At the center of MicroMentor are real human relationships. We'd like to celebrate these relationships here by sharing the personal stories of a few MicroMentor participants.

Entrepreneur | Barbara Telle
Mentor | Erika Hovland
Entrepreneurs | Noel Javier and Brooks Fuentes
Mentor | Sturdy McKee
Entrepreneur | Gail Koelln
Mentor | Jeffrey Daugherty
Entrepreneur | Morgan Dalley
Entrepreneur | Brittany Hermansen
Entrepreneur | Rani Saijo
Mentor | Melanie Patrick
Entrepreneur | Maritza Gueler
Entrepreneur | Kim B. Pouncy
Mentor | Randy Green

Barbara Telle started a medical and legal transcription company in the corner of her bedroom with “one doctor, a rented computer and a Sony walkman”. She had a two-year old and an eight-month old baby at home, and her family relied on her husband’s commission sales to get by. When asked why she started company, Barbara answers: “I wanted to insure that I would always be able to take my kids to Burger King, and be able to keep them in diapers.”

By offering quality services and consistent, copy-edited transcriptions, Barbara slowly expanded her business from the bedroom into the living room and the family room, and then later into the garage. Over time, Barbara couldn’t handle the volume herself and needed to hire typists to help out. “Because I was a mom at home with young kids, I figured other moms would like to stay home with their kids as well, but also need to provide money for their families.” Her company now employs over 50 independent contractor typists “from almost every state, including Hawaii” and has 5 administrative staff in the town where it all started – Concord, California.

When Barbara recounts the story of how her business began, her voice is tinged with disbelief and she’s quick to credit happenstance. “So much happened that I had not even thought about, I hadn’t planned to be the president and CEO a company, and I hadn’t set my sights that high”. So after she home-schooled her children through high school and sent them off to college, Barabara decided to look for someone to help her do some of the foundational things for her company that she had never had time to do before: “I thought, ‘I need help’ and I Googled ‘Business Mentoring’ and up popped MicroMentor”.

MicroMentor paired Barbara with Jeffrey Daughtery who is a partner at a business consulting firm. Although Jeffrey’s firm specializes in investment banking, mergers and acquisitions, he has experience working with business start-ups and he has weathered insight into the common problems small businesses face. According to Barbara, Jeffrey helped her to “think like a CEO”. With her mentor’s assistance, Barbara went back over her business plan and analyzed the company’s sustainability and its potential for expansion. “Jeffrey helped me to look at my business from a financial perspective and he really helped us to get the accounting part of our business on target.” After working with her mentor for a little over 3 months, Barbara now feels that the foundational areas of her business are much more under control, and she has the confidence that her company can operate on an even playing field with its competitors.

From the outside, Barbara makes the transition from being a stay-at-home mom to a CEO look easy, but she swears that: “I never even thought of myself of an entrepreneur, and it was my mentor that assured me that I am one.”

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Erika Hovland has never owned her own business, but she does have more than 10 years of experience working in the marketing profession. And Erika knows, from personal experience, how beneficial it can be to have a mentor.

But it wasn't until her dad and her brother decided to start a landscaping business that Erika first discovered her own talents as a business mentor. While working with her family to make their new landscaping company a success, Erika drew on her marketing training to help them identify prospective customers and to develop the convincing marketing materials they needed to reach them.

The process of helping her dad and her brother improve their business was so rewarding to Erika that when she first learned of MicroMentor she knew she had found the perfect opportunity to leverage her professional experience and to have a larger positive effect than through traditional volunteer service. Erika appreciates that volunteering with MicroMentor allows her to "use skills that I have developed over time to help people become more successful." And just as when she was helping out her family, she has found that her volunteer work with MicroMentor has a tangible benefit: "I feel like I can make more of an impact, and it's more meaningful to me because it's based on a relationship and I can see the long-term results from what I'm doing."

What Erika didn't expect from her MicroMentor assignments was how much she would enjoy the entire process of working with an emerging entrepreneur and how energizing she would find it. When asked what she likes best about volunteering with MicroMentor, Erika answered: "I think it's interesting and challenging to learn more about somebody else's business endeavor and it's fun to work with people who are just starting in, or growing, their businesses because they're really excited about the opportunity and it is thrilling to be around that passion for starting something new."

