At The Alternative Board® (TAB), we often hear from business owners who feel they can’t share those challenges with their friends, family, employees, consultants or even the people they have hired to run their businesses. We’ve heard many business owners use the phrase, “It’s lonely at the top”.
But it doesn’t have to be lonely. Not when business owners get together with an established group of peers to discuss problems as part of a business owner advisory board.
What makes a business owner advisory board different?
A TAB business advisory board is a hand-picked group of like-minded business owners across a variety of industries who can all share insight and expertise to help each other’s businesses grow. In these peer-to-peer boards, members come together as equals in business, with a shared goal of growing their companies and developing their skills as business owners and leaders. This creates an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust, where members can be frank about their challenges and questions.
Not only do fellow business owners more fully understand the issues you face, as a business owner advisory board matures, but members also become more familiar with each other’s businesses and better able to offer personalized insights on things like how to increase sales, how to run the business more efficiently and how to solve thorny personnel problems.
The ability to be open among a trusted group of peers allows business owners to not only grow their businesses but also to find personal and professional balance.
Who might benefit from a business owner advisory board?
Whether you’re just getting your first business off the ground, or you’ve been around the block a few times before, you’ll benefit from a business owner advisory board. Don’t underestimate the power a group of like-minded business owners can have when they put their attention and business acumen toward the same goals.
The benefits of joining an advisory board extend across industries. For example, owners who are members of TAB represent over 300 different industries.
Seeking out a business owner advisory board is a smart move for a business owner who:
- Has been running a business smoothly for some time but is ready to increase growth.
- Is considering a new direction for the business and is headed into uncharted territory.
- Knows that the business is in a rut and isn’t sure how to get out of it.
- Is considering a transition of power – especially within a family – and needs advice.
- Could use regular help with marketing, hiring, employee management and other day-to-day business concerns.
- Wants to run the business more efficiently to improve work-life balance.
- Has just bought a new business and could use expert mentorship.
- Is looking to sell a business and wants to make it more attractive for a potential buyer.
In short, a business owner advisory board is a smart move for every business owner. But particularly for those who are hungry to improve both professionally and personally. Most people join TAB because they know from talking to other board members that it will increase the profits of their company and the value of their business. They also receive non-financial values that may be every bit as important or, in some cases, more important.
Augment your core competencies
Every business owner has specific strengths and weaknesses. Each member of a peer advisory board comes with a different unique set of strengths and weaknesses, each tried and tested in the real world. This makes a board a powerful tool for business owners to help fill the gaps in each other’s knowledge and grow their capabilities in other areas.
Many business owners find it difficult to admit vulnerability or knowledge gaps to others. A peer advisory board is designed as a safe space where you can assess your strengths and grow professionally.
Help you evaluate new ideas and strategies
Are you puzzling through a new growth idea? Considering a possible business opportunity? Here’s another place where the real-world experience of your business owner advisory board will come in handy.
Coming up with effective strategies – growth, marketing, succession, etc. can be difficult. Adapting generic advice to your specific business is a challenge and evaluating whether a specific strategy will work for you is easier with the help of other seasoned business owners. But in a board with a diverse membership, it’s likely one of your peers has come across whichever situation you’re considering in the past and can give you custom-tailored advice.
Your board members can also help you ask tough critical questions or offer suggestions and caveats based on their personal experience. They can help you uncover your blind spots and confront gaps in your line of reasoning to make sure your new strategy is watertight.
Help you avoid missteps
It’s often said that the best way to learn is by making mistakes. But the second-best way is certainly to learn from other people’s mistakes. In a business owner advisory board, your peers will have made plenty of the usual business missteps, and they’ll be happy to share their stories to help you learn.
Provide an outsider’s perspective
When you’re too close to your business, it can be difficult to see issues or opportunities that might be glaringly obvious to someone else. Cultivating a group of unbiased outside observers is an excellent way to expand your perspective. This can be especially helpful for family-owned businesses, which often suffer from relying on the advice of too many people with very similar points of view.
A business owner who has spent 40 years in manufacturing will have unique questions and ideas to offer a wholesale business. These could spark true light bulb moments, whereas if you brought up your problem to a group consisting only of wholesaling professionals, you might hear only industry-standard advice.
Create accountability
Many business leaders excel at meeting the day-to-day deadlines of the business. But big-picture goals designed to stretch business often get pushed to the back burner. A business owner advisory board helps provide accountability to keep you on track with big-picture goals.
Along with providing peer pressure and accountability, members of a business owner advisory board can help you understand why you’re having trouble missing certain milestones or goals. They can help you identify which issues are holding you back or brainstorm ways to get obstacles out of your path.
Two big things that are important to the success of a business owner advisory board
- Openness to receiving advice, and willingness to share advice.
- Are you willing to be vulnerable enough to learn and grow along with your fellow board members? Are you willing to hear (and offer) tough advice?
Advisory boards are ideal for business leaders who are looking to leverage the collective knowledge, expertise and experience of other business owners. Join The Alternative Board® and unlock the true potential of your business, today.