If you are 'too busy' most of the time, or locked behind closed doors, no mentoring relationship can work.

The best entrepreneurs never confuse motion with results.

If you are 'too busy' most of the time, or locked behind closed doors, no mentoring relationship can work.

Being an entrepreneur, everyone needs to hear a personal anecdote from you once in a while or see you go out of your way to make someone's day. Maybe it's time for a party at your house to unwind, or an afternoon off with the team to attend the ball game.

Team members need to feel trusted and valued, and micromanaging communicates the opposite. Founders who are prone to manage every detail of their businesses will ultimately kill themselves as well as lose the support of team members. Learn to delegate key tasks and give credit.

Some entrepreneurs have a bad habit of taking personal credit for all improvements and innovations at their startups. If you penalize or ignore employee initiatives, you can be certain that they won't be repeated, and motivation for more conventional performance will suffer.

If it annoys you when team members ask about their next promotion or talk about other job opportunities in the industry, you have motivational problems in the making. You need to build a habit of proactively seeking employee interests and suggesting follow-up steps.