series on mentoring. “A mentor will tell you the truth because their primary objective is to make sure you are successful. Your friends will always tell you what you want to hear, but a mentor will tell you what you need to hear. This is not always easy to do because of ego issues especially in men. But a good mentor understands that a day of tension is better than a lifetime of regret and as such will always tell you the truth rather than let you believe you have arrived at your destination.”

And finally, a story from Egypt:

Mashable: “How Western Entrepreneurs are Supporting Egypt’s Growing Startup Scene” by Zachary Sniderman: reporting on the recent NextGen IT Bootcamp.

Tony Bury, Mowgli’s Founder and Lynn Brucker, MENA Director, attended a lunch hosted by the British Ambassador Peter Millett. The lunch was to celebrate a partnership under the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office Arab Partnership initiative. As a result, we can now look forward to running three more mentor matching programmes in the next year, and we will be looking for funders and partners to help us run more.

Ian McKay, CEO, attended the launch of the mentorsme.co.uk portal at the House of Commons. See previous post for more information, and look up Mowgli at http://www.mentorsme.co.uk/organisations/the-mowgli-foundation

My hope is that these two initiatives will give Mowgli a solid base for our progress in Jordan and in the UK.

1. You are never too young. Andre is only 33 years old. Last season, the side he manages, Porto, played 30 league games and won 27 of them. Porto won the Portuguese league, cup and supercup, and also the Europa League.

2. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. Andre was only a teenager when, as a young Porto supporter, he wrote to the then manager, Sir Bobby Robson, to explain how his team could perform better.

3. Ride your luck. Andre’s first lucky break was that Sir Bobby not only read Andre’s letter, but responded. Andre then so impressed Sir Bobby with the quality of his analysis of football that he took him under his wing, gave him a job with the youth team and opportunities to get his coaching qualifications. The next lucky break was to be part of Jose Mourinho’s fantastically successful team at Porto, Chelsea and Inter Milan.

4. Seek out and honour your mentors. Andre has been blessed with two greats of football management as his mentors – Sir Bobby Robson and Jose Mourinho. What an opportunity to learn and develop.

5. Don’t be afraid to fail. Andre’s first managerial role was, aged 22, with the British Virgin Isles. The two games he took charge of ended in 5-1 and 9-0 defeats. This did not make Andre a bad manager. In his next managerial role (supported and encouraged by his mentor) Andre took Academica from the bottom of their division to safety, and, remarkably, to the cup semi-finals.

6. Back yourself and be bold. Apparently there is a buy-out clause in Andre’s contract with Porto. The not insignificant sum of GBP 13.2 million releases him from the contract. It has been reported that Andre has paid this himself. Now that is bold!

7. Learn, learn, and learn some more. The first years of Andre’s professional life were full of deliberate learning: gaining his qualification, and a variety of experiences. It is equally clear that Andre has continued to grow and develop through everything that he has experienced, and the people he has worked with.

8. Success is a team game. Apparently, the Porto players love their manager, and I am sure that many of them will follow him to Chelsea. True success means good things for others, not just for you.

And Andre is only 33. This is just the start. I’m not a Chelsea fan myself, but it looks like they might just be on to a good thing.

The BBC feature also describes the particular problems of being an entrepreneur in Russia.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13546177

Observer: Britain’s new entrepreneurs: young guns go for it

My belief is that the government’s approach to UK’s recovery from deficit is dependent on two assumptions:

1. That the Third Sector (charities, social enterprises, volunteering, what now seems to be called “civil society”) will find a way to continue to deliver services despite the cuts, and

2. That SME’s will create the jobs to replace those that are being lost elsewhere.

The latter means supporting entrepreneurs to be successful. Mowgli does this through mentoring – which we believe is a critical success factor – but entrepreneurs also need money, training, access to networks, facilities, and a favourable legislative environment. I look forward to seeing how this evolves in practice.

