BUSINESS MENTORS: THE MISSING LINK IN THE

ENTREPRENEURSHIP ECOSYSTEM

4 MARCH 2024

Author: Sebenzile Dlamini – Founder and Executive Director, WITAD

The small business success rate depends on numerous factors such as the degree of
competition in and size of markets, access to finance for growth, business savviness, etc.
Women in Trade and Development (WITAD) has been facilitating the development of
business savviness among women in business in business in rural areas since 2022.

During this process, we discover that most entrepreneurial women have the time, energy, and
respect to participate in business training programs. What they still lack is access to regular
mentorship from business veterans who are committed to hand-holding them until they make
significant improvements to their business models and successfully transition from informal
to formal businesses. Currently, WITAD has only one mentor who has experience in starting
and growing a formal business. Hence, there is an urgent need to create a pool of business
mentors who can speed up the transformation of the small rural-based women and youth-
owned businesses.

Other business support organisations (BSOs) in Eswatini also lack mentors. They have
trainers or advisors/consultants who primarily deliver generic course modules to small
business owners in different industries. Trainers and advisors play a critical role in supporting
the initial business planning process, raising awareness of the common mistakes of new
business owners, and shedding light on risk mitigation.

What is a business mentor?

A business mentor is a seasoned entrepreneur who builds a one-on-one relationship with an

upcoming entrepreneur (mentee) to facilitate success. Typically, a mentor is concerned with
community building by nurturing young talent. With experience in scaling a business or
successfully using growth marketing within their business, the mentor can boost a mentee's
ability to make changes that increase the number of customers and the company's profits.

She or he offers the mentorship service for free or for a small fee. Currently, mentors largely
operate informally within their networks and rarely through BSOs where there is a huge gap
between the demand and the number of available mentors.

A mentor provides a mentee with customised industry information and advice focusing on
strategy to increase the new business’ lifespan and tap into new opportunities. The mentor is
not afraid to share his/her challenges and successes with the mentee. With such support,
mentees gain the courage to quickly drop non-profitable business ideas and embark on
innovation as well as aggressive marketing.

For a mentor-mentee relationship to work, the two people must have shared values, a
personal connection, and mutual respect. A mentee needs to be accountable to the mentee by
making time, showing interest in the advice or information, regularly reporting on outcomes
of implemented decisions, and/or seeking the mentor’s perspective on new ideas. A mentee
needs to possess or develop conflict resolution skills to proactively identify differences and
offer alternatives to what might not be in her best interest without simply walking away or
resenting a mentor. Likewise, the mentor needs to have good communication skills (tone,
body language, writing), avoid conflict of interest, and respect the mentee enough to give her
autonomy in decision-making. She or needs to avoid competing with the mentee and/or
stealing her business model and customers to earn trust.

Creating A Mentors Network

Mentors incur costs in providing their services. The cost is higher when the target women
entrepreneurs are in some of the remote parts of Eswatini. This together with the low access
to the internet faced by the women limits the communication channels to face-to-face
meetings. Therefore, mentees have to travel to the cities from time to time to meet with the
business veterans. They need to be trained in digital skills and supported to travel to
community-based business facilities that have computers so that they can meet online with
their mentors and discuss business documents. Occasionally, the mentors need to travel to
rural areas to assess the business operations and demonstrate their commitment to the
mentee's growth. Some rural areas have one or two women who run formal businesses and
these have the potential to be relatable mentors to the younger ones. They will need to be
trained in business mentorship when they volunteer to serve in this way.

Contacts
sebenzile@witad.org.sz
www.witad.org.sz