Why I Formed an Advisory Board – By Dr. Sandi Webster

Circa 2004, two fledgling business owners had a lot of faith that the business they started from the ashes of 9/11 would grow. They knew the time was right for a women-owned marketing and analytics consulting company to create strategies and deliver tactics for the top financial services companies. They got their first client a few weeks after opening their business; they became consultants!

After two years in business, they could no longer deliver all the projects that came their way. It was time to take the next leap of faith and hire their first employee. One partner said, “It’s time to get our own advisory board. We are getting too many different answers, and we don’t know who to trust.” After some resistance, the other partner agreed, but from whom and where do they find these people?

My business partner and I were in the same situation you are today – probably not in terms of revenue or how long you have been in business – but we were stuck and tired.

1. We needed a sounding board. We had each other but needed impartial advisors to give us their business experiences with corporations, who knew how to scale and sell businesses and were senior leaders globally. The Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy reports that sole proprietors account for 2 percent of U.S. small businesses. To whom do they turn for advice?
2. We needed high-level connections in corporations. We dared to believe that we could sell to Fortune 500 companies. Neither of us came from a sales background; we got projects due to our reputation with peers in the companies we worked. We could not pick up the phone and ask for business like some male counterparts. Our advisory board members had the clout to make successful phone calls on our behalf. Their reputations preceded them, and when they asked, doors opened. We still had to prove ourselves after we walked through those doors. We know we would never have had several of those opportunities on our own.
3. An advisory board gives a small company prestige. When corporations heard that we had an advisory board, they immediately felt better about doing business with us. It comforted them to know that seasoned business owners were giving us advice. It made Sandi and Peggy look like a more prominent company than we were. Knowing that we were “not in it by ourselves” inspired confidence in others.
4. We needed expert advice in specific areas. We were working ourselves to death. We were hiring the wrong people. We were organically growing the business. Our revenues increased because we were the highest billers; therefore, we could not afford to come off billing. We were running the company at night after leaving our consulting projects. This situation was unsustainable. We wanted advisors who knew how to guide us on hiring, sales, marketing (yes, we were marketers but didn’t have time to market ourselves!)
   1. We made a list of experts. We knew the skill set we needed and who had them. They were our ideal board members.
   2. We wrote a script. We laid out exactly why these giants should give back to us. Many were retired and knew us from our corporate careers.
   3. We picked up the phone and sent invitations. We invited our prospects to come on this journey with us. We got some yeses, some “not nows,” and several “no’s.” We didn’t take any of the No’s personally because we understood that scheduling might be an issue for anyone still working. Targeting retirees gave us a much higher rate of Yeses.

Our advisory board was instrumental in giving us our CFO. They guided us to a multi-million dollar enterprise and the sale of it to a private equity company. They were responsible for the packages we negotiated for our employees and ourselves. They advised us early to start documenting all our processes because this wasn’t their first rodeo – they knew all the secrets and gave them to us.

Today, I’m one of the biggest advocates for advisory boards. They should no longer be a secret weapon as every business owner owes it to him/herself to form one. All you have to do is ask!