Mentors’ Way
E-Booklet
Bank Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC
Mentors’ Way
E-Booklet
The “Mentors’ Way” e-booklet is the result of the experience of Impact Hub Mentors’ Trust and Match-Me-Up supported by ERSTE Bank Serbia and SDC in Serbia. It is intended to highlight the lessons learned and learning generated by all of he actors involved: local and international mentors, sector experts and impact entrepreneurs. Likewise, this tool has the purpose to take the readers through the practice-based journey in which mentors engaged and through the open-source mechanism in the making to support the generation of enhanced mentoring practices. The learning process was not linear, rather it promoted prototyping and pivoting as essential methodologies to strengthen mentoring skills and promote the integrated contribution of mentors, sector experts and entrepreneurs. These tools have been proving very valuable, innovation-provoking and are still to be refined and further structured. Thus, the Mentors’ Way Booklet is not a straight-forward guidebook, but an experiential account with multiple voices (the mentors’, the entrepreneurs’ and the Impact Hub’s) showing the innovation potential of diversity, the generation of opportunities and new mentorship and entrepreneurial models when local and international know-how is intersected. So, you as a reader will not find many numbers in this booklet, but much more storytelling on how mentors and entrepreneurs are inspired, connected and enabled.
Mentors’ Way
ETWORK N L A G L OB A B L E IN NS A T S U S LUTIO SO
I. Strengthening an impact entrepreneurial ecosystem through Mentors’ Trust
Impact Hub Belgrade open innovation approach Part innovation lab, part business incubator, and part community center, Impact Hub Belgrade is offering a collaborative ecosystem across sectors through the flexible use of coworking space, program support, inspiration and diversity. Impact Hub Belgrade is part of the fastest growing global movement of local impact-driven communities that prototype the future of business together in Belgrade and across the 80+ locations of the World. Both locally and globally, Impact Hub entrepreneurial members grow their purpose-driven practices and ventures through collaboration, prototyping, peer exchanges, mentorship and skill-building accelerating their sustainability and positive impact. Impact Hub Belgrade works with mentors and social innovators to strengthen entrepreneurial practices based on interactive learning and doing. Learning is most effective when it addresses real-life questions and challenges that relate to how we live and how we can positively affect our future. So, we start by asking: “What do you want to change?” since this is the very core of entrepreneurial action. To advance practice-based entrepreneurial skills, Impact Hub Belgrade employs interactive approaches that are: - Based on experience and team work - Prototype-driven and iterative - Demonstrating the value of diversity and cross-pollination - Peer2Peer - Tailored to specific needs - Using gamification of education
Impact Hub Belgrade and Mentoring practices Mentorship generates high impact for the development of youth enterprises. Mentors are the key factor for entrepreneurs’ success and as such they need support mechanisms, experiential exchanges and practice transfer. Leveraging on its global network, Impact Hub Belgrade has been facilitating local and trans-national connections, curating the generation and application of entrepreneurial skills and supporting the acceleration of impact entrepreneurship. Both ERSTE and SDC supported Impact Hub Belgrade in strengthening mentoring practices by: creating a pool of local and international mentors, connecting, pairing and empowering them through open-source, peer-exchanges and curated know-how transfer and match-ups. The “Mentors’ Trust” and “Match-Me-Up” have started to provide key support to impact entrepreneurs, mentors and experts and to generate scalable innovations.
