Reaching Back: Mentoring the Next Woman

You did not get here alone.

Neither did I.

Somewhere behind you is a woman who answered your question, recommended a book, told you the truth when you needed it, or simply believed you could do it before you did. You might not even remember her name. You remember what she did.

Here is the tension. The further along you get, the more you have to give, and the less time you feel you have to give it. Just when your experience becomes valuable to someone else, your calendar says no. So the women with the most to pass on are often the ones passing on the least.

Mentoring feels like something you do once you have arrived. It is actually something you do on the way.

The Women Who Pulled Me Up

When I hit my lowest point in business, I did not climb out by myself. I was working about 70 hours a week. I was saying yes to everyone. My marriage was strained, and I was missing my kids while sitting right beside them.

What got me out was not a brilliant idea I had on my own. It was people.

First, I laid down the chase for success, titles, and approval and decided to lead my business God’s way. That was the heart change. But a heart change needs hands and feet. So I hired a business coach who showed me a different way to run my week. I joined a community of women in business who had already walked this road and were honest about the potholes. And with their support, I stepped out of the commitments that did not belong to me.

Those women did not have to show up for me. They had their own businesses, their own kids, their own full weeks. They chose to reach back anyway.

What they gave me was not complicated. Honest questions. A different picture of what a week could look like. Permission to stop being the only person who could do everything. None of it was advice I could have found in a book, because the book would not have known me. It was the truth I needed, from women who could see what I could not see on my own.

That is what I want to talk about today: choosing to be that kind of woman for someone else.

God’s Design for Women Helping Women

Paul’s letter to Titus includes a picture of how this is meant to work. He tells Titus that the older women should be reverent and should “teach what is good,” and then says, “Then they can urge the younger women” (Titus 2:3-4).

In context, Paul is writing about home and faith in the early church, not business. But the pattern he describes reaches far. Women who have walked a road are meant to turn around and help the women coming behind them. It is not a nice extra. It is how God designed the body to grow.

Notice that “older” does not have to mean age. In business, it can simply mean further along. If you have been running your business for two years, there is a woman in her first month who would love to hear what you have learned. If you have priced one thing confidently, there is a woman still charging what she charged in year one.

You do not need to have arrived. You just need to be a few steps ahead and willing to turn around.

How to Mentor Without Losing Your Week

Mentoring does not drain you the way you think it will. Explaining what you have learned forces you to understand it better. Watching someone else grow reminds you how far you have come. But it has to fit inside a healthy week, placed with intention and not squeezed in at 9 PM. Here is how.

1. Give it a fixed slot, not a floating yes. Decide in advance how much mentoring time you have. For most women, two hours a month is plenty. Put it on your calendar as a recurring block on a delivery day, say the first Wednesday from 1 to 3 PM. When someone asks for your time, you are not deciding whether to help. You are deciding whether she fits the slot you already set aside.

2. Mentor from your Monday folder. The email folder where I park on-the-business ideas all week also collects questions from women behind me. When one comes in, it goes in the folder. On my CEO day, I decide: quick reply, resource, or offer a call. Nothing gets a rushed answer at 10 PM, and nothing gets forgotten.

3. Have three ready-made gifts. Most mentoring questions fall into the same few buckets. Prepare one thing for each so you can give generously in minutes. For example: a one-page “how I price” explainer, your client onboarding checklist, and a list of the five books or tools that helped you most. Sharing a template that saved you hours is one of the most practical ways to reach back.

4. Run a 30-minute call with a shape. Unstructured calls run long and help little. Try this: five minutes for her to describe where she is stuck, ten minutes of you asking questions, ten minutes of you sharing one or two specific things you did, five minutes for her to name her next step. Then end on time. Ending on time is part of the mentoring. It shows her what a protected calendar looks like.

5. Tell her the hard truth you wish someone had told you. Kindness is not the same as softness. Imagine a woman in her first year who keeps underpricing her work. She charges $150 for a session that takes her six hours including editing, so she is earning about $25 an hour before expenses. She is exhausted and confused about why the business is not growing. You could say, “Your work is lovely,” and she would leave feeling nice and stay stuck. Or you could say, “Your work is lovely, and you are charging half of what it is worth. Here is what happened when I doubled my rate: I lost two clients and gained eleven hours a week.” One honest conversation might save her a year.

Here is what two hours a month looks like in practice. One 30-minute call with a woman a few steps behind you. One hour on your CEO day answering three folder questions with real care. Thirty minutes writing one encouraging, specific message to someone whose work you have noticed. That is it. Two hours. Over a year, that is 24 hours of your life, and it might be the thing a dozen women remember a decade from now.

You do not need to have arrived to reach back. You only need to be a few steps ahead and willing to turn around.

But What If…

But what if I am still figuring it out myself? Good. Mentor from where you are, not from where you wish you were. “I am two years in and here is what I know so far” is more useful to a first-month owner than polished advice from someone who cannot remember being new. And you will learn as much as she does.

But what if she becomes my competitor? She might. Help her anyway. There is more than enough work for women who do excellent work, and a world with two excellent bakers in it is better than a world with one. You are not building a monopoly. You are building a legacy, and legacy multiplies by giving itself away.

But what if I cannot say no once people know I will help? You can, because you set the slot in advance. “I would love to. I set aside the first Wednesday of each month for conversations like this, and the next open spot is in March. Can I send you my pricing explainer in the meantime?” Generous, bounded, and honest. A mentor who models limits is teaching twice.

Do This Week

Set aside 25 minutes on your CEO day.

1. Write the names of two or three women who helped you. Send one of them a short, specific thank-you this week. Name what she did and what it made possible. (10 minutes)
2. Write the name of one woman a few steps behind you. A friend who just started. Someone in a group you belong to. Someone who reached out once and you never had time to answer. (3 minutes)
3. Offer her one specific thing before Thursday. A 30-minute call, a template, or an answer to the question she has been stuck on. (5 minutes)
4. Put a recurring two-hour mentoring block on your calendar on a delivery day, starting next month. (2 minutes)
5. Pick your three ready-made gifts and note which ones already exist and which need twenty minutes of writing. (5 minutes)

Thank someone who helped you. Help someone coming behind you. Two messages and one calendar block. That is the whole assignment.

Pass It On

The best businesses do not just serve customers. They raise up other builders.

Your story, your mistakes, and your hard-won lessons are not just yours to keep. They were given to you so you could hand them on. The women who reached back for me will probably never know how far their help traveled. Yours will travel too.

Stop working IN your business. Start working ON it. And then turn around and help the next woman do the same.