How mentoring can help Yorkshire recover from the pandemic - Sophie Conboy

No-one is experienced in having to adapt to a world that’s been taken over by a global pandemic, especially not business owners who are having to juggle staff, management and home life.
Sophie ConboySophie Conboy
Sophie Conboy

Our work-life balance has been significantly changed with no prior warning. During this period, the challenges we face need additional support, and so hearing a mentor’s experience or sharing a fresh pair of eyes on your business from a mentor can shine a new light on to different situations.

The mutual opportunity to reflect and improve is one we often take for granted, claiming we don’t have the time.

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A mentorship provides this dedicated time and can often push you outside of your comfort zone and bring things to your attention you may have missed.

Connect Yorkshire’s 300 members are crying out for help in the pandemic. And top quality help is what they are getting from over 100 of Yorkshire’s most successful entrepreneurs; The Entrepreneurs in Residence. We’ve seen the demand for mentoring double since June 2020.

The mentors give their time free of charge to help the members grow and create jobs and wealth in Yorkshire. So it is successful entrepreneurs (who have been there and done it – most having gone through the 2008 recession) helping smaller Yorkshire businesses grow and deal with any challenges they may face.

The mentoring sessions mean our business owners can approach someone in the same industry, or a different industry, but someone that is removed from the day-to-day running of their business.

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This opens a gateway to confidential sharing on their professional and personal goals.

It allows a safe place to exchange and reflect experiences. It’s a lonely place being a business owner, more than ever now, the power of being able to talk to someone confidentially is unbelievable, increasing confidence and ultimately increasing your top line.

Reflecting on yourself, leadership skills etc can often be a hard thing to do, we like to push people out of their comfort zones and give an honest reflection on how they can improve and ultimately grow their business.

We’ve seen a huge increase in our mentoring programme across Yorkshire since the pandemic started, with businesses needing support for different challenges they are facing at the minute. Having a pool of people available and able to run these sessions online has been invaluable for us and our members.

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We are connecting more and more people and have been overwhelmed with the support our network is showing each other. After all, we started Connect Yorkshire to connect people and now, more than ever, we can see the importance of doing so.

Entrepreneur in Residence Martin Port, founder of Big Change, who is a Connect Yorkshire mentor, said: “Entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of the economy they create employment and take risks. It’s a successful entrepreneur’s duty to support business owners that are starting out or part way through their journey.

“Connect Yorkshire brings together incredibly highly successful people that provide unpaid advice to the next generation of superstars and is now more important than ever.”

No-one knows what lies ahead. I’m a huge believer in hope, without optimism and hope for the future, individuals won’t have the energy to take imaginative risks, jump at opportunities and face the future courageously.

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The power of mentoring during this pandemic has never been more important and it’s lovely to see the friendly Yorkshire spirit is still going strong.

By Sophie Conboy - Chief Executive, Connect Yorkshire

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