Identified Gaps in Mentoring Practices In a context in Serbia of emerging (impact) entrepreneurship, mentorship is unmistakingly the key element to drive the development and growth of both entrepreneurs and their ventures. Since it is still a pioneer stage we are operating in, even (potential and perspective) mentors have not refined their tools. In this budding ecosystem, the definitions and applications of mentorship are disparate ranging from the role of “business buddies” to the one of consulting. Impact Hub Belgrade recognizes the high level of technical expertise of professionals as practicing and potential mentors in Serbia. At the same time, knowledge and know-how transfer lack interaction, open-sourcing, cross-cutting and horizontal exchanges that characterize mentoring. Professionals in Serbia usually employ traditional methods deriving from formal education grounded more on theory than practice, on authoritarian roles of educators. Thus, in general, mentors act more as teachers than facilitators with the effect that mentees expect their problems to be solved through mentorship sessions. Communication between mentors and mentees is also shaped by technology and language gaps between mentors and mentees. To respond to the aforementioned gaps and the challenges faced by mentors, Impact Hub Belgrade designed a methodology and a support mechanism to be tested through practice. The prototype consisted in offering local business-practitioners and experts hands-on mentoring with international mentors and business practitioners from the Impact Hub global network. Departing from basics – building trust relationships as the conditio-sien-qua-non in mentorship – we called the venture “Mentors’ Trust”.
The objective of the Mentors’ Trust To establish a supportive and enabling mechanism for Impact Mentors, strengthening their mentorship approach through mutual learning, peer-to-peer practice exchanges and match-ups
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II. Starting with Impact Hub Mentors
, Mentors Trust sc aling entrepreneurial practic es
The growing community of members at Impact Hub includes finance professionals, philanthropists, impact investors, sector experts, artists, coaches, developers and innovators, business practitioners and young entrepreneurs. They work in different fields, sectors and at varying stages of development. Impact Hub Belgrade started by mapping first the aspirations, needs, gaps and goals of Belgrade-based professionals and extended this activity through its global network in Zurich, Berlin, London, Amsterdam and Oakland. This qualitative and dialogue-based mapping constituted the basis to identify potential, young and experienced mentors with whom our team extended communication to match needs, resources and solutions. Realizing in more detail what our network mentors do, ambitions and challenges has been crucial to develop a value proposition as well as the content of meet-ups and match-me-up.
What inspires them The idea of being part of the growth of emerging leaders; being able to pass on the acquired experience and thus increase their legacy; new ideas and energy from social entrepreneurs; application of new technology; replication of best practices; being leaders in a new economy; success they feel part of; recognition and appreciation; internationality; network leadership; being part of a trend-setting global movement.
What is mentorship for them Lifestyle, a way to give back the support they were granted while starting and developing their businesses; good karma; business opportunity; status; professional incentive; a philanthropic act; a social investment; a curriculum requirement; a CSR practice; a way to be inspired on market trends and business ideas; a hobby; a profession; a leadership practice; skill-share.
What challenges are they faced with Limited time; belated results; lonely endeavor; high responsibility; unreal expectations; dis-continuity; often lack of concrete action; lack of practice-based business planning; too few opportunities to skill-up; lack of guidance from senior mentors; weak support mechanism; long shot between opportunity and concrete steps toward it; inspiration and motivation fade when priority needs are no met; financial sustainability
The Learning point question that guided the flow and development of the project has been: “How to enable mentors to offer their best”; “how to most effectively motivate and engage more mentors into mentorship practices”
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Mentors’ Trust – Value Proposition g in
f or w
ard
FUTURE
into t he
v
M o
The Mentors’ Trust is launching as an international support network, a platform open-sourcing practices and know-how amongst experienced and qualified mentors. Mentors in the Mentors’ Trust are dedicated and passionate about mentorship - a journey that makes all actors involved better people and more successful entrepreneurs. Mentors in the Mentors’ Trust are interested to scale their practices, competitiveness and knowledge both locally and internationally, becoming “global mentors”.