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Unbeknownst to the other, Noel Javier headed west from Louisville, Kentucky and Brooks Fuentes headed north from Mexico City by way of Atlanta, Georgia to independently arrive in Portland, Oregon. Upon meeting, they found that their artistic interests aligned, and they decided to start a company that would combine their creative energies and incorporate their values. Thus began Oh Buggy!, an all-organic, sweatshop free clothing design company.

A local Portland design boutique recommended that Noel and Brooks join MicroMentor, and they promptly signed up to find a mentor to help them navigate the challenges of starting a new company. The first MicroMentor mentor to respond to their inquiry was a husband and wife team also based in Portland, Oregon. Their mentor team had complimentary skills and experiences, and they were able to work with Noel and Brooks on a variety of the essential tasks that starting a successful new business required. "It was really neat to work with a duo, because one was great at networking and vetting ideas while the other worked with us on the finance perspective".

Noel and Brooks' mentors helped them to research the market for their designs and make useful industry contacts. Their mentors also helped to point them in the direction of necessary financial resources and small business finance training. Now, several months later, Noel and Brooks' business is up and running, and they speak optimistically about the future of their endeavor. Starting a business has enabled them to "make something fun and neat, and make something that was our creation".

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Sturdy McKee came to MicroMentor as a small business owner looking for a mentor, and the timely and targeted help that he found helped him to steer his small business to success. Now, just two years after he first sought help, Sturdy has returned to MicroMentor as a mentor: “My life changed drastically when we were able to move from the stress of kind of breaking-even for several years to profitability.  Moving the business to profitability changed a lot of things in my business and my life and I hope to help other people to do that. I want to help people figure out how to plan and make their businesses viable.”

Sturdy McKee decided to start his own business when he got laid-off. The hospital where he had been working as a physical therapist downsized and Sturdy received a pink slip. After a frustrating job search, Sturdy sat down with his wife and had a conversation about what it would take to start his own business.

There were a lot of challenges to getting started.  Sturdy had no formal business training, and banks were refusing to finance his planned expansion.  Then Sturdy found MicroMentor. He was matched with a U.K. accountant who did not transfer her accountant’s license when she moved to the U.S. with her husband, and had decided to volunteer instead. Sturdy’s mentor helped him make sense of his balance sheets, cash flow statements, and profit & loss statements and also helped him identify areas in need of improvement. “She reinforced our opinions that we were a healthy company and that we were viable, even though we were unable to secure funding from a bank. [It] gave us the confidence to fund our own growth from our own profits.”

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Gail Koelln, a busy working mom from Hollis Hills, New York, left her job at a non-profit to start her own home-based grant writing firm to help non-profits secure funding for their services.  Gail loved the flexibility of being self-employed, but she struggled over what price to charge for her labor and how to meet her personal income goals.  Then MicroMentor matched her with a new mentor, Brian Kim of Philadelphia.  Brian had experience working as a consultant and he helped Gail identify the number of hours necessary to meet her income objectives under different pricing structures.  Together they set goals for how many hours Gail needed to work each week and what steps to take to make her business a financial success.

Gail and Brian are continuing to work together as Gail moves her business towards sustainability.  Thanks to MicroMentor, Gail feels more assured about the next steps to take in her business and she has more time to devote to the nitty-gritty of what she does – helping non-profits.  And thanks to Gail’s firm, GK Grant Writing, arts organizations, child cancer initiatives, and other deserving non-profits are getting the funding they need to expand their services and increase their positive impact.

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Jeff Daughtery joined MicroMentor after seeing it profiled on www.VolunteerMatch.org.  Jeff, a partner at a busy business consulting firm in Dallas, Texas, was drawn to MicroMentor because it leverages his hard-earned business acumen.  Although Jeff’s firm specializes in investment banking and mergers and acquisitions, he has experience working with business start-ups and he has weathered insight into the common problems small businesses face.

Jeff uses the skills he has acquired in his professional career to get his MicroMentor mentoring relationships on track.  He schedules a preliminary discussion to identify the needs of the small business owner, or protégé, and then follows up with an hour call and additional support emails every week. “It’s a natural fit, it’s what I do [professionally] and what I have done for a long time.” 

