Dream & Do

Why the Dream Team all have mentors outside the business

Dream & DoComment
Tara with one of her favourite designers and virtual mentor Jessica Walsh

Tara with one of her favourite designers and virtual mentor Jessica Walsh

Even Richard Branson has a mentor. So did Steve Jobs. It’s a thing.

Finding a mentor can be so beneficial for you and your business. As Richard Branson shares, “As a young man entering the mysterious and somewhat scary world of business for the first time, I was lucky enough to be taken under the wing of David Beevers, a friend of my parents. David was an accountant and out of sheer kindness (and I suspect some desperate pleading by my mum and dad) he used to spend one evening a week trying to guide me through the basics of bookkeeping – it was hugely helpful and he displayed amazing patience with my repeated requests of, ‘Erm, can you run that one by me just one more time, please.’”

You don’t have to pay $1000s for a business or life coach. Finding a mentor can be as simple as emailing someone who you really admire, who’s doing something that you really want to be doing, and asking for a meeting or coffee date. It doesn’t have to be as scary as it sounds. Sometimes the best business relationships are built through casual meetings. 

At Dream & Do, each of us have individual mentors outside the agency who are specialists in our fields, whether it’s copywriting, photography or design. Tara can't always provide the specialised level of expertise to everyone so it keeps us top of the game.

“No matter how incredibly smart you think you are, or how brilliant, disruptive or plain off -the-wall your new concept might be, every start-up team needs at least one good mentor. Someone, somewhere, has already been through what you are convinced nobody else has ever confronted!” – Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin & Owner of Necker Island