AIBU to ask if you would pay for this?

[Sunflowers095]

I have a business idea but I wonder if there would actually be a demand. Essentially, I've been thinking a lot about how different backgrounds affect your ability to succeed professionally, as well as how graduates are struggling for work.

It would be a platform for women, the main idea is mentoring. So for example, a student (or someone looking for a career change) would have access to things like CV templates/reviews, forum, 1 on 1 calls with women who have experience/are accomplished in their careers and can act as a mentor.

This would exist as a free and premium version (mentoring would be premium).

It would be a partnership with the mentors directly (where they would be paid a fee) or an agreement with their company to have them represent the business as a mentor. The companies/mentors would benefit by having younger people with skills but no experience provide ideas/small projects. A bit like a competition but the company can use winning ideas.

I am yet to iron out exactly the details but want to validate it first. Personally I would pay for a service like this & I think new generations are less family oriented and more career driven.

It could make a great addition to the CV of the younger women as well as the mentors, serve as a community aimed at helping women succeed professionally.

If the premium version cost for example £20 would you buy it? Assuming it's a monthly rolling subscription that can be cancelled anytime and you can benefit from unlimited resources and a monthly mentoring call? Thanks in advance!

The companies/mentors would benefit by having younger people with skills but no experience provide ideas/small projects.

Companies can already get this by offering placements to younger people without the hassle of offering mentorship.

Having worked with people with no experience, they are quite a pain to train. They are very little benefit to a company and are a liability for a year until they are finally trained enough to be of use. I am not sure how this benefits a company to join unless it is part of an HR initiative to promote social mobility. If that were the case, I think an apprenticeship is of more mutual benefit than just careers advice without a job.

Mmm..

I do work for a company (sorry, annoying I really can't say too much to identify it) that provides guidance, advice and support via a messaging platform, email and phone line, to people embarking on a thing ...

I am one of the people providing the one to one support - it is a very niche, specialised field, the people like me offering that support are all accredited in the field and experienced and also skilled at communicating via text rather than talk..

It works because the subject matter is something people often need hand-holding support, answers within an hour, and on-going support over a number of weeks or months.

It is very popular and the numbers are looking sufficiently good that Big Brand Name are putting Uber Money (so far 100's of K, soon to be Millions) into it...

But... i think it really only works because its been relatively easy to find a group of experts to provide the support, and because the subject matter is niche, its a fairly small subject.....

I think you may struggle to provide the required people to provide the support in a manner that gives your client base what they need, quickly... its a VERY broad subject with likely lots of options, opinions and different ways to do things and finding a group of people to offer advice on that that sticks to a script and isn't entirely biased to the particular person advising.... I think you are going to run into trouble tbh.

Also the set up costs - the thing I am doing is app based - people buy an app..

To do that, the app needs to be built, it needs content, you need that sorted first, you need a team of advisors on board straight away and willing to work through teething problems.

Potentially, that could cost hundreds of thousands in tech stuff, paying people to be available even if not actually working.... long before you see any actual income...

A service that can only be accessed if and when girls/women have the money for a £20 a month mentoring service is never going to be a substitute for the kind of mentorship that having highly engaged, probably affluent parents brings.

Another voice here saying that mentorship is available for free in my profession. I have been both mentor and mentee a number of times over the years. Sometimes it is useful and sometimes it doesn't work at all. I wouldn't expect to pay for it and have happily given my own time for free.

Some councils in Australia offer mentor services for free to encourage start up businesses. I guess the thing is would the grads pay for the service, and is it something that you could approach a uni about to see if they would pay for it as part of their student services.

Widdlin that app sounds interesting and seems a good way to reach out to the target audience.

I tend to agree about the service needing to be tailored to the individual to be of genuine benefit. It has to be almost sector-and-role specific, assuming the individual already knows what they want to do.

Dh and I are helping dd to look for a course at university. Despite vast amounts of careers advice and support provided for free by her school, none of it was of much use as dd want to go into the creative field and did not know herself which area specifically in order to narrow down to the right course. The amounts of research that dh and I did to help dd funnel down the courses was immense and tested our research and analytical skills and understanding of dd and her personality and strengths to the max. It was not just sign posting info but also cheer leading and making her watch presentations and attend open days even if she did not want to.

