We met Teresa Norris at the Cardiff Meet a Mentor, where she shared her story and chatted about why she would like to find a mentor.

Teresa started her business, Release and Be Free, to share life-changing therapies with other people. The former nurse had suffered from debilitating ME and fibromyalgia for a number of years, as she explains:

“I hadn’t been able to work for many years with the ME and fibromyalgia – it even stopped me nursing. I kept trying different treatments, spending thousands of pounds but I couldn’t find anything to help me. I eventually found this combination of modalities called Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT, Matrix Reimprinting and Emotional Intelligence. These modalities have totally transformed my life.”

Teresa has broad therapeutic training covering counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and neuro-linguistic programming, as well as EFT and Matrix Reimprinting. Her clients come to her with a range of problems, including physical illness, phobias, addictions and relationship issues, but Teresa’s overarching objective is always the same:

“I help people find more love, more happiness, more abundance and better physical and emotional health. It’s about helping other people but it’s also about making an income. However, I love doing it so much that I would still do it even if I didn’t have to earn an income as I am so passionate about what I do.”

Although she’s on sure ground with the therapies she offers, there are some business areas where Teresa would like some guidance. She came along to the Meet a Mentor event with ideas in mind about where a mentor’s support would come in handy. Part of Meet a Mentor follows a “speed networking” format. Mentors and mentees sit alternately around a table and spend ten minutes chatting one-to-one with the people to their left, then their right. It’s a chance for mentees to tell potential mentors what they’re looking for in terms of guidance and expertise. The last person Teresa spoke to is her future mentor, Dawn Lane, a businesswoman who runs a online secretarial business, and whose skills correspond to those the therapist currently lacks:

“My husband’s done some web training but there were still a few things we were stuck with so I wanted help with that and Dawn builds websites. Also, for example, although I’m on sites like LinkedIn, I’m not really using them to promote my business and reach more clients.”

Because of the ill health she has suffered, Teresa hadn’t been able to use computers until recent years, so finding someone with online skills to share could prove a real turning point for Release and Be Free’s future success:

“Dawn was so good at explaining things and was giving me lots of advice even in that ten-minute session. She was very knowledgable on the various things I don’t know about using the internet effectively for my business.”

Plans are afoot to boost the business’s online marketing, spreading the word on the therapies Teresa offers, using social media and blogs.

“Dawn knows all about blogging and tweeting, neither of which I’ve done before. She lives about 40 minutes from me so some of the time we’ll be meeting up and sometimes we’ll use skype. I’m putting together everything I want to learn from her.”

So, what are Teresa’s thoughts about the event – was it worth her while to come along?

“Meet a Mentor was a great event for me to go to and I was so surprised it was free! In the future I’d like to double the number of clients I am seeing and to go on eventually start doing workshops and teaching. I think my new mentor could really help me get there.”