Should I mentor with a minor stake?

[dotcomdude]

I posted about 18 months ago when I was nearing my 'pensions freedom' age and was wondering whether to keep plodding on or call it a day and travel between our places in the UK and Spain. Well I tried that last year, but still did enough work in between to keep everything going.

Coronavirus has sent most of my clients 'to ground'. I'm sure they'll all resurface, but I'm not really fulfilled by keeping their websites going for them and doing bits of their digital marketing any more.

My main reason for wanting to do something is that I want to keep my hand in, and I just love the technology. What you can do today - online - is so much better than what you could do when I started back at the turn of the century (makes it sound forever ago!).

I now 'work' (potter around) for three hours a day, Monday to Friday. Realistically I'm not going to do any more than that, because I've got used to occupying my afternoons.

So, I've been thinking about what I might do - and what might fit best. There are so many 'things' that can be done well online, that haven't been cracked yet.

The only idea I've had - that I haven't bottomed out yet - is to find someone who's doing something that I am really interested in, and take a small stake to get involved and do whatever I can to help (within the limits I've mentioned).

Alternatively, if I found the right person - that I believed in, but who didn't have an idea - I would happily work with them to find the right idea and give it a go, with them as the head honcho.

In either case, I'd be happy to invest on a small scale, and/or cover some development costs for my stake.

Why would anyone want me on board? There's lots of guru's out there, but that's not me. I've just got lots of practical experience that might help get something off the ground.

Basically I have about 25 years of corporate experience, was on the Strategy & Planning team of the UK's third largest car insurer, oversaw development of an aggregator website for one of the big financial websites, and have started, ran and sold a few internet businesses and associated applications - as well as managing 30,000 products on Amazon and Adwords spend of £30k a month.

I'd be particularly interested in any ideas of where I might find people matching my criteria nowadays:

- someone who's doing something that I am really interested in (I know it's subjective)
- someone who doesn't have an idea but wants to seriously have a go at something online

 

[The Byre]

That sounds like a fribbling offer to the right person! I would almost say it was action-fribbled!

The only problem is, knowing what it would be that gets your interest!

 

[revs]

I'm looking to make a transition from my current job. I have several ideas that have potential if executed well but I have yet to pull the trigger. My background is in Management Accountancy and sports trading(arbitrage) I've worked for a financial comparison website, a manufacturing company, and a car-rental business. At the moment, I'm going back and forth with several ideas, with little progress. Maybe we could work on something together?

 

[dotcomdude]

That sounds like a fribbling offer to the right person! I would almost say it was action-fribbled!

Have to admit that I don't even know whether that's good or bad

 

[The Byre]

To my astonishment, I have just discovered that it is a real word - I cribbed it from 'I'm sorry I'll read that again!' back in 1966 when John Cleese said "Tune in again next week for another action-fribbled episode of Professor Prune and the Electric Time Trousers!"

Ever since then, I have used the word regularly. When people ask me "How are you?" I tell them I am fribbling.

find someone who's doing something that I am really interested in, and take a small stake to get involved and do whatever I can to help

So it's back to the Batmobile - what are you interested in?

 

[dotcomdude]

Ever since then, I have used the word regularly. When people ask me "How are you?" I tell them I am fribbling.

Oh OK, I'm getting a bit nearer to understanding now. I missed the original, as I would have been in nappies and probably wasn't in their target audience

So it's back to the Batmobile - what are you interested in?

I think this is quite difficult to answer. A bit like asking someone "who do you know?"

I like open source technology, that doesn't require £2,000 a month servers. So, whatever project I was going to be involved in would probably be OK running on PHP, MySQL, Ajax etc

In an ideal world, I'd like all business leads to come through my system - so every business in the country would open an account and deposit money with me - and then I'd feed them as many leads as they could handle (a bit like Google did back in the late 90's) and they'd have to top up their account again.

I like cutting out 'middlemen' (probably can't use that word any more) where they don't really add anything.

I see a lot of ideas and think 'meh'. I see a small number of ideas and think 'oh, that's good - wish I'd thought of that'.

I'm working on two ideas at the moment. One is at the point of needing validation, which has been delayed by the coronavirus outbreak. The other doesn't really need validation but is still a punt.

So, to summarise - I'd be very happy to find the right person and provide an idea or two. Or, if someone comes to me with an idea that sparks the opposite of meh then that would be good too.

 

[The Byre]

The one need that stands out for me is for companies of all types to find a link to prospective buyers of their goods or services. That is to say, you have someone in some part of the world who has EXACTLY what I am looking for, but I don't know he or she is there. I can't buy their widget if I don't know that it exists and they can't get heard above all the noise on the Interweb.

Example - I love well-made films that make one think. I am tired of the 'Hollywoodesque' happy-ending, heroes win, three-act, 15 beats movie - with or without space monkeys. For that reason, I like the films made by the Coen brothers, but there is a finite number of those and I've seen them all!

So I asked a well-known cinematographer what he was watching and he told me that in his opinion Andrei Zvyagintsev is the best filmmaker working today. So I bought 'Elena' and then 'Loveless' and 'Leviathan' and wow! Was I bowled over! Esp. 'Loveless' - possibly one of the saddest and most profound movies ever made. (If you watch his stuff, keep that one to the last!)

But how would I know that his stuff is out there? And how do the distributors of those films get heard above the noise surrounding mainstream releases?

In other words - how do we find that still, quiet voice amidst the roar of commercialised narcissistic screaming?

How does a buyer for a toystore find that Polish carpenter making beautiful wooden toys in his workshop at the bottom of his garden? And how does that carpenter find the buyer, without spending thousands on a stand at the Nuremberg Toy-Fair?

 

[Mark T Jones]

Are you really looking at mentoring at consultancy / advisory?

for me, mentoring is all about getting business owners to come up with their own solutions/answers/questions whilst consultancy is about putting things in place with/for them

I don’t doubt that you can add value, though you will struggle to quantify it with shares. Also, it’s important to go into projects that will stimulate and reward you mentally.

your first challenge will be to wade through the avalanche of rubbish ‘opportunities’ you will receive.

 

[dotcomdude]

Are you really looking at mentoring at consultancy / advisory?

I think you're right to question my terminology. It made sense when I wrote the thread, but it hasn't aged well

I've had some interesting text chats with people that have contacted me directly because of this thread and it's helped to flesh it out a bit. I don't think I'm really looking at mentoring, consultancy or advisory.

I'm happy to get involved part-time in a tech-based project, where I'm a minority shareholder and the other(s) are the head honcho(s).

So, I was probably always looking for someone that didn't have the technical experience themselves, but maybe wanted to have a dabble in that world.

I've done the 2/3 nights a week in hotels, going to lots of meetings, award ceremonies and the whole 'circuit thing' - and it's an easy decision for me to say that I won't be doing that again.

Anyway, for others that might read this - although it's early days, I've already made a few contacts that could have potential. So, sometimes what appears in the public thread may only be the tip of the iceberg.