Getting Help with a New Business

Now take a skills and experience inventory of your team: you, your key employees, your professional advisors. What is still missing? Do you have both demonstrable skills and experience in all the key areas of finance, marketing, product development, operations, and general management? Do you have people you can call at a time of crisis? Do you have people who will help you talk through your opportunities to see which you should take and which you should leave behind?
Create a Board of Advisors from these professionals and others. A Board of Advisors is usually made up of from 4 to 8 individuals, each of whom brings a different type of expertise (marketing, finance, operations, product or service expertise, human resource, strategy, etc, in your industry or not.) These are people who you have asked to help with advice on running your company because you respect their judgment and their expertise.

Consider adding a board of advisors for two reasons: First, it will add tremendously to the credibility of your plan, and second, every business owner needs one.
Unless you are incorporated and have a Board of Directors, you as the business owner report to no one. And maybe this is exactly why you wanted to have your own business. But human nature is to work more slowly than our potential if we aren’t accountable to someone for our work. Make yourself accountable for your own goals with a board of advisors.
Don’t deprive yourself of all the help you can get. Consider potential sources of help from these categories:

Trade Associations
Government or Educational Institutions
Successful Entrepreneurs
Suppliers
Professionals in your industry
Other professionals (attorneys, accountants, insurance agents, real estate brokers, bankers, consultants)

A Board of Advisors is not the same as a Board of Directors. A Board of Directors has a legal responsibility to the shareholders of a corporation. A Board of Advisors has no legal obligation to make decisions – it is created only to give advice to the business owner. Advisors, therefore, don’t have the same personal liability as Directors do.

Boards of Advisors usually meet quarterly. Help your Board help you by setting an agenda for the meeting, and sending the Board some information on how the company is doing ahead of time. Plan to meet for about 3 hours per session. Your agenda should include all the major questions you would like to have help in answering, both problems you are wrestling with and the upcoming opportunities.

Besides the quarterly meetings, Advisors should expect to be available to you by phone and should also be expected to review monthly reports or updates and telephone you with their questions. Advisors will probably spend about 10 hours per quarter on your business.

If you are a start-up, advisors may agree to meet without pay. Once you have completed your first successful year in business expect to pay advisors anywhere from $500 up per a quarter. This is some of the smartest money you can spend.