Meet a Mentor is in the midst of running a series of events for female entrepreneurs so we thought we’d give you an idea of how people have found it so far. Don’t forget we still have places left for our remaining events in Exeter, Northern Ireland and Manchester, so if you’re still interested in attending sign up here. After each event, we contact all the attendees to send them useful links to further mentoring support and business support resources, and to see what they think of their Meet a Mentor experience.

From Suffolk to Newcastle, London to Cardiff, and Birmingham to Leeds, they have told us what they loved, what they enjoyed, and ideas for future events.

Unsurprisingly, most of the delegates were attending with the goal of finding a new mentor or mentee, however there were also a large proportion of delegates that cited other key motivating factors for attending such as learning more about mentoring (42%), sharing best practice (29%) and simply making new business contacts (64%). When asked if their objectives were achieved an astounding 85% said they had achieved their goals in attending.

Many seemed to particularly enjoy the opportunity to talk to so many businesses from diverse backgrounds, with many commenting that this had been a great opportunity to reflect on their own business, one such delegate said:

“It was useful to hear many different perspectives from businesses of all sorts.”

A similar amount (82%) of attendees said they’d sparked one or more potential mentoring relationships at the event, with nearly all of these (95%) expecting to have future contact with their budding mentor or mentee after the event. 85% of delegates that attended also said they had made many useful contacts, including other business owners, best practice sharing, potential business development opportunities or partnering and investment opportunities.

One delegate made a suggestion as to how the net could be widened to encompass an even greater cross-section of ambitious entrepreneurs:

“I wonder if you are thinking of doing an event for young people who are aspiring entrepreneurs. I would be really interested in mentoring such individuals. I would also be interested in helping less able women to start a business. Thank you so much for such a brilliant event.”

And what about the length of the events? Did we get that right? Around a third of those who responded to our survey felt there was ‘not enough time’, while two-thirds thought we’d got the time ‘about right.’ So perhaps we’ll make a slight tweak to add a minute or two to see how that goes.

We have had feedback from a few businesses that have been frustrated at how quickly the events fill up, one comment reads:

“It is amazing how the events get full so quickly. I have missed so many because of this.”

We do apologise if you’ve not been able to get on this programme of events but we are aiming to run more in the future to accommodate even more businesses and mentors.

With 92% of delegates rating the event as good or excellent, we’re pleased with the results but we won’t be resting on our laurels. We’re taking all of the feedback onboard to improve and fine tune our upcoming events. For now, however, we’ll leave the last word to two of our delegates:

“Well done all involved. I would be delighted to support anything that encourages more women to take the lead in business.”

“The speaker knew her subject and spoke from personal experience - a credit to the organisers, although all staff involved were great. Such a positive buzz and definitely well thought out as an event.”