I think we got there but I don't know what in real life can replicate the investment in time and knowledge. It is either too general (CV writing, interview tips, all free on internet) or too expensive (career coaching but not necessarily in that particular sector/role) or require the individual to access mentors in the field. If it is the latter, then it makes sense for the individual to seek them out - seriously google is their friend. If someone cannot do that, you won't be able to target them anyway and even if you did, they would not be motivated enough to want to pay £20 a month.

No sorry.

I do this kind of mentoring both for free through charities, industry initiatives and on a paid basis. I do think there’s a big need, I don’t think the model sounds quite right, but I think it would be worth piloting something if you could get businesses to pay for it...I think the end users would be more likely to pay to belong to a group that has clear business sponsorship and backing, maybe in terms of attending in person events. If you look at keeping it fairly simple and low cost it could work, or it could be a social enterprise.

I get this service for free from Business Wales.

I used a service like this in the Netherlands. It is called Empower Amsterdam. It was a fantastic service and I would use it again if I ever needed mentoring or career guidance.
Good luck OP!

I actually really like the idea. I agree that there are some quite big issues to iron out but they are not impossible and I don't know a new business out there that hasn't had to jump hurdles and adjust accordingly.

Maybe an idea would be not just to focus on graduates but also women looking for a change in career. I currently work in one industry and due to the pandemic I am training in another as my plan B. I would find a platform like this really useful from that side, however I am also a business owner and although I would love to I would find it really hard to find the time to mentor someone and make a permanent commitment to that so think from the other side it would need to be made as easy as possible.

Good luck with it all, I hope you figure it out!

My feeling is that those who would be motivated enough to pay for this kind of service, would probably have been motivated enough to create their own network/seek out their own mentor.

There is a risk that it will attract those who need more hand-holding, and potential therefore are less likely to succeed.

I also don't know how mentoring can necessarily get around the fact that it's an exceptionally tough job market out there, and lack of experience will always count against early careers women.

I'm also not sure you can base it on assumptions such as young women are less family-orientated, or that it's those from working class backgrounds who can struggle to succeed.

An operational consideration: will the mentoring be face-to-face? That could make your model much harder.

I agree with the PP who suggested peer mentoring/groups.

For your research, I'd have a look at National Citizenship Service and Escape the City.

But, in a nutshell, I wouldn't pay for this - and I struggled to break into my industry for a few years.

It’s not a bad idea, however the prices you’re considering seem quite steep when there are a range of other ways to potentially access these services for free.

I’ll admit I’m not your target demographic however I was once a young female looking for guidance. I got it initially through Young Enterprise schemes at school, then via my university and then sought out a mentor/sponsor in every organisation I’ve then worked in- many places had mentoring schemes in place, and I’ve networked through various means to seek out mentors outside of my field. Basically it was all readily available without me having to do much proactively. And a lot of this was pre prolific internet (I’m mid thirties).

I would say though that charities and LinkedIn largely have this covered from an online perspective nowadays and at a cheaper price. LinkedIn learning is my current way of exploring other potential career paths, general advice etc. some amazing content on there covering all sorts.

@Sunflowers095 - have you canvassed or done any market research with the target communities or customers for your product? You would get a more useful response than on a general MN forum I suspect.

Personally, the idea of paying for a mentor feels a bit icky. I would rebadge that as coaching or career therapy or something, because mentoring is generally a two-way relationship (not for cash).

Would I pay? No. Would my DD pay? No. Wd I pay for my DD2 who has difficulties and is really struggling - yes - but I doubt you'd be intetrested in helping her as she's not a high flyer she just needs a break.

Too woolly, too vague, I suspect too disappointing, (all hope but no actual job out of it)/

Lost my job, was looking for a career change. £20 pcm too expensive. Time also better spent applying for jobs. IF it was 1-1 support, several hours a week if I needed it, on demand, coaching, pushing, helping, setting up introductions - then yes. But there's no way you could supply that for the price.

My DD - maybe she would pay. She works but is not sure what to do next, how to get on the right road, what she should be focusing on to prepare for the next step. BUT she'd need real support, training, help with next steps- and she;s slaving away in a minium wage job trying to pay rent and travel - so neither time nor money are in abundance.

We both get this sort of support now from family, friends, (my professional friends are very helpful to her), uni groups, volunteering and the internet.

