Since Covid-19, weâve all been in search of new ways to do things from the comfort of our couches. Figuring out how to find a mentor online can be a bit challenging because successful people are usually booked and busy but itâs very doable!
When youâre looking to find a mentor online, sending a bunch of emails or LinkedIn messages requesting that they take you under their wings may not be the best way to go. If youâre looking to have someone to mentor you, they probably get tons of similar requests every day. Youâll need a strategy that helps you stand out.
Here are some hacks to help you find a mentor online and possibly a friend for life:
Find relevant people
If you havenât already, make a list of people in your field who inspire you. You can then boil it down to 3-5 people. When you have your list, make sure you find out as much about these people as you can. To find a mentor, you can also use the LinkedIn Career Advice feature, a great tool for finding new mentors.
Make yourself visible
The next step is to make sure your LinkedIn is popping with your work experience and accomplishments. The CEO of a company is not very likely to reply to a message from an account with no bio and 5 connections. Apart from LinkedIn, you want to make sure your presence on social media is clean and reflects who you are in the best way possible.
Hit them up!
Now itâs time to send a message to your mentor. Donât say who you are and then go on to ask for them to mentor you. What you want to do is show that you respect the work theyâve done and talk about how this has also impacted your own life, you can then go ahead to ask if they can help with a specific area of your career.
Once you do this, donât forget to give a reasonable time for a reply, preferably a week. Make it easy for them to contact you by providing your contact information.
What can you do for them?
Don’t forget that mentors are people too so what you want to do is gain their friendship. One of the best ways to get a mentor is to build a personal connection.
Volunteer to help them with a project, help out with a cause theyâre passionate about or offer to help with some research. You can even interview or write an article about them – this is a great way to get to know who they are and connect with them in the process.
Business strategist and work- life balance expert, Just Omomo Ibe, is helping women create a balance between their work and personal life, so they can chase their dreams and make money while at it. She also helps individuals identify the various opportunities in their business to make more profit.
Just Omomo Ibe has been in the banking sector for over seven years and is the founder of The Just Ibe Network; thus living her dreams while been an employee. She is involved in speaking engagements, coaching calls, online courses and business consulting for SME’s.
Recently, she launched a Youtube show which focuses on motivation and strategies from experts in various fields, the channel is aimed at further helping her target market achieve success in their life and business.
The Just Ibe Network is a group of company that comprises our consulting firm, training and mentorship platform, it also includes an online training academy and media arm. At The Just Ibe Network we pride ourselves in delivering superior quality trainings, coaching and consulting for our esteemed clients both offline and online.
What market research did you carry out in the course of starting your business, and how did you go about it?
The first research was that of my competitors, I needed to find out what my competitors were offering and what gap they are not filling. This helped me make informed decisions as to how best to penetrate the market. A lot of businesses offer homogeneous products, therefore market research helps you understand how best to position your business in a way that not only meets the needs of your consumers but also positions your business as authentic.
What challenges have you faced so far in the setup of your business?
The greatest challenge I faced in setting up my business was creating time to actually execute my plans; creating and fine tuning strategies that would keep me relevant in the market place today and always. Innovation keeps you in business long after your competitors have gone, so you must constantly innovate.
What are your launch plans once your business registration is completed?
Honestly a business registration isn’t stopping any major launch of my business, as all facets of my businesses are in full gear at the moment. The registration  would just allow me operate a corporate account in the designated banks. So my take is it doesn’t matter if your business name is ready or not, keep adding value to your ideal clients and grow your business regardless.
Last year I started my career in public speaking, leveraging on several online platforms and offline avenues, despite been a full time banker, wife and mum.
So people started asking me how I was doing all I was doing, so conveniently. I started documenting steps I have taken that helped me overcome my otherwise very tight schedule and results I achieved. This book is aimed at providing practical steps that can help women fully integrate all aspects of their lives, thus living a balanced and fulfilled life.