The Mentors’ Trust offers mentors opportunities to: - Be part of a innovative Impact Hub global experience connecting leading mentors
CONNECT
BIGGER CONTRIBUTION
- Grow your competitiveness as a lifestyle mentor through international exchanges - Tailor the experience on self-determined levels of efforts, ambitions and objectives - Create mentorship content to be prototyped locally and globally - Engage in practice-based mutual support at the individual and group level - Develop high potentials to scale business opportunities 7% Istražuje i razvija interesovanja
4% Namerava da pokrene biznis
8% Razvija ideju preduzetništva
29 % Započinje i osniva startup
35 % Aktivnih preduzetnika
17 % Dalji podsticaj aja društvenog utic
TALENT & INNOVATION
ECOSYSTEM
- Contribute to the scaling of leadership and coaching master-classes locally and internationally
Shape the Future - Join the Mentors’ Trust
III. Creating an enabling environment for mentors and young social entrepreneurs Impact Hub Belgrade started with the assumption that practice-based exchanges between mentors from Serbia and from the Impact Hub international network contribute to enhancing mentorship skills. This proved as a powerful inspiration providing increased access to opportunities for both self and professional development for mentors. The initial tools designed to facilitate the exchanges, peer-learning between potential and practicing mentors from Serbia and international IH network consisted in: meet-ups and digital meetings. From September to December 2015, Impact Hub Belgrade team scheduled, organized, facilitated and followed-on 6 meet-ups, 4 internal thematic exchanges and 6 digital meetings connecting diverse and meaningful mentoring experiences. The frequency of these physical and virtual encounters was set taking into consideration the tight schedule of participating professionals and the issues o be addressed. During implementation, smaller groups of experts generated to work directly on specific case-studies of interest to the work-group. These digital exchanges of the work-group took an independent flow from the Mentors’ Trust meeting points.
The highlight meet-up that brought together mentors, sector experts, coaches, young business practitioners, entrepreneurs and innovators was Gary Whitehill key-note speech at Impact Hub Belgrade on October 28th 2015. As a coach, mentor and world-wide motivational speaker, Gary approached impact entrepreneurship as a lifestyle and shared with the audience how coaching and mentorship is about helping entrepreneurs turn failure into positive growth.
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Meet-ups organized at Impact Hub Belgrade: • Gary Whitehill, mentor, coach lifestyle entrepreneur – The power of entrepreneurship.
September 10th 2015 • Zikry Kholil, co-founder of The Incitement: “Empowering diversity – Transforming Communities”. September 29th 2015 • Ivan Cosic founder of wwwVrsac: Zivi Lokalno Radi Globalno. October 15th 2015 • Daniel Nowack, director and business developer @Yunus Social Business: social investment. October 28th 2015 • Bruce Lachney, Theory of Constraints. November 19th 2015 • Alberto Masetti, IH Milan founder and business developer at Impact Hub King’s Cross: “Making an ecosystem for Impact Entrepreneurship” December 9th, 2015
Theme/reflection meetings internal to the Mentors’ Trust These meetings were hosted by inspirational mentors/sector experts to discuss themes of interest • Milos Ribic – tech and impact mobile app startup - prototySeptember 5th • Dusanka Ilic – marketing: faking it until you are making it October 20th • Paul Bell – Communication and new technologies in start-upping , November 27th 2015 • Sonja Dakic – the case of FairBeez November-December 2015
Learning points from meet-ups and digital meetings: • The role and the practice of mentorship through its diverse applications, outcomes and values added created. Through discussions sublimating the experience of more seasoned mentors, it emerged that:
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- Mentorship is a continuous process of personal and professional growth. It engages both the mentor and mentee in a mutual relation based on trust, empowering all those involved. Mentorship - not to be confused with “consulting�- has the objective of enabling entrepreneurs to take sound decisions, grow as individuals and as leaders�
- Different mentoring dimensions, styles and skills according to the levels of development of entrepreneurs/enterprises (incubation, acceleration, scaling). What is the required competence for a practitioner to perform mentoring? How do mentors, coaches and sector experts collaborate? What does each of them do?
