How Being a Mentee Leads to Growth

John Donne’s famous line of poetry “No man is an island,” has come to symbolize our human need to connect with others and be part of a community. Many business leaders, including myself, would also say, “No CEO is an island.” Having a solid support team can mean future success. Through my successes and failures, I’ve seen one constant business practice that ensures I’m not an island: mentoring. This week, I want to share some of the top reasons why I found value in having a mentor. 

Most of the time, someone has gone down a similar path before you.

Since day one of Applied Development, mentorship has played an integral role in our growth. Even though I worked for over a decade in government contracting, I knew very early on that owning a contracting firm would present new challenges. I found a mentor in Marcus Board of Premier Management Corporation (Premier). He grew his government contracting firm to $40M in revenue per year in a short period of time. 

I shadowed him at his corporate headquarters, where he gave me access to his staff and a behind-the-scenes look at his operations. I couldn’t imagine a better way to learn about the type of business I wanted to create. I learned from his senior staff members how they ran their finance, human resources, and IT departments-- office management details visionary entrepreneurs sometimes forget about. 

Corporate mentoring helps your business avoid mistakes. 

We also learned practical lessons about the complex government contracting process from Premier. When I first met Marcus, we had just applied for the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) Business Development Program. The program would be ideal for Applied Development because it, “helps thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs to gain a foothold in government contracting.”  However, businesses can only participate in the program for a limited amount of time.

It turned out that the timing of entering this program was more important than we realized. Our mentor saw that we were not quite ready for the program, and advised us to pull our application. In hindsight, I know that we would have wasted two years in the program had we continued our application. Marcus was right: we weren’t ready. When we finally did apply for the program, we won a contract within the first three months. 

Mentoring programs offer tangible benefits. 

In addition to informal mentoring relationships, many organizations and government agencies offer formal mentoring programs. Through the SBA All-Small Mentor Protégé Program (ASMPP), we have a formal mentoring relationship with Thomas & Herbert Consulting. Rodney Thomas and Deana Herbert have over twenty years of experience in government contracting and were pioneers in joint ventures. They provide us with valuable insights into this market, advice on strategy and planning, and tools and techniques in managing daily operations Through the program, we also co-founded P3 Innovation LLC, a joint venture (JV) with Thomas & Herbert Consulting, which has been formally approved by SBA. Through our joint venture, we provide information technology support to government customers. Being in a joint venture with our mentor also allows us to see their best practices and lessons learned put into action through the daily operations of the joint venture. Because of this, the daily operations of the JV have informed some areas of operations for Applied Development. The lessons learned are invaluable.

Being a mentee provides opportunities for personal and professional growth. Having a mentor can mean the difference between success and failure. In fact, John Hann author of Why Entrepreneurs Don’t Scale writes, “Those [entrepreneurs] who scale do so with outside help—say, the feedback of an involved board member, a coach, a mentor, or a facilitator.” Working in isolation and single-mindedness can prevent a company’s growth. 

In my next LinkedIn article, I’ll focus on how I’ve taken these lessons and become a mentor.