 What kind of investors and partnerships are necessary for your kind of business and what strategies are useful in achieving this?
Media investors are required for the talk show arm of my business, which is targeted at providing strategies that would help entrepreneurs succeed and grow in business. Corporate investors also play a major role, especially companies who have CSR projects, ours can successfully pass as a CSR project aimed at helping young and budding entrepreneurs.
Who is the one person from anywhere on the globe, you would love to interview and why?
The one person I would love to interview is President Barack Obama. He is the one person I look up to the most, because he is probably about the best public speaker that exists in this day and age.
What quote resonates with your business and how does it inspire you?
We at The Just Ibe Network live by this mantra: if you can think it you can definitely birth it. So dear corporate ladies, your dreams are valid, they are your dreams for a reason, it’s an act of self sabotage to neglect your dreams because you have a job; the world needs you to live to the fullest.
Have you mastered the art of work-life balance?
Share your story, let us know more about you and your story here.
Lynda Aphing-Kouassi is a former banker and Founder and Director of Kaizene, a firm specializing in training, coaching and networking conferences.The process of creating African leaders and encouraging the inclusion of women is the core of her business which she tries to achieve by her coaching and training sessions.
Passionate and rigorous, Lynda has extensive experience in the management of companies and employees in the following sectors, portfolio management; training, coaching, and seminars; conferences organization for more than a decade.
For Lynda, the biggest resource a successful company should rely on is its workforce. Not being visible on the balance sheets itâs often relegated to the bottom rank. Via its various initiatives on leadership and training seminars organized, Kaizene accompanies multinationals and SMEâs by reminding them of the best leadership techniques to use in order to enhance the skills, inspire the employees, create partnerships and synergies and ensure a stable and sustainable development.
“Our beautiful Africa is full of leaders we just have to accompany them to the best of our abilities, mentor them, remind them of their potential and reiterate to them the soundness of excellent leadership in order to give back to Africa the place that it should have: âthe provider of excellence”.
You spent 19 years abroad, fill us in on your experience in a foreign land.
As a French speaker who disliked English at the time, living in London was a most difficult experience. My sister who was married to an Englishman lived in London already and they kindly allowed me to live with them. I soon found I could express my fears and got to speak English more often. My brother-in-law’s help was tremendous because he was patient and understanding despite the many mistakes that I made. I then started uni and work during which I experienced a lot of setbacks and a feeling of non-belonging as far as the lifestyle was concerned. It is at that time I realised that to belong you had to embrace the new culture. But I could see that others embraced it to the point of forgetting their own!
I then decided that the authenticity of my culture would take me far. So, while learning and understanding the lifestyle in the UK I was also bringing my own to the table. For example, I would make my countryâs food during parties and lunches and wear my African print dresses as often as possible. I became an object of curiosity which brought people near me to try and understand where I was from and slowly the feeling of not belonging disappeared. I started to make real friends and began to really enjoy and understand the country. The UK became my home.
At work in a FTSE 100 company and being a black person, you can imagine that every disagreement or difference of opinion may well be perceived as aggression. I considered this as a form of bullying and refused to be bullied. I worked hard and developed this mindset of a winner where nothing was good enough until it was excellent. Also, I made sure that I was going to be accepted, not just tolerated. This is what you can do if you value and believe in yourself.
I learnt from this experience that only you have the answer to your own doubts and that the only judge is God. So, I have brought back with me this mindset of a winner and the power of excellence. My dream is to influence my peers with this belief so we can be proud individuals, strong, developed and authentic and to then become an example to others. I believe we can and will, with our young population and this mindset of confidence and excellence, have a better Africa.
Awesome! So what did you experience in terms of mindset and lifestyle that you wish to bring to your own country or Africa as a whole?
During my time in Europe, I found the development of infrastructure so important that it created a great communication between companies and people. The buildings are often rehabilitated and well maintained, communities put themselves together to ensure development and the cleanliness of their spaces in order to have a decent living environment.
