Do You Deserve a Business Mentor?

November 23, 2007


If you are lucky enough to find a decent business mentor the most important thing you can do is listen.

I don’t know if you’ve ever watched Gordon Ramsey’s Hell’s Kitchen? Basically, he helps and advises restaurant owners who are struggling. But unfortunately, some of these restaurant owners are the most ungrateful b…ards I have ever come across.

Now, imagine if you had a restaurant and it was on it’s last legs. Your regular customers wouldn’t come back, because you’d kept them waiting all night, then gave them food poisoning a la carte. And you were facing a miserable winter season with the prospect of zero customers.

You’d be v grateful if someone who owned some of the best restaurants in the world offered to help you turn it round wouldn’t you?

But some of these people don’t deserve any help at all. A couple of nights ago, we watched Gordon Ramsey attempt to help some guy who’d opened a restaurant in Spain with his parents money.

The restaurant was a complete disaster. His complicated menu resulted in complete chaos - people were waiting for hours for their food; he was serving up lamb which was raw inside (yuk); he was receiving complaints from locals and still charged them full price for their meals.

And the worst thing was, he didn’t listen to a word Gordon was telling him, even though he devised a new menu for him and showed him how to cook properly.

The bread and butter pudding he was serving up was burnt to a cinder, but he wouldn’t have it. Some of his customers liked it, he said. And a couple of his customers liked vomit inducing concoctions such as chocolate prawns, so he was keeping them on the menu too.

Luckily for this guy, Gordon took extreme measures to change his ways, including putting him in a ring with a bull. And the restaurant survived, but it still has a long way to go.

So, if you manage to find a decent business mentor - the first, most important thing you can do is listen. Remember they have already got to where you’re trying to go. And they don’t need to help you. In fact, if you don’t listen, they’ll probably do what Gordon often does and tell you to f… off.

And if you’re struggling to find a business mentor at all, watch this space, as I’ll be sharing more tips on finding a decent business mentor at the weekend.

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Posted by cathlawson | Filed Under Mistakes 

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