Why I’m Championing Professional Business Mentoring Across the UK

YUnique Marketing Insights

Whether you’re looking to grow, scale or exit your business, preparing for what’s next starts with strategic clarity. At YUnique Marketing, we’re on a mission to give ambitious SME business leaders the strategies to unlock their growth potential and build more valuable businesses.

Permit to share a personal reflection on my appointment as National Chair of the Association of Business Mentors Ambassador Network.

I’ve recently been appointed National Chair of the Association of Business Mentors Ambassador Network. It’s a role I’m excited to take on alongside my main client work at YUnique Marketing as a Consulting CMO and Growth Mentor. The appointment is new, but the conviction behind it has been growing for years: quality mentoring can transform individuals, strengthen businesses and create opportunities that extend far beyond both.

Mentoring has long been a thread running through my professional life. Alongside my client work, I’ve built and led marketing mentoring and leadership development programmes with the Worshipful Company of Marketors and Royal Holloway Business School, supporting aspiring marketers entering the profession, and with B2B Marketing/Propolis, developing marketing careers and emerging leaders.

As a professional Mentor/Coach with Business Leader, I also mentor business owners and CEOs, supporting them to navigate their business challenges, explore opportunities and make confident, informed decisions. Together, these experiences reinforce my belief that quality mentoring has value at every stage, from emerging talent to accomplished business leaders.

Why professional mentoring matters

I’ve always valued informal mentoring and the generosity of people willing to share their experience. But being successful in business doesn’t automatically make someone an effective mentor. Without specific mentoring training, it’s easy to prescribe solutions based on their own experiences rather than enable the mentee to develop their own judgement.

That’s why I invested in becoming an accredited professional Business Mentor. Professional practice combines business experience with specialist training, mentoring models and frameworks, ethical standards, ongoing development, reflective practice and peer support. Just as importantly, agreed goals, regular sessions and accountability maintain momentum. Without that structure, even well-intentioned mentoring arrangements can become irregular, drift and lose their impact.

The aim isn’t to create dependency, but to strengthen the mentee’s confidence, capability and independence.

The opportunity is too important to overlook

The evidence reinforces what I’ve witnessed. In ABM’s research with 250 business leaders who had received professional mentoring, 65% felt it had directly boosted revenue and 72% reported improved mental health and confidence. These are leaders’ reported experiences, not a claim that mentoring alone caused those outcomes. Yet they underline the breadth of value, from commercial performance to the wellbeing of the person making the decisions.

And there’s a substantial opportunity to reach more people. Enterprise Nation’s Mentoring Matters report found that 57% of small businesses had never had a mentor. Imagine what could become possible if more leaders knew where to find quality mentoring and felt confident taking that first step.

The international picture is revealing, too. Be the Business’s G7 Productive Business Index found that 82% of UK business leaders regularly seek advice or support, compared with 97% in Italy, 93% in France and 92% in Canada. Leaders seeking external advice were also up to three times more likely to plan investment in capabilities linked to higher productivity. While this measures advice and support broadly, not professional mentoring specifically, it underlines the value of seeking perspectives beyond our own businesses.

From belief to action, across the UK

That’s why I’m excited to build on my involvement with the Association of Business Mentors, taking a more active role in advancing its mission to make quality professional business mentoring accessible across the UK. I’ve developed the strategy and delivery plan for the ABM Ambassador Network, secured Board approval and will now recruit, onboard and lead regional Ambassadors to connect people, open doors and champion professional business mentoring locally.

My focus at YUnique Marketing remains working with ambitious SME leaders to grow, scale and build more valuable businesses. This additional ABM role extends that commitment by championing quality professional mentoring as a more accessible part of business support across the UK.

Because when we develop better leaders, we build better businesses. And stronger businesses create opportunities for people and communities. That’s a future worth championing together.

If you are an experienced professional business mentor interested in becoming an ABM regional Ambassador, I would welcome a conversation about how you could contribute.

Sources and further reading

Association of Business Mentors, Driving Business Growth and Wellbeing Through Professional Business Mentoring (2024) Report: https://associationofbusinessmentors.org/abm-research-driving-business-growth-and-wellbeing-through-professional-business-mentoring/

Enterprise Nation, Mentoring Matters Report and Findings: https://www.enterprisenation.com/learn-something/mentoring-matters-why-57-perecent-of-small-businesses-have-never-had-a-mentor/

Be the Business, G7 Productive Business Index (2023), p. 62: https://bethebusiness.com/files/research-reports/btb_g7_pbi_2023_080823.pdf