Stuck at the starting gate on your business plan, BD plan, and/or audacious vision?
Hi gang,
Welcome to Issue #5. I am sending you wishes for a snuggly start of fall, through the wires.
Today: you readers with a big idea: I don't want you to go it alone. I want you to leverage your time. In this issue, you get my story, actionable tips & an offer.
Tick tock. Let's go.
Story:
Back in June, my business was in a pivotal place. I had recently closed my Circle community, choosing to double down (focus-wise) on my mastermind offer.
I felt really alone, if I'm being honest. All my supporters, at the time, I interfaced with 1:1 and yet, I know from experience that people meeting in a small group, with a clear goal, yields synergistic results.
I decided to build myself an advisory board, comprised of industry titans whom I admire. I wanted complementary skills, unvarnished wisdom, and, as always, a demonstrated servant leader ethos.
[TL, DR: I wanted that synergy badly enough, that I became willing to swallow my pride and ask these superstars to join my brand new (and therefore imperfect) advisory board.]
I structured it like this:
- I invited 6 or 7 people, and had it start very shortly thereafter.
- I chose the time, no voting/polls. Risky, but it worked out.
- We met on alternating Fridays, for only 30 minutes - I didn't want to ask too much of their time (now, it's 45 minutes and once/month).
- I asked them to "commit" for 3 months, to beta test this and not overcommit.
Board composition (sharing some of my logic for those of you considering "growing your own" advisory board):
There are 3 regulars, currently.
- One lawyer, who owns a large legal coaching business and has decades of experience, sits with me on the ABA Women Rainmakers and is values-aligned;
and two non-lawyers:
- One of which is an entrepreneur with expertise in marketing (which is an ongoing learning adventure for me), regularly offers me loads of constructive feedback/ideas (), and is a monster networker who shares my ethos on that; and
- A very accomplished, senior executive who has worked for years in happy partnership with a leader wired like me; I knew she would be highly complementary and spot any oversights with grace and speed. (She has not disappointed).
Actionable tips/takeaways:
1. The short meeting length forced me to focus.
2. The group was, as I expected, synergistic and far more powerful than time-consuming 1:1 meetings.
3. I've added value to them, too. Why? Introductions, the experience of knowing they are helping someone, the joy of being a part of something bigger than ourselves.
4. I realized from our chats that I needed to create a holistic mission, vision and strategy document, in order to gain and be able to articulate, with clarity and consistency, who I am, who I am here to serve, and what impact I want my business to make - in the short and long term.
I have so much more to share, but that's all for today, folks. Ring my bell on LI if you're curious for more details, as I'll be posting about this over the next few weeks.
Offer:
I created a free guide for you to launch your own Advisory Board, too. Want the guide? Add your name here, and we'll email it you.
See you in two weeks.
xo, R
P.S. I've been told 100x I should teach networking, as you have heard in past issues.
News: My 1:1 offer on this will be up in the next business day or two, I hope. If you want to reverse engineer how to get in front of your target client, ideal employer/employee and/or that vision that you're stuck figuring out how to achieve, shoot me an email. Or, just ...
