You have finally decided to start your own business at home. Great! But you don’t really know what to do to succeed. What you need is a coach, a mentor who will teach you the ropes and answer your questions. But how do you find good one?

First, you need to know just what a mentor is. A mentor is someone who coaches you and guides you. Teaches you how to set up and run your business. He or she doesn’t do it for you but gives you direction in how to do it yourself. Your mentor will be there to answer your questions and give you feedback. A good mentor makes a good leader of those he or she helps.

The right mentor will be someone in the same kind of business you are in. If you have joined a particular network marketing company, someone who has been in that same company for a while, is successful and a good leader is the kind of mentor you want. This could be your sponsor but don’t assume that it will be. Your sponsor might only have been in the company a few months longer than you and still learning.

A good mentor will help you know how and where to market. Rather than just tell you to go to forums, etc., He or she will help you find the best forums and give you advice on how and what to post. Your mentor will also give you guidance in every aspect of advertising, letting you know what works and, more important, what doesn’t work. You will learn from your mentor’s experience and it is a good idea to follow his or her advice. This can make the difference between earning an income within a short time and spending more than you make for a long period of time.

You could go it on your own if you chose and find your own way in the business. You could learn from your own trial and error. But that could get very expensive very fast. Without the experience of another to learn from, you could make mistakes that could cost you more the money, too. You could get reported as a spammer, for instance, if you buy leads from a disreputable source. Such leads could have been collected unethically or be so old that the people you contact don’t even remember signing up for anything. You could get scammed trying to buy traffic or spend a lot of money on advertising in the wrong places. These are all things you want to avoid as well as many others.

So a good mentor is the way to go. What is the best way to be in contact with your mentor? Well, a lot will depend on your mentor, of course. Phone and/or instant messenger contact could be set up on a daily or weekly basis, depending on what works best for your and your mentor. These would be pre-arranged times. In between, email would be used to ask questions that come up or notify your mentor you need to talk about something that can’t wait until the next regular phone or instant messenger conference. There should be some flexibility but it is not good to occupy all of your mentor’s time. Neither of you would get much accomplished that way. Too little contact isn’t helpful, either, as your questions will need to be answered, so email is a good way to maintain regular contact along with instant messenger and phone contact.

Once you find the right mentor, you will see a difference in how well you run your business and how confident you feel that you will succeed.

I am so thankful that I found a good mentor, one whose main goal is to help me succeed. I am happy to be learning much from him and following in his footsteps of being a great mentor.

One final note, and perhaps the most important. Your mentor should be focused on YOUR success. Because your success brings their success.

Demand Success! You Deserve It!