Going it alone is scary when you are redesigning your business. Gathering a “group of greats” around you will help.
When I was redesigning a part of my own business several years ago, I asked 26 people to be part of my Advisory Group. I wanted feedback on my ideas and a group of people to tell me where I had big, gaping holes in my plans.
How Did I Select Them?
They are current and previous clients, business colleagues, students, and friends — all who know me and my business and whom I trust to give me honest feedback about my ideas.
They’re also part of my ideal target audience. All of them are self-employed and have been running their own businesses for more than five years, so their advice about what they need most for their business helped me to define new products and services to offer.
I also selected some of them because they’re creative and some because they are practical and linear. A mix of personality types and thinking styles helps to balance out the discussion and keeps you, as the business owner, from falling into the trap of limited vision.
It was also important that they were willing to commit to the process. An advisory group can meet just once, or it can meet multiple times. You need to know they are going to show up consistently to support you. (It doesn’t hurt for you to ask them how YOU can help them, as a repayment of their being in your advisory group.)
What They Said
As part of my own business redesign, I wanted to start doing live events after a six-year hiatus and an national economic recession. They were thumbs-up on that idea!
I even ran the name of my new workshop and the business reinvention topic by them to see how they reacted to it. The group loved the idea of exploring business redesign as a topic and a process!
They weren’t so keen on making it a self-study program. They felt the content required that students brainstorm together in a live environment.
So, two thumbs-up and one thumbs-down, and I was ready to move forward with my plans!
A Question For You
Do you have an Advisory Group, a trust team of advisors? What kinds of people would you love to have in your group?
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