Gathering on a weekly basis with fellow Christians that want to improve their personal financial status and business profits are possible when joining a Peer Mentoring Group. By Gary Shotton #000438

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Peer Mentoring Groups

By Gary Shotton

Hello, my name is Gary Shotton, and I’m here as a part of Inspiring Better Business. And today we’re going to talk about “Peer Mentoring Groups”. What do I mean by a pyramid praying group? Well, we’re strongly encouraging you to gather with other Christian business men and women on a weekly basis to discuss business. Discuss business done God’s way. And discuss things that will help each other grow in your individual businesses. And if the body of Christ will do that and you as business owners or those that desire to own a business will gather together I believe God will really join in with you and make a big difference.

Now, we’re really focused after God’s ideas. God’s plans. God’s Laws for doing business. So anything we’re talking about has that overriding understanding that we’re really not wise enough to develop all the answers ourselves. And we really don’t want you to feel like you have to go outside your group to get all your answers. When God will get really help you with most of your answers. But you can go outside your group to get research and development and get information and follow some procedures so it saves you time and money and energy because you’re learning from other people. That’s what we’re doing.

So, a peer mentoring group is a group that has peers. That’s a P E E R. That’s a group of individuals that have a similar vision for wanting God to help grow their business. And when you gather together there are several things that you can do as that will help a technique to make your meeting go efficient. And go well. And have something to discuss. You have some choices here. You could choose a topic. One of the topics that are on our podcast that’s in your language and you can discuss that as a discussion group. Or you can also set your group into a pattern of discussing around the circle the things that are very pointed and of interest to you. It’s your choice. It’s your group.

So, by choosing a topic that’s kind of a discussion you could choose a topic that’s been taught by one of our teachers from a foreign country. They’re in your culture and language like Judith a jeweler. And you could talk about the quality that she had in making her jewelry. That’s a good discussion group. Again, the idea is to take a topic in that case, that will really help everyone that’s in business or want to be in business to improve their business skills. This is not a place to discuss the technical side of your business like if you had maybe a wedding cake business you don’t need to discuss the ingredients to make a cake. Or if you had chickens you don’t need to discuss the kind of feed that you feed your chickens. Those are technical things.

Every business has technical things. The meeting we’re talking about talks about the business things. The laws of business. Now one option that is encouraged all depends on your maturity as a group is to follow a pattern called the mastermind procedure that helps people have a good meeting and a good discussion. This is especially good when you’re already having some businesses going and you’re now trying to improve your business. Or it could help you in starting your business. But it’s really good when you have your active business in place. And so in that setting you would have maybe no more than 10 or 12.

By the way, Jesus Christ Himself picked 12 apostles. And they met together and discuss their problems and came through life, on the other side in a much better way than if they had been just by themselves. Now I’m just so happy that there was a mixture of people. There was several fishermen. There was, I believe a carpenter. There was definitely a tax collector. There was a cross section of people, yet God uniquely called them together. Jesus called them together. And that in my terms is a bit of a peer mentoring group, because they work through their tasks in a general way to help each other. They wanted each other to have success. That’s what you want here.

So, one thing you could do is start each meeting with the idea that every person in the group would be a discusser. They would not just be a listener. There’s only participants, and not one person is the teacher or the leader or not just one person who’s responsible for all this, but everyone is responsible for themselves. So you could start out by going quickly around in a circle, and each person discuss briefly a success they had in the previous week. Because maybe they had a new customer came. Oh that’s exciting for everybody. Another success could be I was able to land a small contract. Or I had my best week in sales. Something that was successful. That will encourage everyone as you’re talking as a group. Then you can go around quickly in the circle, and everyone share a challenge they had.

Well, there’s a good place if you don’t have a business, maybe it’s a challenge you have that’s driving you to want a business. To create a business. So, everybody’s going to have challenges in their businesses, so let’s get them on the table and just briefly discuss those. Or at least share them. This is really not a great time to discuss for just say here’s some challenges I’m having, or a challenge I’ve had in this last week.

And then third, you can go around in a circle again, everyone sharing that you would share those things that were accomplishments. You had set a goal to increase sales by 5%. Or you had set a goal to get this contract. Your desire could be something very simple, can be a goal that you had from the last week and you share what the goal was, and how you succeeded in that or maybe how you didn’t succeed and you’re going to try again. So everyone is discussing. This is not for one person to mentor you, but for each of you to be mentoring each other. That’s the entire idea.

Now we go deeper than that, because if the group would agree to this one person could be assigned a head of the meeting. Knowing that they’re the person that is setting uniquely in a position to discuss deeply their business. Or more deeply their business. They would go more in depth. We call that sitting in the hot seat. They sit in the hot seat and it’s not to drill them for criticism. There’s no criticism in any of this. It’s all to help each other grow in their businesses. So, that person would go in depth. Talk more about their business, maybe bring to the forefront their biggest challenge. And not everyone like unpaid consultant is giving input and feedback. Or a board of directors, like you had a corporation, and they’re giving feedback to that person. And it’s important that everyone be at every meeting. So, that when it comes turn for your turn to set in the hot seat you’re gaining the benefit of everyone else. And you rotate that hot seat around.

Now, not to put too much on you but there’s another thing we strongly encourage, and that’s your group, it’s another well-known structure. It’s called a community savings group. Or a community Savings Bank. Or some people call it a Village Bank. But it goes way bigger than just a few small coins coming to each group. We’ve seen one in Eldoret Kenya that grew to millions of US dollars as had developed their community savings group. And so, they helped More than 1000 businesses get started. So, this is not just this little bitty businesses if you’ll take it that way. So, every time you meet well established by others in your community you can learn from them. You bring some a great sum of money and you’re bringing that money to the bank and it’s now put in savings and you’re gaining interest on the money you put in. And every week we bring a pre agreed upon whoever this group is, however you can, and you bring that money each time a very small amount is fine.

And then at that point that money is accumulated you don’t just put it in an envelope and hold it hoping nobody steals it. You immediately loan it back out to those that have need. Those that have need for in your group. The group has a situations maybe someone’s in the hospital, maybe you have your car broken down. Now you can borrow money, as agreed to use that the group decides who gets the money, and how much. Is like a request for a loan. But more importantly you can also get requests for a loan to advance your business. This is one of the starter ways to get you started in getting capital for your business. Now over time, maybe you’ll grow your business and then you’ll have enough of a business that an actual bank like a bigger bank would take on and give you a loan. But this is a great way to start.

This also helps when you as a business are going to show some prosperity, you’re going to have things happening, and you’re going to have people coming to you. I know this happens. They’re going to be coming, asking for you to help them. Give me some money because I have a problem. Or give me some money because something very serious happened in my life. Well, you cannot drain the cash out of your business. Cash in your business is like blood in your body. So, you might help them with just a small amount of money and say hey here’s seed that will help you. I’ll pray with you, God is your answer, but I’m not your bank. But you tell that person, you must join a group. It’s not a trick. It’s a way to help them understand that there is a way for them to get help, but they’ve got to take the effort and one of those ways is to join a group like you’re forming. Well thanks for being a part of inspiring better business I hope this is helpful, and we wish you the very best and believe God’s best for your Future.