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Posted: Tue 20th Oct 2026
8 min read
Four years ago, just as ChatGPT was about to launch, Enterprise Nation published its first Mentoring Matters report. Today, small business owners can ask a machine almost anything, at any hour, for the price of a monthly subscription.
Back then, the question we asked was whether enough people would step forward to mentor. They really did.
Enterprise Nation, Newable and the Association of Business Mentors have recruited and enrolled 14,420 volunteer mentors on Help to Grow: Management.
As a result, 89% were satisfied with their mentor and 92% reported improved confidence after the course, and nearly three-quarters felt less isolated.
An independent evaluation by Ipsos and the Institute for Employment Studies found the mentoring element was consistently the highest-rated element.
Enterprise Nation’s new report, Mentoring Matters: Four Years On, looks at who gets mentoring, what difference it makes, and where it could reach further.
Aaron Asadi, chief executive of Enterprise Nation, said:
“The world small businesses work in has changed sharply since our first report in 2022. Cost pressures have not gone away, and owners are running leaner, working longer and making more of the big calls alone.”
Our Small Business Barometer collected 3,406 responses on mentoring across seven survey waves between 2023 and 2026. Just 43% of small business owners have ever worked with a mentor, which leaves 57% who never have.
That share hasn’t improved since 2023, so the gap won’t close on its own.
Gender makes almost no difference: 44% of male and 43% of female owners have been mentored.
Business size does. Only 37% of solo founders have had a mentor, compared with 52% of businesses with employees. Bringing solo founders up to the employer rate would mean around 660,000 more small businesses with an owner who has worked with a mentor.
“Too many are doing it without anyone to turn to,” said Aaron. “Nearly three in five small business owners have never had a mentor, and the owners with least to fall back on are the least likely to have one.”
Since 2022, Enterprise Nation, Newable and the Association of Business Mentors have recruited, trained and supported the volunteer mentors on the government’s Help to Grow: Management Course.
Every participant is offered 10 hours of one-to-one mentoring over 12 weeks. Every mentor is trained to an ILM-assured professional standard.
The numbers so far:
14,420 business leaders enrolled by March 2026
87% of completers were matched with a mentor
89% of those matched were satisfied with their mentoring, including 64% who were very satisfied
95% of mentors said their expertise was well matched to their mentee
94% of participants who used mentoring to plan for growth felt well supported
The mentees’ own words show what that looks like. Catherine Roylance of Genesis Publications said:
“Just to have someone to talk to, that is amazing. And to not feel so alone with it.”
Nicole Owen of Powersheds called mentoring “the best thing about the course”.
Having a mentor isn’t enough on its own. The research, which looked at the Enterprise Nations Small Business Barometer research over three years, found that among owners who rated their mentoring highly, 65% were confident their business would survive, compared with 50% of those who rated it poorly.
On expansion, the figures are 51% and 39%.
Across the wider small business population, owners rate their mentoring 6.8 out of 10 on average, which is solid but short of where it could be. Inside Help to Grow: Management, where mentors are trained, matched and supported, satisfaction is much higher.
Mentored owners also have bigger plans. They’re more likely to plan to hire (53% against 36%), more likely to export, and more likely to seek outside finance, including equity investment.
The first Mentoring Matters report came out a month before ChatGPT launched. You might expect AI to have taken over the role of mentor, but the data doesn’t show that.
Of mentored owners, 68% use AI compared to 60% of those without a mentor.
Owners aren’t short of tools. They’re short of time and an experienced outside perspective to help put those tools to work.
In 2022, the top things mentees wanted from a mentor were life experience (61%), knowledge of the areas they wanted to grow in (58%) and relevant sector experience (43%).
Flora Hamilton, executive director of the Small Business Charter, said:
“Good mentoring needs a human dimension. This is what will bring critical thinking, challenge and judgement, and it keeps decisions grounded in integrity and responsibility.”
Help to Grow: Management is open to businesses with five or more employees, but the owners least likely to have a mentor sit just below that line. The report asks government to:
Make mentoring core to any programme funded to accelerate AI adoption
Build mentoring into any successor to Help to Grow: Management as a defined entitlement, with a guaranteed minimum number of hours with a trained, matched mentor
Create a structured mentoring offer for solo founders and businesses with fewer than five employees
Minister for Small Business and Enterprise, Lord Leong, said:
“Having built and run my own business, I know first-hand that the journey of an entrepreneur can be challenging, and that having someone experienced to turn to can make all the difference.
"Good mentoring is about more than advice. It gives business owners the confidence, practical insights and encouragement to overcome obstacles, seize opportunities and achieve their ambitions.”
Aaron Asadi added:
“Mentoring works: Help to Grow: Management participants rate it above everything else the course gives them.
"The next step is to put a trained, matched mentor within reach of the solo founders and smallest firms the current course does not cover.”
If you run a business on your own, the report’s advice is to find a mentor, and to agree what the mentoring is for before you start.
If you’ve already been mentored, consider becoming a mentor yourself, because experience is what mentees value most.
To become a Help to Grow: Management mentor, sign up or find out more about the course and its mentoring.