Technology is well advanced allowing sustainable environment and every child understands the value of a prosperous technology. Â I truly wish we have the same type of developed infrastructure in Africa, and I am sure we will get there. All services ( water, electricity, transport etc) go through the infrastructure and ensure the development of the community. This prompted me to plan the organisation of a conference on infrastructure in October this year to discuss our lack of infrastructures and how to ensure a sustainable development for Sub-Saharan Africa.
A better Africa to me is a stable Africa where we understand politics and donât use it against ourselves. It is one where we realise that Africans have all the necessary tools to be excellent and should therefore collaborate. A better Africa is one where Africans can freely travel across Africa and use our own products, learn to transform our raw materials and understand our values.
A better Africa is one where one African canât tolerate seeing another one begging but where possible help others and grow together. And most of all where we do not envy Europe and strive to be the best.
Walk us through the journey of starting up Kaizene.
Kaizene is a baby that was born on the underground in London whilst talking to a friend about setting a business. Then the idea was put to bed. I had a job opportunity in Abidjan and although I had never experienced the working life in Abidjan, I had a fantastic manager. There were some difficult moments of integration and being someone who has just returned from the Diaspora, the situation was somehow different and I was not fully assisted in terms of integration.
I felt that my Director could not do it all, it was also upon the team to open up. Alternatively, I had to adjust myself to our realities and accept the fact that I was back home. I was always in tears in my Directorâs office because of the absence of integration. It was the most difficult experience and I felt that the training for staff was not sufficient and there was not enough autonomy or empowerment.
After a discussion with my Director, we decided to part ways. This experience was helpful for the successful creation of Kaizene. I will always thank my Director for his understanding, time and belief in me. Â I came back to London, opened the drawer that contained my business plan and knew that I wanted to set up a training company where I can use my experience to help develop talent and at the same time secure the development of the companies in Africa. Then came back to set up the company and started selling our services. Itâs a rocky road but a passionate and truly rewarding one.
To this day we provide training, coaching, and organise various leadership and mentorship seminars to individuals and companies. We also organise conferences for the creation of partnership and synergies. To me, a true entrepreneur is the one who thinks of transferring some knowledge or skills to others before thinking of the cash advantage associated with it. Only with passion can we ensure the success of our enterprises, and being an entrepreneur is not all about success it comes with a lot of failures but the most important is what we learn from it and how we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off to carry on.
Kaizene is now two years old, almost three and we are known in the market. We have a good client base but we still need to carry on to ensure that we reach our main goal; which is putting training and education in the heart of everything we do to ensure a sustainable development and become role models for the younger generations.
So, after your experience in Abidjan what measures did you put in place in your own company that prevents other people from facing the same issues?
I have put in place a strong integration scheme in order to welcome all our newcomers. I also have a mentoring system where one is assigned to a mentor to assist them in their duties and also introduce them to the rest of the team in a better way.
This develops their team spirit and it automatically allows the individual to have a sense of belonging, therefore, increase productivity. To also assist companies that we collaborate with we also provide a tailor-made service based on their visions and objectives.
You also mentioned that you have a good client base, please advice the reader who might be struggling with creating trust relationships with their clients.
Honesty and passion are important in our company and we believe that our clients sense that we have their best interests at heart. To create this trust we have learned to know our clients and prospects, understand their vision and value, protect their brand in developing seminars and training that responds to their needs and objectives.
We have also learned to respect our deadlines and produced all our tasks with quality and efficiency.
What are your core values and what do they mean to you?
Authenticity, religion, integrity, honesty, passion, determination, discipline and hard work. They represent the defining point of my personality and Kaizene.
Those points must be followed at any given point to allow our development and the development of others. They represent my rule of life and my line of conduct.
What techniques can you give #MotherlandMoguls today to focus on to strengthen their internal teams?
