Reading From Inside and Outside: The Box of Objectivity

In celebration of National Volunteer week happening from April 6 – 12, 2014, CYBF is celebrating mentors’ valuable contribution to young entrepreneurial success!

Why is mentoring important to entrepreneurial success? Francisco Lingad of ANCL Partners, explains his mentee’s experience.

Generally to get an objective view of the situation, you need to look at both outside the box as well as inside the box. As you face business challenges, you tend to concentrate more on what is going on inside the box. This can be good; you’re focused on what’s happening within your environment – but don’t forget that you also have to consider what’s going on outside the box. This way you have a complete scope of the picture.

Let me share one of my consulting sessions with a young entrepreneur over lunch. We have dealt with various topics on business success and experiences including the possibility of going into another type of business completely different from his industry. He, Bill Clark who I fondly call as BC, is managing his own trading and retail business.

He assured me that shifting to another business different from his current industry was not his immediate goal, and his commitment was to grow his current business.

His primary goal was to sustain and expand their business as this is a task entrusted to him by his father. The business, which fed and practically paid for him and his two siblings to finish their university education, where he spent 30 years of his existence, is now his own challenge to sustain and to keep.

He feels he is lucky that his father who started the business more than 30 years ago is his mentor. As BC is focused on running the day to day business, he was concentrating on what he saw only within the confines of his office, retail outlets, and his warehouse. He admitted he had his own failures and he learned from these mistakes where he heeded his father’s advice on the solutions. He recognizes the fact that he at most times just looked inside the box and his father, as his mentor, had the objectivity of observing his actions both inside and outside the box.

BC’s target is to grow the business, expand not only in British Columbia and eventually National, then global and pass on to the next generation. I challenged him by saying that one day he can be another famous “Bill” like Bill Gates in the making. With humility, he said “it is always easy to dream but hard to be an achiever, it is hard work”.

Written By: Francisco Lingad, ANCL Partners BC, Vancouver BC

Show Your Mentor Appreciation on Twitter!

Show your mentor how much you appreciate their time and dedication by joining us on Twitter on April 7^th, 2014 from 1pm – 3pm. Use the hashtag #WeHeartMentors and be sure to tag your mentor!