A good business mentor can help you grow faster, avoid expensive mistakes, and stay motivated when you are running a business on your own. For women founders in the UK, mentoring is particularly valuable. ONS Labour Market Statistics, 2024, show that women account for around one-third of the UK’s self-employed workforce, yet the 2024 update of the Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship found that women-led businesses contribute around £85 billion in gross value added and that equalising startup rates between women and men could add £250 billion more. A business mentor can help close that gap by giving you practical advice, introductions, and perspective that is hard to find elsewhere.

If you are looking to start or grow your own business, it is only a matter of time before someone suggests that you get a business mentor. When the relationship works, it can be a great boost to you and the business. Good mentoring relationships help to increase motivation and confidence, broaden horizons, aspirations and understanding, and often lead to a better-performing business with increased sales. For women founders, a mentor can also expand your network and provide role models at a time when women remain under-represented among UK business owners.

What to look for in a mentor

The most effective mentors ask questions, share experience without taking over, and leave you in control of decisions. Professional bodies also expect mentors to maintain confidentiality, declare conflicts of interest and review progress regularly.

A good mentor will

• Listen carefully before offering advice
• Guide and suggest options, rather than direct
• Empower, showing you how to do things for yourself
• Offer expertise, information and suggest ways of finding out
• Support and encourage
• Give realistic advice when necessary
• Listen to and explore your issues
• Be open and accepting
• Use their own experience in a positive way

They will not

• Prejudge the viability of your ideas or make assumptions
• Counsel you through deep-seated emotional problems
• Tell you what to do
• Do things for you
• Claim to be an expert in everything
• Get too emotionally involved
• Create false expectations
• Have a narrow and judgemental attitude
• Involve you in their own problems

This checklist reflects the behaviours identified by UK mentoring organisations such as the Association of Business Mentors and the country’s network of volunteer mentor programmes. Have a ‘get to know you’ trial session for both parties and use the checklist above to review how it went.

Where to find a business mentor in the UK

Start with your local Growth Hub. These are funded by central government and local partners and offer free or subsidised mentoring for small businesses. With around 5.5 million small businesses in the UK at the start of 2024, according to the Federation of Small Businesses, the demand for practical support is high. Many Growth Hubs are being reorganised into local growth bodies under the current government’s industrial strategy, but the front-door service for business support remains.

National programmes and membership bodies can also match you with an experienced mentor:

• Be the Business runs mentoring and peer networks for SMEs across the UK, including programmes specifically designed for women founders.
• The Association of Business Mentors maintains a directory of professional mentors and sets standards for the profession.
• The Prince’s Trust Enterprise Programme offers mentoring for young people aged 18 to 30 starting a business.
• The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and British Chambers of Commerce often have local mentoring networks and events.
• Women in Business Networks and sector-specific groups can be a good source of informal mentoring and introductions.

If your need for a mentor coincides with a need for start-up funding, the government-backed Start Up Loans scheme combines finance with free mentoring for successful applicants. Delivered by the British Business Bank, the scheme had lent more than £1 billion to over 100,000 businesses by 2024, with around 40% of loans going to women. You can read more in our Start Up Loans Female Founders guide.

Even better, take the direct approach and ask someone you have met or know of who you think you could learn from. People are usually flattered and love to be asked and to help. Sara Murray, founder of personal safety business Buddi, met her mentor, financial journalist John Kay, when she sat next to him on a flight. She still turns to him when she has a big issue to grapple with: “Explaining a problem to him allows me to think about the solution,” she says.

Mentoring is not the same as business coaching, which is a more structured and measured process, using powerful questions and tools. Coaching is usually something you pay for, while mentoring is usually provided by someone more senior or experienced as a learning process for both of you.

Peer mentoring for women founders

For women founders, mentoring can also work well as a peer group process. This is often called a mastermind group. The idea is that you get together a group of three to five peers, meet regularly either in person or via video call, share challenges and use the group experience to find better ways forward.

The key to a successful peer mentoring group is to find others at a similar stage with a similar level of drive and commitment. Look for people with a positive problem-solving outlook. Trust and confidentiality are important and it is worth getting members to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Make a schedule for regular meetings and stick to it. Everyone should have an equal amount of time to share their updates and get feedback and insights from the other group members.

How to make mentoring work

So you have found and tested out a mentor, or got together a peer mentoring group. After that, you get out what you put in. Here is how to make it work:

• Set clear goals for what you want to achieve during the mentoring term and update and review them with your mentor.
• Agree a time frame. You can always extend it, but time limitation helps to focus the mind.
• Take your commitment seriously. It is a commitment to yourself and your business as much as it is to your mentor or peers.
• Keep the relationship positive and productive. If it does not feel right then bow out quickly.
• Prioritise meetings and give due notice if you are not able to make it for a good reason.
• Follow up and follow through with action items. You do not need to follow advice blindly, but do follow through when you have said you will.

Finally, show appreciation and acknowledge the help you have been given. A business mentor usually gives their time and shares their experience freely. Knowing that they are making a difference is the best reward. Business mentoring can make a huge difference to your success, so let your business mentor know just how valuable they are.

Action steps to find your mentor

1. Write down the three biggest challenges you want help with over the next six months.
2. Contact your local Growth Hub or one of the national programmes listed above to ask about mentoring.
3. Arrange a trial session with a potential mentor and use the checklist above to assess the fit.
4. If a one-to-one mentor is not available, set up a peer mentoring group with three to five founders at a similar stage.
5. Agree goals, meeting frequency, and confidentiality rules at the start of the relationship.

For more context on the environment women founders are operating in, see our Women in Business: Key UK Facts page and our update on Rose Review Female Entrepreneurship: Progress or Promises?.