Communication
Strong Leadership and knowledge of their teams to define the type of leadership to apply to ensure success
Empowerment
Humility
Collaboration
In Africa sadly we realise that with strong management strong egos are also born. This prevents sometimes the effective and efficient leadership. We also work on coaching sessions in order to ensure that leaders are capable of empowering the younger generation and leave a legacy of development.
“If you want a career that fulfils you, you need to focus on your interests rather than your qualifications.” Why is this?
Your interests are part of your dreams and your being and as they say dream big and you will achieve it. Not only this but you have a passion and with passion long lasting great things are achieved.
In your interest, you also have the practical skills and the desire to excel and excelling make this interest a durable source of living which is also socially responsible.
I have a daughter and my ideas come with the need to be an inspiration for her and others. I also know that God plays a strong part in the generation of my ideas. As a team great ideas come from big dreams and passion, they also come from the kids we deal with in whom we can truly identify as a better Africa.
Our great ideas also come from experience and the way we wish to see our Africa and Africans. Mostly the Kaizene ideas come from the desire to positively impact and change the world. Our role is to develop the talents in Africa, create leaders and ensure that within our conferences great synergies and partnerships are created. With the talents have a more developed Africa well equipped to became the hub of humanity.
You also have leadership programs. What is the must-have trait for a powerful leader?
Inspiration.
Although there are other important traits that make a powerful leader such as humility, self-assurance, social boldness, decisiveness, optimism, focus, and honesty.
For those who don’t have these traits, how can they also possess them?
Following our Leadership programme.đ
What is the hardest thing you ever had to do?
I must travel a lot for the business and the hardest thing that I had to do was to leave my daughter behind with her nanny for work reasons.
If youâd like to share your story with She Leads Africa, let us know more about you and your story here.Â
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Our Joburg ladies gave us love as usual. Click on the image below to relive the fun from SheHiveJoburg (February 2017).
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You must be crazy! But in any case, this is what you can expect from a She Leads Africa experience:
Fun and engaging content:Â We arenât boring and strive to deliver business content in a fun and relatable way.
Young women like yourself looking to make an impact:Â Our community is full of smart and ambitious young women who want to live their best professional lives.
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Adedoyin Jaiyesimi writes and edits books, manages blogs and creates content for websites. Through her coaching and training platform, The Sparkle Writers Hub, she is helping other writers achieve their writing dreams. So far, some of her trainees have moved on to start successful blogs while others have been able to gain access to platforms to showcase their work. Adedoyin fills SLA in on not just the excitement of writing, but what she is doing about it, for herself and other writers.
How can a writer turn her craft into a profitable business?
Turning your writing craft into a business starts with having a plan. What kind of writer do you want to be? What range of services do you want to offer? Do your research and find the niche you can excel in. There are people who stop at editing and proof-reading while others take it further by writing web copy and coaching other writers.
Once you identify the services you are able to offer, you should talk to an intellectual property lawyer to know the steps to take to protect the content you produce. You also need to think about how you will publicize yourself and your work in order to build your client base. Build the right structure and most importantly, get people to work with you. As you get more clients you will discover that you canât do it all by yourself, especially if you want your business to grow.
What are the right principles to turn a small idea into a profitable business?
I would say the number one principle is passion. You need to be passionate about what you are doing otherwise, the business will fizzle out. Then thereâs the part of creating value. For any business to be profitable there has to be some value that is being added. This is essentially the âwhyâ of your business and it goes beyond money. What need is the business meeting? How does it improve the lives of people?
One thing I have learnt over the years is the importance of building a brand and not just a business. You must be able to connect with your clients and deliver on your brand promise. This involves going the extra mile. It also involves making the choice to be excellent in your delivery of service and be innovative.
Have you faced any challenges that are unique to your trade as a writer? How did you overcome them?
Yes, I have. They are so many, to be honest. One of the challenges writers face is managing writerâs block. When I first started out, I was a lazy writer and I used to write only when I was inspired. You canât run a profitable business as a writer if you only write when you are inspired. So I had to discipline myself and learn how to come up with creative content whether I am inspired or not. It was tough, but Iâm glad I went through that process.
