Page 97 - Benjamin Franklin\'s The Way to Wealth: A 52 brilliant ideas interpretation - PDFDrive.com
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44 MAKE FRIENDS WITH A MENTOR
Franklin thought the principle of learning from other people’s mistakes
was such a good idea he opted to say it all over again—in Latin. ‘Felix
quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum’, he intoned which, if your Latin is
a little rusty, roughly translates as ‘happy is he who learns caution
from the perils of other people’.
Worst-case scenarios are helpful but there’s a less painful way of learning
from others than drawing them up. Franklin’s point that ‘wise men learn by
others’ harms’ is the thinking behind the whole process of mentoring which
is rapidly gaining popularity as an alternative to traditional consultancy.
DEFINING IDEA…
Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to
make them all yourself.
~ ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
If you’re running an SME then a business mentor provides a number of
roles. They are a sounding board for your ideas and a trusted third party
ready with unbiased opinions about the wisdom of your plans. They also go
a long way to easing the loneliness that goes with shouldering an SME on
your own. After all, who else can you freely turn to? Of course you have a
bank manager, friends and family but, unlike all of them, a mentor really
does want to talk about your business and is happy to spare whatever time
that takes.
But most of all they’ve been there, done that and got the T-shirt. Which
means they bring with them all of the mistakes they themselves made and
the answers to those mistakes, without you having to go through that
painful process yourself. A mentor also brings with them all the networking
contacts they have made during the course of their own entrepreneurial
activities which can prove an invaluable short cut for the SME in a hurry.
Typically a mentor is someone who has ‘made it’, in whatever terms they