Mentoring

While your own great ideas are essential to your business, through mentorship entrepreneurs can have a powerful asset to get you through rough times when your self-confidence may be waning. Good mentorship will show you new perspectives and pathways to success and can help a fledgling entrepreneur think through strategies, crunch numbers, and create a business or marketing plan.

You can try local business and start-up networking groups as well as the leadership of community non-profit organizations to find mentors. Business incubators and accelerators are also great places to frequent if you want to establish connections with entrepreneurs at all levels of experience. Also try Chamber of Commerce meetings, local business roundtables, social media communities, and industry conferences.

Here are a few ideas on a local level

• Some private or volunteer Hubs will guide you in the validation, testing and execution of your business idea, helping you identify and develop all the individual building blocks you need to build a product with a unique selling proposition. You will get the opportunity to connect with mentors, expert networks, business angels and funding institutions.