Join the Dots is a consumer insights and market research agency, which helps clients operating across all sorts of industries to better reach consumers. The agency’s chair is Trish Comley, who, along with her husband, set up the business in 1998. In addition to playing a strategic role in growing her own company, Trish now also volunteers as an enterprise mentor, supporting start-ups and small and medium businesses to develop and learn. We caught up with Trish, as well as with her mentee Paresha Raj-Burnett.

Trish Comley is someone who has helped grow a business from being a two-person operation to one which employs 120 people. Along the way she’s overcome numerous challenges, making her an ideal person to mentor other ambitious new entrepreneurs. With a background in IT, before setting up Join the Dots, Trish had worked for large retail organisations including Sainburys and Citibank. Like many of those she now mentors, Trish soon realised there’s a big difference between being part of a big company and suddenly being responsible for keeping a small business afloat. She says:

“In a large organisation you’ve got a lot of back-up. You’ve got whole departments to support you. When you start out on your own you have none of that. I had experienced how lonely that can be. In that situation people don’t always know where to go for help. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to contribute some knowledge and advice to a young business.

Although Trish agrees that ultimately, this was an altruistic move on her part, she says that she knew from the start that she’d enjoy the mentoring process, in part because she’d already mentored internal colleagues at Join the Dots and found it rewarding. She says:

“I believe you get back what you put in. I knew that doing this would be really interesting and I’d get a good feeling from doing it, and I’ve learned a lot too!”

Right now, the mentee enjoying the benefits of Trish’s experience is Paresha Raj-Burnett, who is the brain behind Luminaire Arts. This exciting young company sells original art work by British artists to people like interior designers, architects and property developers. While Luminaire Arts is based in London, Trish herself frequently works from home in Basingstoke, so how does the mentoring take place, on a logistical level? Trish explains that she takes her lead from her mentee’s needs:

“Whenever I’m going through London, I try to see Paresha or I’ll make a special trip if I need to. Our approach is fairly flexible and my philosophy is that this should be about what Paresha wants from the relationship. If she’s too busy or doesn’t feel she needs a catch-up I won’t impose it on her.”

Trish encourages Paresha to consider which areas she’d like to discuss before each mentoring session, an approach she also uses when mentoring internal Join the Dots staff. When working with her Meet a Mentor mentee, Trish describes her approach as ‘light touch.’

“I listen to what Paresha has to say but I am deliberately sparing on my input. I will try to nudge her to consider various options. People often come upon the right solution to a challenge themselves, and it’s always better if they do. Sometimes they just need to talk and then their minds start working in the right direction.”

This tallies with what Paresha herself was looking for in a mentor. She says:

“Although I set up Luminaire Arts three years ago, the first year was a bit of a test year with just me on my own making it work. Last year, I went to a Meet a Mentor event in London. I was looking for someone more senior who had run a business before, who could act as a sounding board.”

Having connected with Trish, Paresha found the mentoring experience very beneficial. Since the pair began meeting up, which they do around every six weeks, the young entrepreneur has secured permanent premises for Luminaire Arts in London’s Victoria and she is currently making ambitious plans for the business’s future including a wider events programme and recruitment. Describing the experience of being mentored, Paresha says:

“Trish has got a very good business brain and although she’s from a different industry to me, she’s done all the marketing, the setting up and the promoting we’re doing now. She’s also knowledgeable on scaling up and her input has been great as we prepare for growth. I would definitely recommend mentoring to other small businesses.”

Before setting out to mentor an external contact, Trish underwent IOEE mentor training and although she’d never had an official mentor herself, during the course of her career she had purposefully identified people to approach for advice. She says:

“I particularly sought out influential women to take advice from. At various points I asked women who had done well in business to give me a steer or give me some ad hoc advice. Those positive experiences were certainly part of my impetus to become a mentor myself.”

In the future, Trish intends to continue to mentor Paresha, although the younger woman will soon be on maternity leave and the mentor feels every mentoring relationship has a natural lifespan. After that, it seems likely that Trish will be looking to share her hard-earned experience of building a successful SME with another fresh face…