"Who are my followers, and what are we trying to tell them? Tell your story." - Beth Wiley, The Great Pumpkin Patch

In addition to hosting Mentor Coffees, at Illini Prairie CEO we are also using targeted mentors to help our students bring their business ideas to reality.

What does "targeted mentoring" look like? Sometimes it's scheduling a speaker to help the whole group work through an idea or a process, like keeping financial records, like Jennifer Perrine of Camelot Business Solutions. Or, it may be bringing in an entrepreneur who has experience with several of the products and processes our entrepreneurs are making, like Jill Hohlbauch of Jill's Design Studio.

Last week, it was returning to The Great Pumpkin Patch, not for a tour, but to talk with Mac Condill and Beth Wiley about the branding, marketing and merchandising lessons they have learned through the years, and how we can apply those lessons to our own businesses.

Condill, a former CEO facilitator and General Manager of The Pumpkin Patch, advised students to, "Lean into CEO hard. It already has a network." He showed us how we could use the CEO logo on merchandise in posts for our own businesses, as well as using our CEO contacts for cross-promotion.

Wiley encouraged us to get people to connect with our products and businesses by not just posting our products, but letting them get to know us, as well as our business. "You all have great stories, you just have to tell them."

Condill reminded us, "You're going to build up from nothing, or very little." After all, "All this stuff [branding at TGPP] didn't happen overnight. You're not starting here; you're starting where you're at."

Then, they shared ideas specific to each of our businesses for how we could use social media to help build a brand, how to approach potential wholesale customers, the importance of walking in with the product in hand, the packet of information we should provide to potential marketplaces, opportunity costs, and how to take "no" for an answer.

"We're offering you guys some of our expertise," Condill said, encouraging us to really take to heart the conversations we have with our mentors.