After the successful end of the 3-month mentoring program of Mentor the Young and our fruitful work with my mentor Todor Madjarov, I decided to share with you an idea that I think you will find interesting.

From the very beginning of the program, I had a goal to document the progress in a short way, keeping a lot of basic notes before and after each conversation with the mentor, to have visual progress after each conversation, I also found it quite fun to have a version where the brand evolves and people are interested to know how the hell everything happened and what kind of ideas and options we went through.

So over the next ~2 weeks, I'll be sharing with you the progress, the questions, and cases we discussed, and overall how a mentor/professional with real-life experience can help a startup entrepreneur.

I will present the beginning and the end of the creation of the next "Start-up" in Bulgaria, which is a total improvisation, but with deep thoughts and grand plans.

In our first official meeting of the Mentor the Young program, as is logical, I as a mentee, and Todor as a mentor, commented again on the goals and the essence of our work together.

It is very likely that most of the "mentees" are not aware of the exact specifics, what their goals actually are, and how to maximize their own benefit from their mentor.

I'll tell you something - you'll never be able to get the most out of a "direct supporter" and you don't need to. It's enough to take advantage of the fact that you're not facing YouTube with yet another "Lambo guru", nor ChatGPT or Google, but another human being who has most likely walked your path (since he's your mentor) and you can simply comment on different cases that bother you, prioritizing the important points, because time is precious (for idle chatter, after all).

So, what we commented on, during our fun-formal first conversation - first we decided it was okay to be clear about my personal goals to start with, and then my professional goals.

In my case, the main focus was the professional ones, which weren't much different from my personal ones. According to my mentor, Todor, working with me would/was easy because I was clear about my ideas and goals from the start.

This was true, but not exactly.

What were my goals in the end?

On a personal/professional level:

- To improve my verbal/public expression/communication (we definitely didn't do that, it's very hard for me)

- Slightly clichéd but essential - to improve the way I negotiate, especially on more taboo topics. For example - awkward conversations about money, salaries, debts, quick loans (just kidding), etc.

- And last but not least, and actually the focus and essence of my existence right now - Digital New Era.

Briefly about the brand - the idea for the name was inspired by Counter-Strike: 1.6 New Era - sounds cool.

Back to the program, actually during my interviews with the Mentor the Young Machines I mentioned that my main goal is to develop my own, legit digital agency with a focus on the web, having good knowledge and experience in project management, in giving consultancy on the web and doing sales, again in the same niche, basic, technical SEO, good basics of planning and doing digital designs - graphic, web, logo, and branding, etc (not much else, say brochures, business cards, and banners). Complete design of quality, user experience for digital products and web, and last but not least - development of cool, working, interesting, innovative, MEGA, MEGA cool, and reliable websites. (hee hee hee)…

But NOT DIGITAL MARKETING - NO, NO, AND NO.

That's actually one of Todor's many strengths - digital marketing, on top of that in the same direction I'm in - Start-Up.

That's enough for today, if you're interested, wait for the next post, if you're not interested, don't wait. Might as well give a shout-out below.

Conclusion:

The essential goals for the program:

Marketing

- Strategies for promoting services and products;
- Different marketing campaigns according to different levels of business success and objectives.

Negotiations

- How to negotiate successfully with potential customers and partners?
- Focus on the "less comfortable" topics, e.g. money, terms, conditions, percentage, etc..

Business extension

- When is the right time to expand and how do we identify it?
- Under what conditions should we do it?
- Where and how to start?