Where to Find Really Good Advisory Board Members
In this episode, we discuss where do you go to find really good advisory board members. We are joined by members having decades of experience in different industries.
Marissa Levin is a renowned author, speaker, and expert on advisory boards. Her TED talk ‘Women taking their place in the board room’ shares why there’s never been a better time to increase the number of women board members.
Marissa gives us her advice on where to look for good advisory board members:
The first place that you want to ask is actually any current board members that you have, that actually know the organization. That’s one place you can go; you can ask your partners, you can ask your employees. LinkedIn is a phenomenal resource. I use LinkedIn very extensively and strategically for a lot of reasons, and it’s you know a great place to go and connect with potential advisers. The other thing is to attend events where CEO’s are. So SmartCEO Magazine, I don’t know even if they’re out on the west coast but I know on the east coast they’re all up and down on the east coast, and they have incredible events where it’s all CEO’s. They have got Future 50; they have tons of award events, so when you go there, it’s just a great place to be able to mingle with other people.
You want to make sure that you are looking for advisers that are not in the exact same place you are. So if you’re a company of 1 million or 5 million or 10 million, you want to be looking for advisers that have already achieved what you have achieved, and have already hit a milestone that you’re aiming for because when you surround yourself like we just talked about with the people who are exactly like you, or where you are right now then you’re not really stretching and growing and doing the things you need to do to move to the next level.
Jeff Thompson has served on the board of directors for ten years at Edelbrock Corporation. He was responsible for all financial reporting and served as shareholder liaison. He was also a member of the executive, compensation and audit committees.
Jeff gives his thoughts on where to find good advisory board members:
I think networking with real professional groups is probably where you find successful business men and is a great way to find advisers. You know there’re financial experts, there’re banking people, there’re attorneys. Also another aspect a company could look at is through associations in their industry and you know could possibly conventions. When they go to conventions, they see, maybe someone is not in the same type of business but that they are successful in their trade that can align with you to create successes for your company… It’s really important that you get outside help through your boards and your advisers because you want a clean set of eyes to help and give you thoughts and ideas to help your business expand.
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