Core-Competence skill-set Trainers: the basics of what it means to b in business - Building the core business skills in social innovators and entrepreneurs to lay the basis for the creation of new leaders pioneering models, practices, innovations and businesses building local and global economies. Sector experts: are essential during growth of enterprises and entrepreneurs. At these stages focused and specific expertise and practices are needed to grow the business, innovation in specific directions. Mentors: engage in a continuous practice building relationship. As leadership is a lonely road, trained mentors with entrepreneurial experience provide support to entrepreneurs and business leaders. Mentors enable leading entrepreneurs to keep focus, overcome their own personal limits and take decisions in the best interest of their business and themselves
- There are different types and approaches of mentoring that intertwine with mentor expertise depending on the entrepreneurial development journey and its stages. In the early stages, a lot of the mentoring is about definitions and goal-setting, understanding who an entrepreneur is, and often giving very general guidance. As entrepreneurs become more confident over time in terms of their businesses, the mentoring becomes much more focused. As the venture advances, mentoring relates more to the business itself. At these phases, mentors focus on the venture and instead of mentoring per-se, they employ their sector or domain expertise such as: market share, research, finance, or positioning. Oftentimes, as a business matures, the mentoring reverts to the personal, because the entrepreneur needs to become a leader. Thus, mentors need to possess domain expertise and to be capable of empathy to understand people and businesses in all their complexity. They are most appreciated for hand-on, practical, real-world experience more than for their academic knowledge. Mentors are expected to help young entrepreneurs turn their indispensable experiences of failure into positive growth opportunities. - Reflection on best practices and approaches and need to further enhance mentoring and mentorship skills through case-studies and curriculum development. Need for harmonized work of sector experts, mentors and coaches. On the basis of these practical questions a first-step curriculum of core-competence skillset was developed along with a basic model to trace links between core-competence paradigm, mentorship and sector expertise:
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MENTORSHIP TEAM
STAGE ONE CLIENT NEEDS SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTISE
BEING IN BUSINESS FORWARD PLANNING
FEASIBILITY
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
CONFLICT RESOLUTION
MENTORING AND COACHING
CORE SKILLSETS CREATIVE DECISIONMAKING
BASIC BUSINESS TRAINING
BREAKING EVEN
MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS BUSINESS TRAINING
UNDERSTANDING YOUR MARKET
UNDERSTANDING COST PRICING AND POSITIONIN
TEAM BUILDING
STAGE TWO CLIENT NEEDS
SECTOR SPECIFIC EXPERTISE
SECTORAL MENTORSHIP AND ADVICE
COACHING
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
TEAM BUILDING
CREATIVE DECISION MAKING
- Going beyond with case-studies and match-ups to test a mentorship model engaging professionals (sector experts, mentors etc) from different countries working together on the same case. Testing of a mentorship model including different sector experts; managing a diverse “mentorship team” with elements of coaching and curatorship.
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IV. MATCH-ME-UP
Match.Me.Up!
The Mentors’ Trust realized that the trans-nationality of the mentoring collaboration on impact enterprises from Serbia with high-potential for market expansion in countries where mentors operate is one of the most valuable opportunity to be developed and realized. Mentors were very excited to become at the same time connectors, collaborators, enablers, allies and sector experts contributing together to a same transnational goal. What has been motivating them the most is the making of a “movement”, overcoming boundaries and joining forces to render what is already creating positive value even more impactful. They have been very adamant to be part of the making of success and to take direct action. The learning-by-doing and direct involvement of mentors was then channeled through “Match-me-Up” at the level of: mentor-to-mentor and mentors-to-entrepreneur.
