An interview with Miklós Palencsár (Mentors & Partners Group)

Mentors & Partners Group is Hungary’s premier consulting firm that specialises in business strategy, business mentoring and organisational development. For multinational companies entering or working in Hungary, MPG offers unparalleled market knowledge, data, and access. The company works alongside international HQs and their domestic outposts to execute organisational improvement projects. For domestic companies wishing to enter the international market, MPG provides complex international expansion consulting. MPG is the developer of reputable companies that are committed to continued development and achieving business goals.

Mentors & Partners Group has been awarded Most Innovative Business Advisory Firm by the Corporate LiveWire judging panel. The judges were particularly impressed with the company for having achieved substantial growth in the past year, despite the global COVID-19 crisis which has decimated businesses worldwide. The judging panel also praised the expertise brought by the CEO and founder, Miklós Palencsár, who is a prominent business specialist known worldwide for having invented the cutting-edge psychological analysis tool, RISE. This unique system is able to identify over 100 trillion personality types, building business theories and strategies based on the results. For more information, please visit www.mentorsandpartners.com.
 
Can you tell us a little bit about your career in business mentoring?
 
I call myself a ‘private mentor’ because I have mentees from the sport and education fields, and of course from business. I started my work as a mentor quite early. I was 22 years old and received a promotion to be the new business development director at Trader Classified Media Group, which was one of the world’s most successful media companies in the print advertisement sector. Within one year, I earned two more promotions, and I was introduced to a business mentor whose responsibility was to make me a strong international leader. He started to teach me about private mentoring.
 
I had just turned 24 when I signed my first business mentoring client. He was a business owner from Germany who saw my company’s success and asked me to build up a new strategy for him. He is my oldest private mentoring partner; we have worked together for close to 20 years. He recommended me to his business partners and friends, and after a while, I was fully booked.
 
What is the RISE system, and how does it benefit business professionals?
 
RISE defines people’s decision-making processes. I could call it a ‘psychological system’ too, but it is much more than that. It includes deep generational research, social media profiling, and historical and sociological impacts. RISE is all about ‘making the best you’, using your original personality: do not act, do not play roles because it can decrease your effectiveness in work, sport, education, etc. If we start a project, we focus on finding a person’s best place in an organisation, team, or division—a place where they can be themselves, and where they can produce most effectively.
 
What inspired you to come up with the concept?
 
I am a fact-based, objective, and realistic economist with a degree in finance and controlling. But when I became a leader, I realised that if I could find a common language with the clients and my team, we could all become way more successful. I used old-school psychological tests that could show a few good things, but not one of them was deep enough, they concentrated more on people’s behaviour. I could easily mislead these tests, so I did not trust them. I wanted a clear, personality-based system that would not be ‘nice’, but one that would show reality, and with it give a real roadmap for development towards a happier life. Some people say I am idealistic, but I don’t just believe that a person can work really hard and have a beautiful private life too—I am actually doing it myself.
 
Why are personality types so important in business, sales, and decision-making?
 
Our personalities govern our lives. When a really important decision comes along, you will use your original personality to make that decision. You need to know your decision-making mechanisms if you want to make good decisions. If you are honest, if you know who you are, you can lead and motivate people, and you can maintain your success. If you play roles, if you are always acting, you will always be a victim of the circumstances. So, if you want to be a real winner for a long time, you need to live your life with your original personality.
 
How can the RISE theory be implemented into other aspects of life?
 
We have serious research concerning parenting, the personalities of children, education, sport, and business, of course. We are preparing national teams and individuals for the Tokyo Olympic Games, and we work with international sports clubs, but we also have private clients who wanted to analyse their families to improve the connections between them. Additionally, we work with sports academies, universities, and of course, we have sizeable partnerships with businesses of all types (SMEs to multinationals). That is to say, if you can find a place where people, their performance, and their future happiness and success are important, you can use RISE.
 
What led to the founding of Mentors & Partners Group?
 
For 15 years, I was an independent private mentor, and I had help in every project, but I never thought about founding a consulting firm. I knew that this field is about trust and relationships, so it is not a product. But a few people whose opinions were important to me pushed me towards opening a firm. And because of that I started to realise that yes, we do have a lot of products—team cohesion development, management development, company scans, reorganisation products—it’s just that I had never thought of them in that way before. So finally, I founded my company, and here we are.
 