Another challenge I faced was putting the right price to the services that I offer. Something that I used to hear a lot when I started was, âIs it not just to edit the content on my website? Why are you charging this amount?â There is a way people tend to trivialize the writing process especially when you are able to deliver quickly. I did a lot of trial and error before I could find the price that I was comfortable with charging because there is no industry standard. Now, I have set prices for every service I offer.
Iâll add one more because like I said, they are many. Putting the right structures in my business was challenging. Creative people donât like structure. We just go with the flow. This will hinder the growth of your business. So I had to take the time to put the right structures in place. I registered my business name, Content Craft, opened a business account, set up a proper accounting system and so on. Itâs not perfect yet but we have a process for most of the operations we carry out.
Realistically, in what ways can an African woman live off writing?
There are many ways an African woman can live off writing. Like I tell the writers that I coach, you just need to be creative and be able to identify the gaps that exist. When I started out, what I knew how to do best was to write articles and edit magazines. Now my expertise has grown to creating and editing books, managing blogs, writing web/ social media copy and creating content for social media.
So the possibilities are endless. If you want to live off writing, you can become an editor, you can be a content creator, you can be a copywriter, you can write voice over scripts, you can write content for training materials and so on. As you improve your skill, you can also earn money from coaching other writers and organizing training sessions for businesses and individuals.
How do you help other writers achieve their dreams? Is it through mentorship or any other means?
I created a platform called The Sparkle Writers Hub and our main aim is to help everyone who has a desire to write to achieve their writing dreams. We work with all kinds of writers; the ones who have a nudging in their heart and those who have started writing but want to take their work to the next level. We offer a basic training program where we teach writers the basics of writing and how to attract readers. We also offer a more intensive coaching program where we work one on one with writers to achieve their goals. Since we started, some of our trainees have moved on to start successful blogs while others have been able to gain access to platforms to showcase their work.
What will be the name of your first book and what will it be about?
The million dollar question! This is a tough one for me. I have thought about my first book several times; the title, what it will be about and when I will actually write it. The truth is Iâm not sure. There was a time I started writing a book with the title âBlue Havenâ. The book was about the struggles I was going through at the time, finding myself after being âcagedâ all my life. I didnât get very far with the book because I lost the inspiration for it.
I do believe strongly that I will write a book about my journey of faith (which is what my blog is about). My journey in life hasnât been a smooth one but what has kept me this far is God. He is my anchor. So I am definitely going to write about Him; His love, His wonders and my walk with Him. Hey, maybe Iâll call it âMy Anchorâ. Time will tell.
If youâd like to share your story with She Leads Africa, let us know more about you and your story here.
Remi Owadokun used a major life change to kickstart her online business as a weight loss coach and nutritionist. She also used that motivation to start an online video series that spreads health consciousness in a fun and interactive way.
Remi shares with us her thoughts on what’s keeping young women healthy, how she started her business with only N10 in her wallet and how she’s planning to take her business global.Â
Why did you start the Total Makeover Program?
I started the Total Makeover Program when I made the decision to change my life and lost 40kg. During this process my life was transformed emotionally, financially, spiritually and mentally and I wanted other women to experience this power as well.
The first thing that came to mind was simply to blog about my experience because many people who knew me wanted to know how I did it. How many people do I want to tell? So one weekend I sat down and started compiling my experiences.
Once my blog was up I started sharing it via email to friends and family. When I went out and people asked me about my health transformation I always referred them to my blog. It was meant to start and end there but I started getting a lot of feedback from people who wanted me to keep writing.
There were people who had started their weight loss journeys simply by reading my story and I started getting emails from people who wanted me to coach them. I initially said no because I was not comfortable with people coming to me or me going anywhere.
But one day, a lady emailed me and said; “Please coach me, we never have to meet, just email me meal plans and exercise plans.” That was when it occurred to me that I could turn this into an online business. I imagined that if one person was interested, I could get more people interested too.