Mentors’ skill-up (connecting the unexpected); curriculum development The practice of mentoring and the learning-by-doing approach embedded in the action further unfolded the interests and needs of all stakeholders involved. One of the primary objectives of the project has been the awareness raising and building of capacities of mentors to enhance their practices and further enable impact entrepreneurs to achieve impact and sustainability. By exchanging their practices and applying their know-how directly on the same case-study (FairBeez), mentors became more aware of their own contribution and of the benefit of integrated and collective action. At the same time, they also appreciated the way in which issues that need further exploration emerged. This requires also enhancing and developing of new skills to respond to changing paradigms and models from mixed investment practices to new marketing techniques. The learning points facilitated and provided by the Impact Hub and most appreciated by the mentors and impact entrepreneurs included: - Moderated connections and meet-ups between diverse mentors, innovators and entrepreneurs in physical and virtual environments created “the unexpected”
What happens when different professionals connect and the unexpected happens - So, when Milos as a mentor met Milos - one of IHB innovators, the two of them entered a relationship that went beyond mentorship. Milos the innovator has since become the main developer of mentor Milos innovative app that is being launched in California for now and that is going to create a healthier food behavior and practice in all users. - And when Fabio-financial expert and coach met Dusan-mentor and investor their collaboration started to become a joint venture for a locally rooted and globally spread platform “Life in Music”. This creates alternatives to the bottle-neck traditional music industry for artists and musicians who become enabled to live their lives in music sustainably
- Further and continuous skills-up is required through curriculum development applied to both entrepreneurs and mentors. The curricula Impact Hub Belgrade develops reflect an applied learning methodology that promotes and facilitates engaging, self-reinforcing, and immediately applicable learning. So real-life experience and challenges are prototyped and enhanced in a safe learning environment, including through simulations, structured discussions, participatory exercises, and peer-learning techniques. The Mentors’ Trust has offered an amazing opportunity to test such techniques and to readjust tactics according to the diversity of individuals and target groups. The first results are emerging and evolving, mentoring practices and new ventures are developing. At the same time, increasing mentors’ experience is still not codiefied and structured, but rather constantly being re-employed in practice. Mentors are asking to develop flexible and up-to-date curricula on the basis of the elaboration of practices, so as to accelerate the development of their skills synchronized with applied practices.
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Matching the work-group with FairBeez – Business Association of women-led ethical and eco-friendly products One of the most relevant examples of the mentors-to-entrepreneur match-up is the work with FairBeez. This has been particularly significant because of the nature of the business organization FairBeez, its objectives and targeted market in Germany that fitted and closely aligned with the work-group of cross-border mentors.
PROFILE – FAIRBEEZ CLUSTER BRAND Fair product entrepreneurs struggle to develop the market in Serbia w/o international validation. At the same ime, individual entrepreneurs alone are not able to sustain the burden of high costs and heavy administration to position their products in segmented and targeted (international) markets.
Why FairBeez: FairBeez is a business association of 4 micro and family owned enterprises. It aims at better positioning and marketing nationally and internationally fair and ethical products. This association increases the visibility of women-led enterprises and their honest, fair products. A cluster brand with a UVP for high-quality products can more effectively optimize expenses, operations and accelerate growth
FairBeez Objectives: 1. Position the brand of brands and individual products it represents in the market in Germany and Serbia 2. Build FairBeez brand awareness in Serbia and abroad 3. Expand market potential of individual businesses and of the FairBeez umbrella brand 4. Increase FairBeez products sales in Germany and in Serbia
First steps of the association: 1. Brand the high-quality hand-made in Serbia integrated product 2. Attendance to international fair in Frankfurt
What does FairBeez need? • Integrated product development; • Identity and image of the integrated product; • Marketing and sale for international markets; • Distribution channels for international markets;
Role of Mentors’ Trust • Assistance on assessment and research on marketing strategy, tactics and channels • Support in establishing a legal entity (company in Germany able to import FairBeez products) • Guidance on Go-To-Market strategy
Role of Impact Hub Belgrade • Establishing a work-group focused on Fairbeez enter in the German market: matching MT experts from Germany, Serbia and Impact Hub Belgrade relevant resources • Organizing and managing meetups both digitally and physically at the Impact Hub • Managing communication, strucuring steps and outcomes of he work-group • Offering technical support on specific fields witth guidance from the MT
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VI. The coordination work of Impact Hub Belgrade – Prototyping innovations
Portfolio management In order to best coordinate the developments of mentoring and trace the journey of both mentors and entrepreneurs/innovators in the process. Impact Hub Belgrade employs the portfolio management tool. In practice, a portfolio manager has been mapping the path and tracking the progress of mentors, experts, FairBeez and other innovators involved. This allows to best record, manage and tailor services as well as assess approaches and tactics as they are applied. Portfolio management is a tool that takes the administration and basic “due diligence” burden off the responsibility of the actors involved in order for them to focus on execution. It proves to be of crucial importance to monitor the process, to intervene when needed. Also, this management tool is the basis that creates the baseline, benchmarks and targets against which achievements and impact can be measured both in qualitative and quantitative terms. Portfolio management proved indispensible during the realization of the project especially given the practice-based stamp of the action.