No I wouldn't pay for it, similar things exist for free in my area

Surprised at some of the responses here. I would have thought if mentoring from uni/current job would be that easily available graduates and many women wouldn't struggle professionally but they do.

We generally don't though? We struggle in our careers if / when we decide to get pregnant and take 5 years out.

Think about this logically...

The ones who are looking in the direction of a professional career will already have the skills / know how / internet smarts to find all of this for free. It's probably because they've found all of this that they're looking in that direction anyway. I'm in my late twenties and was one of them, as are many of my friends.

I've had two different careers, engineering being one of them, and both have active communities on Reddit - engineering specifically for women. I've been in three different Slacks with people I've never met face to face, but we share information relevant to our careers. And that's not including the things set up through workplaces.

The ones who might actually need something like this either don't want it (because they want to be a hairdresser or a nail tech, like a few of my high school friends) or they aren't looking for it because careers where you'd need networking and mentoring just aren't on their radar.

So how are you going to convince people to pay £20 a month for something they don't want and never knew they needed?

The only way you'd have any luck with this (imo) is the old saying "you can mine for gold or you can sell pickaxes".

Like these people... selling a course which teaches women how to start a business selling memberships and courses to other women who are looking to start a business.

(And their new businesses will probably be in the #girlboss momtrepreneurship industry too).

femaleentrepreneurassociation.com/start-and-grow/

Also I'm NOT suggesting you actually do this because imo this shit is MLM in a slightly better outfit - preying on people's desperation to make something of themselves.

Go back to the drawing board. What can you sell? How can you add value? What skills do you have that are in high demand?

I would have used something like this in my 20s. Now in my 40s I I have been approached to do mentoring for a few companies, and it irks me- I love mentoring and do a fair bit of it, but will always do it for free, I don’t want a middle man to profit from it.

A couple of points, not RTFT so apologies if repeats

1. People that already mentor do it as an altruistic thing, adding in a £ element may put people off becoming mentors. You add in money and it feels like it's an expectation and burden rather than a voluntary extra nice thing to do
2. I think mentoring works better when mentors can also be sponsors of that person so within the same industry if not company
3. If you do set this up consider having male mentors as well as women even if the mentee audience is primarily women. It is society's job as a whole to make sure diversity and talent are supported not just women's

Haven't read all the replies but there is something like this here in Ireland, set up over the last couple of years called Mentor Her. Might be worth a google

Erm, why does the fault lie with me when I have based my reply on what you've posted?
Your attitude is appalling
Have you actually worked in the real world?

I’ll be honest, even if I was struggling my instinct would be to avoid this kind of thing as it sounds like you’re just trying to make money out of people of are already in a difficult and vulnerable and frustrated position. I’d also be wondering a lot about you - what are your achievements and therefore what puts you in a position to support others?
It sounds like a vanity/saviour project. You’re going to big yourself up by seeking out others less fortunate than you.

I'm the sort of person you'd want as a mentor, in terms of career and background. (Probably not in terms of personality, though!) I see two big problems with this:

First, most people with established professional careers have relatively little free time. The average man doesn't have much of it, and the average woman has even less. Most of them feel like they don't get to spend enough time with their own kids. The trade-off is that they get paid really well. In combination, that means that if they're going to spend several hours per month moonlighting as a mentor, it needs to pay at least as much as they'd have made if they spent that same amount of time taking on an extra client or putting in more hours on an extra project. Your suggested subscription fee won't even come close to covering that. The only way someone like me would do it would be as a sort of charity, and if that were my goal, I'd rather help someone who can't afford this sort of thing, because they probably need it more.

Second, what exactly are the mentors supposed to do? I'm not going to vouch for someone or pull strings to get them a job just because they indirectly paid me to give them some general career advice. That's because it makes me look bad if they screw up, and if they basically paid me to use my influence to get them in the door, that makes me look even worse. Depending on the field, it could be a discipline-worthy ethical violation. I'm certainly capable of helping them put together a CV or doing some mock interviews, but most universities have entire departments for that, and their employees are probably better at it because they do it for a living.

No, similar things exist for free. Also if someone doesn't have a job how would they afford the subscription?
No offence but keep thinking of ideas, this isn't the one.

LinkedIn's new Career Coach does a lot of what you're proposing.