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“Since a very young age I knew that I wanted to own my own business,” said Morgan Dalley of Austin, Texas, “the number one reason was just to have freedom, the ability to do what I wanted and to make my own decisions”.  And in 2004, Morgan achieved her goal when she launched The Spa Beyond, a mobile spa providing spa services in the comfort of her clients’ homes. 

Without any formal business training, Morgan built a successful start-up, but when she wanted to expand and develop her business, she turned to MicroMentor.  MicroMentor matched Morgan with Kevin Hanville, a mentor from Lawrenceville, Georgia.  Kevin had much needed experience as a past business owner and as an entrepreneur and he understood what it meant to start a business from scratch.  “MicroMentor mentors have gone through it themselves and can counsel me on the topics that I need”.

Through a series of telephone consultations, Kevin helped Morgan to focus her expansion efforts in the sectors of greatest potential. “I was kind of all over the place and [Kevin] helped me to tone it down and focus my energies”.  Kevin led Morgan through self-directed exercises to get her financial goals in line with her business expansion efforts. “Going through [the mentoring] process made me realize where the most amount of money was going to come from with the least amount of effort… it helped me to hone into one aspect of the business that had potential and needed to grow.”

Together Kevin and Morgan developed a whole plan of action for Morgan’s business.  “Whereas I started with nothing, not really knowing how to approach my goals, I am now out there prospecting on the phone and making appointments.” 

MicroMentor helped Morgan get the timely, relevant advice she needed to make her small business a success.  “I would definitely go back and use it again, and I have recommended it to other people, in fact one of my friends just signed up last week!”

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The beginning was tough. Brittany's greatest challenges were finding the time to do all the little things that any business requires (administration, accounting, etc.) while figuring out how to make money--that was the major issue. Brittany was struggling to accurately price her services, run her business more efficiently, and attain the profit margins that would make her business sustainable over the long term.

In early 2005, after considering several business support groups, Brittany discovered MicroMentor. She liked the professional nature of the website, the structure of the program, and there were no hidden sales pitches, unusual for a free program. One week after enrolling, Brittany was paired with a mentor.

In her initial meeting with her mentor, Brittany described her business needs and challenges while her mentor asked questions and took notes. Her mentor came back to her soon after and they decided on the primary goals for the mentoring relationship. Brittany and her mentor also established a structure for the relationship early on: they would meet once a week and each meeting would end with a project for Brittany to work on (i.e., making a detailed record of the time and costs associated with a client job). The next meeting would begin with a review of the project's progress and changes to the business would come out of this discussion, (i.e., assigning a dollar value to hidden costs and pricing her services competitively to avoid losing money on jobs).

Brittany's mentoring relationship has resulted in some very tangible benefits for her business. "The homework projects were not easy, but they forced me to take an objective look at my business (a challenge, especially for a creative) and helped me see where I could improve." Brittany has developed an advanced job costing model that has allowed her to more accurately price her services. She is also able to better forecast her revenues and she is slowly adjusting her prices upwards to help her business earn more money. "I learned that it is important not to sell yourself short on the things you need to grow," Brittany says. Even though assuming payroll and rent costs seemed virtually out-of-reach, Brittany now works with 9 part-time helpers and has her own office space.

Brittany is proud that she is still in business after two years. In fact, Eiffel Printing & Design is now becoming a "heavy hitter" in her local market and is growing more each month with client referrals steadily rolling in. Brittany's advice for other proteges in MicroMentor: "Be open and honest about your needs and remain receptive to ideas that might not work."

Rani Saijo knew a thing or two about owning a business by the time she purchased the Leaves of Grass Bookstore in 2001 in Willits, a small community in northern California. After all, she'd owned a gardening business in the San Francisco Bay area for seven years before buying the store.

Still she recognized the need for one-on-one business advice and saw MicroMentor's offer of an on-line mentor as a convenient and useful way to get it.

