Interested in the WIC Mentoring Program? Spring session starts soon

We created a new Women in Consulting member benefit late in 2009, the WIC Mentoring Program. Our successful six-week pilot run ended in mid-October.

The pilot included seven mentees who agreed to help us test the new program. These were WIC members who were interested in the program, but also ready to invest some time (and do some homework!) in order to apply the information we shared with them to help improve various aspects of their businesses.

Desiree Lehrbaum (Lumen Consulting) and I (J. G. Richards Consulting) worked together as a team to mentor the pilot group. We’ll also lead the spring session, which runs from March 24-April 28.

Desiree’s mentoring focus is on marketing and business development of mentees’ businesses. I lead the vision-setting, action planning and “optimizing your business operations” parts of the program.

Once again, the spring session will use a webinar format once a week for an hour, supplemented by a 30 minute 1:1 mentoring call between each mentee and each mentor in the final weeks of the program. We hope to hold our kickoff session as a group, in person.

So how did the pilot go?

I’ll let the Fall, 2009 mentees speak for themselves. Here’s some of their feedback, provided on the anonymous feedback survey we sent them soon after the pilot was over:

“The content was awesome! I can’t imagine it being better.” (This came from a participant during our follow-up call a month after the session ended).

“Not only did I learn specific skills, but I felt more focused on my business and more motivated to actually get past hurdles and get things done.

“A very practical way of approaching the steps of marketing for my business, and identifying and confronting issues holding me back.”

“The program was extremely well thought out, structured into a business development focus with actionable tips and tools to take my thinking to the next level.”

There are more participant quotes I could share, but I think that gives you enough information to know if this is a program that sounds right for you, too.

If you’re interested in the Spring, 2010 WIC Mentoring Program, send me an e-mail at jan@jgichardsresults.com to let me know. We’re finalizing the Spring 2010 Mentoring group soon.