When it comes to business mentorship, it goes without saying that you want guidance from someone who understands what you do, has seen, faced and overcome the same challenges you are or will and can give you support that moves beyond generic help and advice and is specific to your wants and needs.
And when you work in trades or technical industries, the guidance from the right people takes on even more importance.
Let’s take a look at the value this type of mentorship can offer.
Technical Credibility
When it comes to mentorship, you need to be able to trust the person you’re receiving help and support from. You need to know that the advice they give you is built on real-world experience. And in trades, this bar is set high. If someone hasn’t managed a team of engineers, managed subcontractors or dealt with the logistics of getting the right parts to the right job at the right time, they’ll struggle to help you out in those areas.
Technical credibility isn’t about having all the answers; it’s about understanding the constraints within which you operate and being able to help find a solution and give you the answer to the right questions. This is something that working with a business coach with a background in retail or professionals can’t give to electricians or gas engineers.
Trade Specific Resources
One of the biggest benefits of working with those in the same sector as you is the training they can deliver to you and help you curate your own business. The more specific the resources you can access, the better your training will be for you and your team. This is when platforms like TrainAR Academy come into the picture. Resources like this bring together experts across finance, compliance hiring, marketing and operations. They all have the relevant direct trade experience, meaning you can get the right advice rather than sifting through generic help to figure out what will be useful for you.
Because everyone knows that training isn’t one-size-fits-all, and training with each company shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all. It should meet each person wherever they are in their training and career, as well as benefiting the company too.
Regulatory Complexity
Trades businesses operate under a layer of regulatory obligation that many other small businesses don’t. Failure to understand how each impacts you can lead to trouble down the line.
When you work with experienced mentors in the same trades as you operate in, you can benefit from a deeper understanding of not only the regulations you will need to comply with — Gase Safe, RIDDOR, NICEIC, Part P, CIS, COSHH and the Building Safety Act — you’ll know more about the consequences of getting it wrong too.
The rules here change all the time, and you need to fully understand them in each revision and update, and someone with direct experience here knows not just the rules but how they apply to you as you work each day. It’s about more than you need to comply with XYZ, and the more that you implement this aspect of the regulation here, or in this way, this part of Part P impacts this operation and so on. Without this experience, you’ll know what you need to comply with, but not really how it will impact how you work each day.
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