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.

On this website (Dutch) you can find some guidelines on how to find the right coach/mentor. The Chamber of Commerce has also prepared a list with organisations that can support your business here.

Here are an extra few ideas on a local level in the North of the Netherlands, which are not included in the list of the Chamber of Commerce above.

• Entrepreneur Mentoring Service (EMS) is a mentoring service for entrepreneurs with growth ambition in Friesland (the Netherlands), by top entrepreneurs.
• Inqubator Leeuwarden is a regional example of an incubator which supports starting entrepreneurs with growth ambition. Membership of Inqubator provides access to a large and broad network, master classes, peer support, etc.
• Centre for Entrepreneurship is an initiative of the regional University of Applied Sciences, set up for all students that are interesting in entrepreneurship (in the broadest sense of the word).