By Suzi Dafnis, HerBusiness 
When I first started my business, I was 26-years-old and didn’t have a lot of business experience. I was lucky enough to have a one-on-one, face-to-face business mentor. At HerBusiness, we have taken the traditional business mentor model and brought it into the 21st century. We offer a six-month mentoring program, MentorNet. Our program has won awards due to the way we use technology to facilitate collaboration. We have one mentor who could be situated anywhere in Australia (or anywhere in the world) and a mentoree who can similarly be in a small country town in Australia in a rural area or in a big city. Each mentor mentors a small pod of mentorees.
The program delivers not only mentoring …but training in key business areas — and we use online collaborative tools in order to do that. Over six months, participants learn how to put together a business plan that includes finances, marketing, HR and all the core elements of a solid business plan. Further, we have an online, closed-door community that’s hosted in the cloud, where they go to read case studies, answer questions and post on their own blog about their findings. Every two weeks, we conduct a web-based seminar using GoToWebinar by Citrix — we have an expert presenter who delivers information and interacts with the other people on the call. For example, when we enter the marketing module of the MentorNet program, the expert presenter asks participants to share their key marketing strategies.
Information exchanged in real-time
The Citrix GoToWebinar tool allows users to exchange information in real-time, link to their business websites and even share desktops. The chat function lets other participants give their impression of websites and other marketing materials. In this collaborative, interactive environment, participants can tell each other, “I’m lost when I arrive at your home page” or “The wording in this section is really complex and hard to understand.” The ability to get the input of other successful and aspiring businesswomen has been very helpful and made our MentorNet program a success. The 2012 MentorNet program begins on 12 June. Learn more about the program. Registration is now open.
