How To Create And Utilize A Personal Advisory Board
by Miki Saxon
To reach their goals entrepreneurs and other small businesses are big users of advisory boards and there’s no reason you can’t create one on a more personal level.
Here’s how to do it; note that the process needs to be done in writing, not just in your head.
- Think through what you want to accomplish and how the advisors can/will help; write it down.
- Describe specific areas in which you want assistance, e.g. managing, career planning, job hunting, parenting, etc.
- Describe what you want from each advisor and explain how their acting as an advisor will also be to their benefit.
- For each area think about the people you respect, who will listen to you and to whom you will listen.
- Present your request with enough context for them to understand the above points, the approximate time commitment and your specific reasons for asking them.
- Discuss it with the person, don’t push them or guilt them into doing it. You want people who are excited/pleased to work with you.
- In terms of benefits there are many things you can offer other than formal compensation, e.g., be appreciative; if appropriate offer to do the same for them, take them out and discuss stuff over a meal; send flowers; give them chocolate; use your imagination and knowledge of the person.
- Never overload or abuse your advisors time/energy/interest
How many advisors do you need?
That depends on
- what you want to accomplish,
- the people you can access, and
- the time involved.
Don’t put your advisory group together to impress others (yes, I’ve seen this done), because advisors don’t commit for life and don’t grow on trees you want to access them wisely.
Finally, your advisors aren’t there to stroke you—if you want strokes call your mom—they’re there to tell you hard truths, help sort out confusion and assist you to overcome challenges.
No matter their age they have wisdom, experience and smarts—otherwise why did you ask them in the first place?
Image credit: Andres Rueda on flickr
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December 15th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Great posting and advice. An advisory board is a powerful concept and should be seriously considered by any entrepreneur or small business owner.
Having worked with small business owners on creating advisory boards and boards of directors, I have found the most difficult part is in finding the right advisors. In an attempt to make this process simpler, my colleagues and I created boardmybiz.com, an online matching platform for small business advisors and owners.
This is not a search engine, but instead is a matching service, similar to an online dating site.
The site is for entrepreneurs dedicated to making their business a success and for interested business advisors, dedicated to small business success.
As you have acknowledged, a proper advisory board is an essential element to achieving small business success.
All the best
Bill
December 15th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Hi Bill, it looks like an interesting service. What costs are involved? I looked through the site, but didn’t see anything except on the advisor’s form. Could you add some information.
December 16th, 2009 at 4:45 am
Hi Miki,
Yes, at this time only the advisor profile is accessible as our initial objectives revolved around recruiting qualified advisors, as they are the key to the service. We are a few weeks away from launching the Entrepreneur/Business Owner profile and the rest of the site (matching algorithm) will follow shortly after. Only a sign up exists for the Entrepreneur and we take it all manually from there.
As part of refining the matching algorithm, we are manually matching the advisors with the Business Owners based on the rules of the algorithm. This is allowing us to provide the service for free while we test, refine and improve.
As for the costs, this service will charge both the advisors and the business owners. The proceeds from the advisor fee and a percentage from the entrepreneur fee, will be donated to a number of small business funds, and we plan to award those funds to qualified small businesses.
We will also be providing resources and information necessary to help guide the eventual formation of the board as well as provide suggestion for structure of the board and its meetings.
Hope this helps
Bill
December 16th, 2009 at 8:52 am
Hi Bill, Thanks for taking time to respond in such detail. It will be interesting to see how the service performs. I hope you’ll find time to update us in the future.