In your opinion, what is the difference between business mentoring and business development?
 
I was the first who started calling this special business development methodology ‘business mentoring’. Lots of people use this phrase nowadays, but there is no real meaning behind it. Business mentoring is the combination of classic business consulting and business coaching.
 
A mentoring relationship entails a complex business development project with a consulting team. The mentor leads the project, while the mentee is the chief decision-maker throughout the entire process. That is why good mentoring necessitates a long-term connection where the partner and the mentoring firm work together to reach the partner’s goals year after year. Our longest business mentoring programme is now going on eight years, and the company grew from a micro-entity to an international company with units in 14 different countries.
 
In 2020, Mentors & Partners Group became the largest business developer in Hungary in terms of revenue. What would you say are the key criteria for success in this field?
 
I can say that our partners stay with us. When our business mentoring partners renew their yearly contracts, it is the most natural thing in the world. That is real feedback. But of course, you can follow that in revenue and the profit, too. A good business developer is continually growing. And the profit margin is high because they sell their knowledge.
 
How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the business development landscape?
 
I recently gave a presentation about it in Hungary to CEOs; COVID destroyed the business development market in 2020. By the ‘market’, I mean the part that just took money from the clients but could not deliver real results with their development projects. So, COVID-19 put a halt to the development programmes of most companies.
 
A crisis always cleans the market; companies finally review how much they spend on business development and whether their spending resulted in tangible results, and based on this, they make changes. Our revenue in 2019 was €1,532,000, in 2020 we earned €2,938,000, and most importantly, as of early February 2021, we already have contracts in place to easily surpass the €3million mark. This shows us the loyalty of our partners, which comes from the success we reached together.
 
Is there anything else you would like to add?
 
When the economy is peaceful, people think they don’t need to do their maximum. They don’t need to look into the mirror, and they especially do not need to see the weaknesses that can come from their personality. They need to change this attitude immediately. Of course, if somebody has already changed, they will have an interesting and successful year. I hope we learned from the COVID-19.

Winners in the Corporate LiveWire Innovation and Excellence Awards 2021 for
Most Innovative Business Advisory Firm

Based in Hungary, Mentors & Partners Group (MPG) specialises in business strategy, business mentoring and organisational development. The consultancy firm works with clients across Europe, with a significant presence in Hungary, Brazil and the United States, and a particular focus on domestic companies looking to enter the international market. For these, MPG can offer extensive knowledge on international expansion and continued business development. Advising across 17 sectors in 14 countries, the company’s expertise lies in sales and management development programmes, CEO mentoring, foreign market entry, and brand and image management.
 
CEO and founder, Miklós Palencsár, is a prominent business specialist known worldwide for having invented the cutting-edge psychological analysis tool, RISE. This unique system is able to identify decision-making mechanisms, which ultimately helps clients to identify personality-based target groups, market opportunities, and entry strategies. MPG is also the only company to have created a personality map for different locations in the world, which shows the proportions of personality types in a given country; thereby helping clients determine the main decision-making factors in the appropriate market. This means that in addition to traditional market research information, the consultancy’s partners get a clear idea of the most effective business strategies and communication techniques for the chosen location.
 
The judging panel praised the expertise brought by Miklós, who has been a business mentor since the age of 22. He offers honesty to his clients, with direct and constructive feedback that pushes them to achieve their long-term goals. Working at each level of the company, Miklós is known for his inherent ability to understand people and their motivations, thereby discovering the building blocks to success.
 
In 2020, MPG achieved 60% revenue growth and 107% profit growth; an immense achievement considering the difficulties many businesses faced during this period. In turn, many of the company’s clients have also reported unprecedented success, thanks to the expertise of the dedicated team. Meanwhile, the RISE system is now being implemented as a vital tool in parenting and sports teams and will be guiding the cohesion of multiple national teams and individuals athletes at the Tokyo Games later this year.
 
“CEO and founder, Miklós Palencsár, is a prominent business specialist known worldwide for having invented the cutting-edge psychological analysis tool, RISE.”

Website: https://mentorsandpartners.com/