Why do you think most young professional women struggle with living a healthy lifestyle?
Many young women are misinformed about what good health means and how they can maintain a healthy lifestyle in today’s environment. Most people assume that someone who is healthy is slim. This is not always the case, there are several “fit looking” people who are unhealthy.
They eat junk, don’t sleep well and are constantly stressed. Most people assume that by just eating right and exercising, you will automatically be healthy. There are many factors that contribute to being healthy and whole.
You can eat all the greens in the world and exercise 2 hours a day, if you are a bitter, angry person, you are upsetting your biological make up. You can actually find rare cases where an individual eats all sorts of crap but because she is happy and fun loving may end up being in a healthier state than most.
Being healthy and living a healthy lifestyle requires a more holistic approach that most ignore. The tendency is to focus on just one area of life and ignore the rest.
What makes Total Makeover Program different from other health startups?
Most health start ups focus solely on exercise and diet. At TMP we focus on two things: primary and secondary foods. Primary foods are things that feed us but don’t come on a plate like love, relationships, career, spirituality, education, etc.
Secondary foods are the items we actually eat on our plates every day. Â We know that there is no point trying to control your diet if you don’t focus on the things that trigger you to eat. If we can fix the triggers then we worry less about your understanding of food.
Most people are emotional eaters but most start ups never focus on the emotions. People eat when they are happy, sad, angry, stressed, etc. For some people a fight with the significant other that displaces them and sends them into over eating. For others it is boredom, being stuck in traffic, or a fight with their boss.
I don’t see the point in telling people if they are ill equipped to deal with their emotions when stressful situations arise. I want to avoid the situation where someone I’m working with faces the same triggers and they revert back to their old habits and get so disappointed that they don’t want to try again.
Life can be unpredictable and it is unhealthy and unwise to build our lives based on the happenings around us that are outside our control. At TMP we empower you to take full control of the only thing you truly have control over, YOU.
For your business to get to the next level, would you prefer funding or a mentor? Which one would you choose and why?
I started this business with N10 in my wallet and built it to where it is without needing to look for funding. I would pick mentoring any day as I have always had mentors and I understand the role they play in my life and how they have created opportunities for me.
Proper mentoring provides value that will eventually translate to money. As a thought leader and as a mentor, I find that people who have worked with me are more impacted by the time spent together than anything else. Money will finish, then what next?
What can we expect to see from Total Makeover Program over the next 6 months?
I have coached a little over 80 men and women 1-on-1Â in 7 countries in the last 20 months. There is a limit to the amount of people I can coach 1-on-1Â , so I am currently creating an online course where people all over the world can download, partake and achieve results without having me there full time.
I recently became an international best selling author for my book “How I lost 40kg” when I hit the number 2 spot only 8 hours after it’s release on Amazon. My next book is due in December and I hope to hit number 1.
I am also starting the 2nd season of the Phat Gal Series. The Phat Gal Series is an online based animation series aimed at spreading health consciousness. It is based on my stories as a fat girl and the lies I chose to believe.
What is the most important thing you’ve learned on your journey towards health and wellness?
Along this journey towards my personal health and wellness as well as building my business, I’ve been reminded that every single person is different and there is no one size fits all approach. What works for one person may not work for the other. We are all in different stages of our lives and all in different environments.
I’ve also witnessed the ripple effect that changing one person’s life can have beyond just themselves. When you work with one person, you are impacting the entire family and possibly a generation.
Women on my programs have also been able to influence their families towards healthier lives. This for me has been an important lesson and has also reminded me of the weight of responsibility I have towards my clients.
Finally, I am constantly reminded of the old adage, you are what you eat. What you eat, whether primary or secondary plays an important role in how you ultimately turn out.
Everything matters, your friends, the type of music, the words you hear and say, what you watch and of course what and how you eat.
If you’d like to share your story with She Leads Africa, let us know more about you and your story here.Â