MicroMentor paired Saijo with mentor Melanie Patrick, who worked with her on a variety of business issues from August 2002 through late 2003. Together they addressed problems remaining after a devastating fire threatened Saijo's business less than two years after she bought the store. They identified and resolved problems Saijo had with her small but growing staff. And together they explored the complexities of accounting, inventory control and cash-flow management, ensuring that Saijo got a firm grip on those business essentials.

"For the first time, I feel kind of settled," said Saijo, taking a moment to reflect on her business and her MicroMentor experience. The help "was fairly critical," she said, adding, "I was in kind of a panic state over my finances. She (Melanie) was good at helping me create a picture of cash-flow, inventory and budgeting."

Through regular contact with her mentor, which included e-mail exchanges and phone calls, Saijo says, "She helped me look at what I had in a different light. That was very positive."

With some nagging problems now resolved, her store inventory well balanced and book sales up, Saijo says: "I feel much more relaxed this year. Things are coming into place. Everything was done in a rush in the past. Now I'm taking my time."

Although Saijo has come to rely less on her mentor as her confidence has grown, she nonetheless considers the experience an important part of her growth as an entrepreneur. The relationship "was for my benefit and solely for my benefit," she says. "I got so much out of it. I would absolutely do this again."

Melanie Patrick's strong affinity for small business owners grew out of her past experience owning a small restaurant, as well as her more recent work assisting small enterprises through her management consulting business.

Owning a small business, she says, is "a little like being a parent: You have to be a problem solver and there is no one with you as you learn." And that's what makes MicroMentor so valuable. "Small businesses get so isolated. They don't have a circle of competency."

Patrick and her protégé, bookstore owner Rani Saijo, have worked together since August 2002, focusing on ways for Saijo to recover from a devastating store fire, improve employee-employer communications and resolve cash-flow issues.

From the start, Patrick and Saijo have used weekly, one-hour phone calls and periodic e-mails to communicate. They use the phone calls to check progress on specified goals and set new ones for the coming week. Establishing their routine was like "learning to dance together," says Patrick, but it's a process that has worked extremely well over time. "I think we've been pretty good at staying on track. She's very professional and very driven to make this work - to get past this (fire) crisis and keep running her business."

Moreover, Patrick has been impressed with Saijo's commitment not only to entrepreneurship, but also to owning a bookstore in particular. "She's dedicated to it. She's passionate about the gift of reading and connecting people to knowledge."

In her role as a mentor, Patrick is part "personal coach," part impartial, third-party observer - both of which can sometimes be godsends to small business owners.

At the same time, Patrick says the MicroMentor experience has been richly rewarding for her, as well. "What do I get out of it? The networking and the contacts and the sense of building community. I'm getting into a broader circle. I'm getting to know more people and they're getting to know me."

But beyond those practical considerations, Patrick cites some more philosophical reasons for volunteering in the MicroMentor program.

"I believe democracy rests on the backs of small businesses, and if we lose them, we've lost everything. We've lost our individual freedoms," she explains. "I'm completely dedicated to small business development. I don't think I'll ever be seduced by the corporate world again. … I just don't have the passion for it."

Though Gueler had years of experience writing arts reviews and editing in her native Argentina, she had difficulty picking up the U.S. jargon she needed to develop Danza en Espanol (www.danzarevista.com), a Spanish-language Web magazine devoted to dance in San Francisco.

She found the answer through MicroMentor, a new program that pairs business experts with budding entrepreneurs -- online. What was mono (monkey) in her homeland was also the term for a magazine design prototype in English.

Along with her partner and co-publisher Rodolfo Lo Bianco, Gueler e-mails their mentor, Richard Christison, at least three times a week -- sometimes three times in a day. Since January, the retired advertising executive has helped them with finding sponsors, business etiquette and using the right parlance.

"We spent two years trying to get this word," Gueler, 45, said with a chuckle.

Lo Bianco, 52, and Gueler unveiled the online magazine at the end of 2001. They sank more than $20,000 into the project so far, not including their unpaid labor. Lo Bianco works as a photographer and Gueler as a Spanish teacher and translator to support the site. A paid Webmaster in Buenos Aires and 15 unpaid contributors reporting from Russia, Mexico, Cuba and around the world round out the staff.

