If you haven't already, now is a good time to start reaching out to potential mentors that you can share your plans with. Mentors are great at providing you with feedback when you're in the trenches.
First, a couple of things about mentors:
1. Mentors aren't the same thing as advisors. I won't get into the value (or lack of value) of advisors in this guide, but I'll just say that advisors usually get equity, are usually paid, and are usually only necessary if you have a very technical product (you sell DNA kits, so you have a celebrated scientist as an advisor) or are trying to enter a very competitive or closed market (so you have CEOs from key stakeholders as advisors).
2. A mentor "works" for the CEO, not for the business. A mentor has a professional relationship with you to help you deal with issues or see opportunities in your business. Think of them as personal advisors as opposed to company advisors. This means that they aren't required (and you shouldn't ask outright) to introduce you to people in their network, or be on call for advice. If you picked and expect your mentor to make key introductions, you should consider making them an advisor and making your expectations clear - and compensating them for it.
3. Working with mentors take time. If you want to get value from your mentor, you need to keep them informed of what's happening and provide them with regular updates. If you don't follow-up regularly, most mentors feel like you don't value their time.
4. Mentors offer advice - its up to you act on it. You don't work for the mentor. It's up to you to take or leave their advice. Sometimes you'll disagree. If it's on a big issue, it may end the relationship (it's hard to mentor someone who's vision is fundamentally different than mine). If you're both professional, you'll accept it and move on. Don't get stuck in a relationship where there isn't mutual trust and respect.
5. You should both get something out of the relationship. You may feel like you're getting all the good advice and the mentor is getting nothing. Most mentors that I know do it because they like to work with smart people, see what's happening in an industry, be close to decisions and their outcomes to learn what works, and to give back because someone helped them. They're getting something from the relationship too.
When you're looking for someone as a mentor, here are some things I recommend you look for:
Business relationships are still relationships and you should apply the same core principles you do in any other human relationship. When you reach out to a potential mentor, you want to provide enough information about your business and your challenges to engage the person. Usually the first time you're reaching out to them, you are asking them to do you a favour. Often, initial introductions look something like this:
"Hi Scott, I am founder of XYZ and am having an issue with ABC… I know you've had success in this before, can I pick your brain?".
When a mentor receives an email like this it can come across as "Hi, we don't know each other, but I need your help. When can you help me?".
A better way to reach out to someone is to show that you respect and know something about them ("Hey Scott, I saw you on This Week in Startups and I loved your line about Linkedin - I was totally nodding my head when you said that, and I noticed Jason Calacanis was all like "hell yeah" too."). Then mention your startup and problem "I'm actually building a mobile social platform for tennis players that I think you'll really love, but we haven't been able to get the user signups we had hoped for when we launched.". Make the request respectfully. "I know you must extremely busy working on Accel.io (which is awesome, btw!), but I was hoping you might have time for a 30 minute call to suggest some ideas on how we could fix the specific problem we're having. I wouldn't normally be this bold, but I have a lot of respect for your experience in this and I truly believe we have a great product.". And then offer to be flexible for meeting.
Usually you'll get a positive response from a request like this. Sometimes you won't because people are genuinely really busy when you contacted them. Follow-up in a few weeks.
Once you speak with the person, its ok to finish the call with "hey this was really helpful, would it be ok if I sent you an update once we tried a few things we talked about today?". Just be sure to follow-up and take your time.
Lastly, I don't believe you should ever pay a mentor. If you want to compensate someone for their advice by giving them shares, or buying them lunch, thats your choice. If someone has been mentoring you and brings up compensation, I would suggest you say that's more of an advisory role (and you can discuss if you want that or not) and give them a way out "I understand if I've been taking too much or your time and you want me to back off a bit".