A wonderful moment, just brilliant!

Women in Business Mentor Corinne Campbell

Corinne Campbell, the principal of XDOC® XDOC®, was lecturing on international trade at the WorkVentures Business Enterprise Centre when she was invited to become a mentor for the Women in Business program. Mentors provide informal support for women starting their own small businesses and may also attend the Women in Business lecture series.

“It immediately appealed to me, because I’d been involved in mentoring already, both formally and informally,” Corinne says. “I was matched with someone who could communicate freely with me – in some ways compatible personalities are more important in these situations than shared business interests.

As a mentor I was able to go to the Women in Business courses for free, and I found them enjoyable and useful. It was a new experience, listening from my mentoree’s point of view.”

Corinne and her mentoree lived a long way from one another, so they arranged to meet halfway to discuss issues faced in the proposed business. “The presentation on cash-flow was particularly good,” Corinne recalls, “but I could tell my mentoree was having problems with the concept. Eventually we decided to draw up a complete three year cash-flow chart, working together. It took hours, actually. We were looking at these rows of figures when suddenly my mentoree exclaimed, ‘My God, my business is feasible!’ It was a wonderful moment, just brilliant. She suddenly knew her ambitions might take a lot of work, but they were not just a pipedream.”

Starting a new business requires confidence, perseverance and willingness to take risks. In Corinne’s experience, the mentor spends less time on business information than on encouragement and reassurance. “They need someone to help with their business confidence,” she says. “That’s why it’s excellent to have mentoring schemes. WorkVentures’ program to support mothers who are re-entering the workforce is also an excellent idea.”

Corinne’s expertise in the documentation of import and export transactions means that she coaches businesspeople who range from the naïve to the highly experienced. “There’s quite a lot of help available, but so many exporters are unaware of it. It’s like a closed circle. I hate to see people taking unnecessary risks with their intellectual property, neglecting legal advice and proper documents. A mentoring scheme focusing specifically on international trade would have a lot to recommend it.”

Corinne and her mentoree are still in touch by email and telephone. “She’ll get there,” she says. “When you spend a lot of your time as a business coach, every little success story is very rewarding. Sometimes a project takes a couple of years to get off the ground, but the ones that succeed make it all worthwhile.”