I’ve had a spate of bad mentors after a good one initially who then disappeared. They seem to be patrolling all the business descriptions to look for someone they can use.
The last person was weirdly obsessed with my disability and wanted me to create write-ups on this as busywork when I’m busy actually running my business. He was obsessed with social media brownie points for showing himself helping disabled people. He did not provide any meaningful help to me though.
For the most recent person, I’m getting the vibe that he’s trying to get in on my business. (I’ve had this happen before.) I have to be cautious about theft of my proprietary materials. This dude seems desperate for work rather than someone who wants to actually mentor as a retired executive (which is what SCORE is supposed to be).
I did not find my two most recent mentors helpful AT ALL other than pointing me in the direction of SCORE’s resources. Neither of them had business background (I wanted help with applying to grants and they paired me with someone who said she had experience with grants from her time working at a university) and the other I think has a non-profit (really wasn’t clear to me, my mentor recommended her to me for help with marketing as an SME but she was never available and stopped responding to my emails). When I would send them text for a grant application to proofread they were missing major typos and grammatical errors (I know this because I double checked their work) but told me it was good to go. Complete waste of time for where I’m at in my business now and both seemed too busy with their personal lives to be of assistance and didn’t really have the experience I needed them to have, but I think if you’re just starting out it could help.