Every day's a school day…even for the most experienced business leaders

It was reported at the start of the year that less than a third (27%) of the 30,000 small business leaders expected to attend the government-backed Help to Grow: Management programme, will actually do so.

The scheme is designed to make businesses more resilient, providing business leaders with additional skills, mentoring, and a structured approach to planning and managing expansion – all critical areas for scale-up success. So, it’s disappointing that attendance has been lower than expected, especially given how valuable mentorship and mentoring can be.

This is truer now than it’s ever been. Entrepreneurs who founded businesses in the UK between 2008-2022 did so in an incredibly low interest rate environment. Borrowing was “cheap”, investing vs saving was incentivised as interest on savings was minimal, and thanks to government intervention during COVID, the country avoided a recession. Then, the emergency budget in October 2022 sent interest rates soaring, and many entrepreneurs have had to re-learn a lot of what they thought they knew about managing their business finances after a 13-year bull run.

OakNorth 's 2023 research report in partnership with the Social Market Foundation , titled Full Scale, highlighted the importance of mentoring for business leaders. The report revealed that a lack of focus on the skills crisis is limiting the growth of UK scale-ups, and included a list of tangible recommendations for Government. These included increased funding for Be the Business to enhance its capacity to provide training and mentoring for leaders of growing companies.

In 2021, we launched our Mentorpreneurship Programme with LSE Generate to support the development of socially minded businesses and inspire entrepreneurial thinking by focusing on the fundamental role of mentorship. The programme also empowers young entrepreneurs to connect, network, and build mentoring relationships. It is the first university run initiative of its kind to engage past, current, and future student entrepreneurs in a ‘life-cycle’ of mentoring and has so far supported over 5,000 people in their entrepreneurial journeys.

As I have said previously, in my experience one of the key components to successfully navigating the entrepreneurial journey is to continuously seek out mentorship from the right individuals. This is all the more important now considering the numerous challenges entrepreneurs and businesses will be facing in the months and years ahead.