Gueler has worked with mentors before, with mixed results. Though her mentor last year through a different program was charming and kind, she did not have the industry expertise the magazine needed at the time, Gueler said. They stopped calling each other four months into the six-month program.

The dance magazine's new mentor, Christison, learned of the program from a posting on Craigslist, the San Francisco online community site. Christison said that he was helped by mentors in his career, when he ran his own businesses, and he has mentored many of his former employees, he said. The tech format of MicroMentor appealed to him.

"I liked the idea that the mentee would have to think about their question as they composed it in an e-mail," he said. "The act of writing forces them to collect their thoughts and focus on what's important. It's a sensible idea that genuinely helps everyone."

With few other options available to her, Pouncy founded Pouncy Designs, a web and virtual assistant services provider, running the business out of a small home office on the island of Vashon in Washington State. After a few months, she found that providing services to clients was not all there was to owning a small business. Pouncy was having trouble securing clients and while she "knew about web design," she "didn't know anything about actually doing 'business'". After researching a number of programs, she came to MicroMentor looking for help in early 2004.

Just two days after she applied to MicroMentor, Pouncy was paired with Louis Summe, founder and CEO of Tools for Health, a venture backed software startup in New York City developing communications systems for health care providers. Two days after being matched, Summe contacted Pouncy by phone and their relationship took off.

"I trusted Louis right off," said Pouncy. "He offered down-to-earth, no-holds-barred advice and opinions." As a technology entrepreneur who had spent 12 years designing and developing software systems and companies, Summe got what Pouncy was attempting to do with her business.

"He told me some 'home truths' right away, such as go out and get a temp job to keep the wolf from the door. I didn't have any clients and it looked like it would be a long haul."

While Pouncy was offering three different services - web design, virtual assistance, and software training - Summe advised her to focus on one thing and get that right first. Summe also helped with networking, connecting Pouncy with a friend in the marketing business who offered to send her work and provide leads on where to locate new business.

Summe offered several ideas on how to find more clients, and on his advice, Pouncy decided to take a sales and marketing course. "I find I am a great web designer, but a lousy saleswoman and I need to learn more sales techniques," Pouncy admits.

While it is too early to determine the long-term effects of the mentoring relationship, Pouncy had secured two regular Web Site Maintenance clients just two months into the mentoring relationship and was developing a greater awareness of what it takes to grow a small business.

"The most important thing Louis has taught me is that there will be ups and downs, that starting your own business is a marathon, not a sprint, and to not give up or get discouraged."

Randy Green was both surprised and delighted to be paired with a protégé whose line of business so closely matched his business experience. Green, a marketing expert who has spent most of his career focused on natural and organic products, has been mentoring the owner of a small herbal products company since last fall.

As a result of their shared business bent, he's been able to provide her with solid professional advice on such topics as how to work effectively with product manufacturers, meet the Food and Drug Administration's labeling requirements, create effective marketing brochures and develop a strong Web site.

Though never an entrepreneur himself, Green holds an M.B.A. and says his career includes working with several small companies. Through those experiences he's gained a solid appreciation for the role small businesses play in America.

"Small businesses are what's driving the economy. A lot of people think it's large corporations. But it's small businesses that employ the majority of people in this country."

Green, who lives in San Francisco, relies on e-mail and telephone calls to stay in contact with his Mt. Shasta, Calif.-based protégé. "We're both very comfortable with the Internet and with computers," he says, explaining that differing schedules have been a bigger challenge than technology in making MicroMentor work.

He also credits MicroMentor with developing an exceptionally user-friendly enrollment process. "The process is very simple. It's not arduous at all. My experiences signing up for other things have been a lot more difficult than this."

Moreover, Green says both he and his protégé are deriving benefits from participating in MicroMentor. "I think I'm building her confidence, as well as giving her some insights into things she should be concerned about as she expands her business. … She gets confirmation of her vision or ideals - a validation of her business - that this is something she can do."

For his part, Green says, "It's a 'feel good' thing - that's what I get out of mentoring. I'm getting the satisfaction of helping another person."

In fact, Green is so pleased with his MicroMentor experience, he says without hesitation: "I absolutely would recommend MicroMentor. I think it's a great opportunity for anyone with business experience to help a small business person - and get some personal satisfaction as well."