Cross-pollination: Matching a team of mixed professionals: As Tom Kelley has been demonstrating for the past thirty years at IDEO: “There’s magic in cross-pollination – and in the people who make it happen… The Cross-Pollinator is an essential part of the ecosystem of innovation.” We are living in a time when leadership requires not only the ability to connect dots…but to connect dots that are seemingly unrelated. The leaders who can do this create an advantage and set the stage to allow creativity and innovation to grow and flourish within their organizations. For this to happen, leaders as much as mentors, entrepreneurs, experts and business practitioners have to broaden their range…to essentially become idea magnets. Drawing learning from a wide and diverse range of thinking and thinkers and applying them to their endeavors is cross-pollination.
Cross-pollination is a value, approach and practice Impact Hub Belgrade embedded in Match-Me-Up to enhance the potentials and competence of mentors to perceive new connections, solutions and travel along “new leaps of imagination”. So, matching local and international professionals, different sector experts provided the basis to map and recognize a diverse and wide range of learning, skills and solutions. The joint practices in mentoring in which they have been involved through the Match-Me-Up continue to provide an ongoing flow and well of ideas. This is the “stack” that enables the connection of dots, even when issues seem unrelated. This is how the unexpected has started to take place as in Fabio’s, Milos, Dusan and Milos examples.
Impact enterprises developing their transnational potential through cross-border Mentors’ Trust and IHB curatorship The mach-up of mentors/experts from Belgrade, London, Berlin, Zurich, Oakland and Amsterdam opened the way to the further development of multi-disciplinary and trans-national expert team working on the cross-border market opportunity development of an ethical product business association. Michael from Berlin was the initiator, challenging through a call for action his colleagues of the Mentors’ Trust. Involved in investment-readiness programs, Michael identified as one of the downfalls of acceleration - otherwise effective and necessary – the strong focus on academic strategy development rather than practical work. In his experience, impact enterprises participating to accelerating programs for investment readiness were mainly followed by business consultants without direct entrepreneurial and business experience. This led to the increasing of the gap between he designed business model and the every-day practices. Michael’s intention has been to redress this vacuum and promote honest business practices, models and techniques based on and useful in the every-day. As the pioneer in the idea, Michael became the nexus of a team including also Milica (Belgrade), Nathan (Belgrade) and Chris (Oakland) that was motivated enough to assist Fairbeez in the process of developing is market opportunity in Germany
Impact Hub Belgrade curatorship in the team match-up and in the matching of the expert team with FairBeez also entailed: alignment of expectations on all sides; design of content to be discussed through the guidance of the expert team; organization and coordination of communication between the expert team and Fairbeez; technical support in the development of GTM strategy; follow-on activities for next steps projections and recommendations. The process is still ongoing – even after the end of the project. The team of mentors, sector experts and FairBeez are still working together through the facilitation, moderation and technical support of Impact Hub Belgrade to establish a FairBeez sister company in Germany importing FairBeez products and selling them.
