Invest Ottawa’s iProfit Small Business Mentoring program connects small business owners with professionals and seasoned mentors who can offer helpful advice, expertise and direction customized to your needs. Learn how to grow your existing business to the next level, while avoiding some of the most common pitfalls that businesses make.
How can mentoring help you and your business?
Avoid the mistakes most commonly made by businesses in their early years.
Learn from others’ mistakes and successes. A mentor’s role is to share with you lessons from their experience so that you can benefit without having to learn from painful trial and error.
Stay focused on what is most important for your growing business. Mentors assist you in identifying what steps will have the greatest positive impact on your business, and help prioritize an action plan. Mentors provide a sounding board. When you’re the sole owner of a business, often there’s no one to turn to for advice or direction. You’re on your own. Everybody needs a good reliable sounding board, a second opinion, and someone who offers positive support.
Expand your knowledge network. Your mentor, being an experienced businessperson, is likely to have an extensive network, and can offer you access to other senior decision-makers. The iProfit Mentoring program is designed for growth stage companies that want to take their business to the next level. As part of this program, business owners are matched with a seasoned mentor who can offer helpful advice, expertise, and direction customized to their needs. The mentorship typically involves 6 sessions over 3 months.
As a small business owner, you may not always have the time to see what is right in front of you – both the good and the bad. As part of the SWOT program, two Invest Ottawa Business Advisors will review your business and identify the strengths in your current business and what opportunities may be out there that you should focus on for growth. They will also identify the weaknesses in your current operation that may be turning customers away, as well as threats that may impact you in the future. This program may also include the use of mystery shoppers for an additional cost. The results of this analysis will be provided to you in a written report.
Sometimes, a business owner just needs to sit down and spend some time with a group of advisors who can offer guidance on a variety of issues. In this program, Invest Ottawa will convene 3 professionals to discuss the issues of the small business owner in one 90 minute meeting. The panel will offer advice and develop a list of ‘action items’ for the business owner, and will include follow-up by the EC Business Advisor in the following weeks.
One of the cornerstones of a successful business is an up-to-date business plan. Business Planning Services are offered as part of the iProfit Small Business Growth Program. Under this program, an Invest Ottawa business advisor will work with the business owner to help guide them in updating their business plan.
