Mentor Best Practices

Work with Event Organizer

• Ask as many questions as you feel necessary to understand all aspects of the project
• Invite the organizer to the classroom to provide additional guidance
• Follow up every couple of weeks to report progress
• Help entrepreneurs understand the organizer can provide real-world business resources
• Help promote the competition to entrepreneurs that might be struggling
• Organize a field trip into the community, such as an empty building tour or visit to a local maker space
• Request resources and guest speakers, schedule time for them to come and present to entrepreneurs about resources available
• Ask local entrepreneurs, bankers, etc. to volunteer as mentors, come in and hear practice presentations, or review draft executive summaries

Getting Started

After the competition organizer has approached you to become part of this program, you may be wondering what the best next steps are. Here is a list for you to get started: 

• Obtain event information from your event host. If they have not already decided this information, then you may work with them to help decide. Likely a host will seek input when deciding on this anyway, to ensure that other extracurricular activities do not interfere with the date and time chosen.
• Decide how to implement this. This includes what lessons you will teach on competition components (executive summary, 4-minute presentation, etc.), how often, and on what specific days. 
• Help entrepreneurs access outside resources such as local business owners, etc.
• Connecting students with mentors gives them inspiration, extra guidance, and an idea of how entrepreneurship impacts the real world.
• Look through the ideas and best practices in this document for inspiration about how to get optimum participation in this competition.
• Look over entrepreneurs’ entries and provide coaching and guidance leading up to the competition.
• Help entrepreneurs register for the event when the time comes.