Finding Expert Advice for Your Business

Having a mentor provide you with sage advice based on experience is probably one of the best ways to give your business a boost.  Whether you want to make marketing easier or run your business more efficiently, there is someone out there to help.

Unfortunately, there are so many places to get advice it's hard to know where to turn.  For the personal touch, there are coaches, consultants, mentors, counselors, and professional organizations.  Additionally, with varying degrees of personal interaction, there are conferences, weekend retreats, boot camps, teleseminars, and formal classes.  If you don't mind going it alone, there are books, newsletters, at home study courses, training CDs, and webinars.  Feeling overwhelmed yet?

The challenge is finding something that works for you.  To make the right choice, you must know both yourself and the advisor.

Here are a few suggestions to help you narrow the field.  To know yourself consider

• How much money are you willing to spend?
• How self-motivated are you -- in other words do you need a kick in the pants to put in the hard work?
• How good are you at taking generalities or examples not specific to you and seeing how it could be applied to you?
• Where are you in the learning process?

When looking at a training or advisor option, consider how the option stacks up against your answers to these questions.

Now, let's look at the advisor, delivery options for the information, and length of programs so you can find what will best fit you and your business.

First, consider what sort of advice you're looking for.  General advice over a broad range of topics means you either need to find a jack-of-all-trades sort of person or you need an organization with some depth of available resources.  Sources for information and advice in a specific area are easy to find.  Specialists are everywhere — check your phone book or the Internet.  If you are somewhat experienced in an area but are trying to move your business or an area of running your business to the next level, find a specialist for expert advice. 

Next, what are your options for getting the advice you need?  If your needs are general business information, books are worth considering since you likely will continue having questions and being able to refer back to the source is helpful if you weren't able to implement all the advice right away.  There are also organizations set up to provide general information on a wide range of topics.  The good news is many of them are free and have multiple ways for you to get the information.  Good places to start are the Small Business Administration, www.sba.gov, and the Internal Revenue Service, www.irs.gov, which both have resources relevant to individual professionals as well as larger small businesses.  The SBA also provides training and advisors at locations throughout the country.

If you're needs are specific, consider first what you can afford to spend getting your advice.  Sometimes, just hiring someone for an hour or two is all you need. If you are going to go the consultant route, try to get a referral from someone you know.

If the advice you need is more personal, look for a mentor.  This will get you the most personalized and individual support possible.  The mentor can be a single person you meet with, or you can build your own with books, workshops, teleseminars, and recorded material from an individual or multiple people so that both your business field and personal style needs are met.

The last thing to consider is the length of the program.  Intensive two or three day workshops can be effective if your needs are specific and the workshop is clearly going to be focused as well.  One thing to consider with this option is how you work and if the schedule seems too ambitious.  Unless you work quickly and don't need to ponder things, intensive short duration workshops are probably not the best option for you.  Also, programs that cover too much or promise to deliver a big final product are likely to be unable to meet your expectations.

So, pull out some paper or start a new document on your computer.  Put down what kind of information you're looking for, how much you want to spend, and create a list of ways you can get the advice and guidance you need to take your business to the next level.  Good luck!