Tony was part of a session entitled “Cautionary tales of entrepreneurship”. It was his job to summarise, as well as share his own observations. One of the other speakers was Jack Romero. You can read Jack’s story on his website, but suffice to say he founded an airline from scratch, British Mediterranean Airways. An astonishing story of determination and drive in the face of huge odds. On his website, Jack says this: “Remember the three main tenets for success: Realistic Vision, Belief in oneself and in what you are selling or aiming to establish, and Unshakable Determination to succeed whatever life throws at you. And of course a bit of luck wouldn’t go amiss!”

It left me thinking, how much does luck (or serendipity, or fate, or positive energy, depending on how you look at) play in making the difference between success and failure? And how many failed businesses would have ultimately succeeded if only their founders had been more thick skinned, or indeed thick headed, giving more opportunity for the luck to kick in?

If you want to find out more about what happened at the first ever UK Business Book Festival, then you can visit their website which is full of interesting and fun information: http://www.ukbusinessbookfestival.co.uk/

Anyway, Les has produced his first blog for the Huffington Post, “No Role Models, No Tools — Our Best Hope for Recovery?”. In it he hypothesises that the coming period could be a great opportunity for entrepreneurs: “We’re about to experience either a period of turgid, lackluster business growth, or an entirely new, exciting phase of corporate innovation and expansion that will be unrecognizable from anything that has preceded it. My money is on the latter.” And the reason for this assertion? “Why do I believe that despite deep global malaise and economic uncertainty, we will in the next decade see a new era of explosive, creative entrepreneurship? For this simple reason: the next generation of business leaders have no other option.” Read the article for more.

Amongst the comments there is one from Daniel James Scott: “You make a great point, Les. When I started my first firm, I consulted with SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives). Not taking anything away from the counselors’ large-company executive experience, education or willingness to assist; but they simply did not have the framework or perspective to help the founder of an agile startup. This relates closely to your argument. I would guess the mentors for these executives could best be today’s entrepreneurs. However, they will go almost completely ignored in a major corporation’s C-suite. Something will have to change, and maybe the recession will help expedite that needed change.”

I know that the American mentoring organisation SCORE do a great job, but Daniel puts a case for tomorrow’s entrepreneurs being best mentored by today’s entrepreneurs. What do you think? And what do Mowgli need to do to get these people to see the value of volunteering to be mentors?

As I come to the end of my third week – and just before I leave for a pre-planned holiday – I thought it would be good to make contact and share my early impressions. As we look to the future together, I would really appreciate hearing your thoughts, and your responses to my thoughts expressed below.

Firstly, I want to be clear that I am committed to building on the foundations that have already been laid. As well as the commitment of our Founder and the Board, we have a good staff and volunteer team, a programme that delivers value, and strong working partners and helpful relationships in a number of MENA countries and in the UK. And as a result we already have a group of mentors and entrepreneurs who are working together to, I hope, mutual benefit. We have learnt a lot in Mowgli’s start up phase.

We now need to move Mowgli from start up to consolidation and growth, and I’m looking forward to working with you to define and deliver the future. It is early days for me, but at this stage I see the priorities as being:

• Clarifying the proposition. A deeper understand of what we are trying to change, and how we define, assess and measure success. We know what we do – join up entrepreneurs with mentors. But why do we do it? What outcomes – in particular, what social outcomes – are we hoping to enable?
• Local presence. Working through the legal and practical implications of establishing sustainable local partnerships, with Jordan likely to the first “official” Mowgli Chapter (as we are calling them).
• Effective programme. Continuing to develop and deliver the mentor/mentee programme, with the next event in Syria in October, and the first UK event in Manchester in November. We need to learn from what we have done so that we are as effective as possible in delivering the outcomes we aspire to.
• Developing waiting lists. Wouldn’t it be great if we had waiting lists of potential mentors and entrepreneurs, all of whom were qualified and ready to go, and waiting for us to set up events where we could join them together?
• Building sustainability. Balancing the development of commercial and philanthropic funding to create a sustainable business model for Mowgli as a whole, and ensuring that Mowgli as an organisation is itself healthy and sustainable.

Do you agree with my list of priorities?  If not, what would you change or add? I’d really appreciate your input.

Thank you for the part you play in making mentoring available in places where it can really make a difference.

With my regards,

Ian