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VII. Recommendations for follow-on – Growing innovations The expected and unexpected innovations started through the Mentors’ Trust and Match-Me-Up have high-impact and generative potentials. To develop them and heir sustainability further, match-up practices can be improved by strengthening Impact Hub Belgrade curatorship and due diligence; enhancing curriculum development; skilling up mentors and building a fair business model to reward mentors, grow ownership and responsibility of entrepreneurs and sustaining curatorship.
Further Curriculum development Impact Hub Belgrade has developed a core-competence skillset curriculum to provide young entrepreneurs with the skills needed to be in business. We have been working closely with the Mentors’ Trust mentors and particularly Paul Bell (senior mentor and coach based in London and Belgrade) to design this tool harmonizing the need to deliver sound planning and practical tools to be tested and further evolved in the practice of entrepreneurship. The process of curriculum development is essential at every entrepreneurial stage and new curricula can be designed from scratch or adapted to fit the specifics of the entrepreneurs and enterprises growth stage. The further design of curriculum packages will benefit the entrepreneurs and the technical, sector experts, trainers, mentors and coaches. The main features of the curricula will be: - Assessment of needs and skills: of direct beneficiaries (young and impact entrepreneurs, innovators and enterprises); of trainers of trainers, mentors and coaches and the capacity, availability, knowledge and competence. - Training in a cascade model: curricula and trainings for master trainers, mentors and coaches that strengthen their facilitation skills, build expertise in specific content, allow them to practice their skills and new knowledge, and help them to offer additional, ongoing support to other mentors and young entrepreneurs.
Continuous mentors skill-up – Mentors’ Academy for Network Leaders As it has been underlined throughout the experience and the journey here delineated, matching, building of relationships, interaction and communication, employment of more or less focused learning methods are key to mentoring practices. Very often, mentoring professionals need to employ holistic approaches because mentorship is not only about transferring skills, but more than that it is about supporting the leadership development of impact entrepreneurs.
As Gary Whitehill put it during the meet-up Impact Hub Belgrade: “the entrepreneur is a person with individual, psychological, environmental and social needs...to be a satisfied and successful entrepreneur he needs to harmonize at best and take care of these dimensions while developing her enterprise”
Mentors are required domain expertise and empathy to understand people and businesses in all their complexity. They are most appreciated for hand-on, practical, real-world experience more than for their academic knowledge. Mentors are expected to help young entrepreneurs turn their indispensable experiences of failure into positive growth opportunities. All this takes place in an environment of fast-pace of innovations and ever-growing competition that call for the revision, re-design and implementation of hybrid financial models for more sustainable growth. Just like entrepreneurs, mentors are called to be super-heroes in their everyday lives.
Thus, like entrepreneurs, mentors also significantly benefit from skill-up and continuous practice-based support. The Mentors’ Trust and Match-me-Up are growing as a support mechanism for professionals engaging in mentoring. Curriculum development that Impact Hub Belgrade started to design based on the needs, potentials, skills, opportunities emerged throughout the Match-Me-Up in the Mentors’ Trust is a basis to be further evolved. Webinars, trainings of trainers, coaching of coaches and mentoring of mentors through more focused match-ups, real-world case-studies and leadership processes are to be professionalized and expanded. The cross-border and trans-national learnings emerged from the Match-Me-Up can thus be replicated, scaled and fast-forwarded to accelerate entrepreneurial ecosystem in Serbia.
Sustainable business model It is a fact that mentorship is a reward in itself. The Mentors’ Trust professionals are passionate about what they do. They engage in mentoring because they know how it was when they themselves started their own ventures and businesses. They are honestly giving back the support they had received back then, to keep the good karma thriving. They share their concern, compassion, interest, love of the business and of entrepreneurial practices and the adrenaline. At the same time, the investment and efforts of mentoring become increasingly demanding and complex. Their life-long learning and engagement need to be rooted in a fair business model in order to reach sustainability.
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Makedonska 21, Belgrade, Serbia +381 11 40 82 550 belgrade@impacthub.net