148 – Breakthrough Growth for your biz: Tom talks Advisory Boards

Episode 148 – Advisory Boards
[00:00:07] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:23] Hey everybody it's episode 148 of screw the commute podcast I'm Tom Antion and I'll be with you today like every day let's see today we're talking about advisory boards. Now this is something you can implement in your business to accelerate your success. I just started one. Let me tell you about it in a minute. Now the last episode was 147 is Terry Brock who's a technology expert who's helped tens of thousands of people around the world. And he shared the stage with one of the richest men in the world. Now I've got a big freebie to thank you for listening to the podcast. It's my twenty seven dollar e-book how to automate your business and just one of the tips in this e-book is saved me over seven and a half million keystrokes and certainly saved me carpal tunnel. I'm sure and I've got another little special gift for you over there so check it out at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And don't forget to pick up a copy of our podcast app for your cell phone or tablet at screwthecommute.com/app. We've got complete instructions to show you how to use all the fancy features so you can take us with you on the road. And also I'm sure you know somebody that is either wants to start a business or is interested in starting a business or. Well they already have a business and they're struggling and they want to improve it. This is the podcasts for them. Tell them to check it out at screwthecommute.com or they can get it at iTunes or any of the major podcast directories that they like. All right. Did I ever tell you about how I turned the Internet marketing world on its head around the year 2000 or I like to say the turn of the century. Well people at my level at that time were charging 50 or 100 thousand dollars upfront to teach what we knew to kind of clueless business people who refused to learn on their own. So I'm a small business advocate and I knew many small businesses could never afford that kind of upfront money. So. So I made all the gurus mad by charging a relatively small entry fee to my program but I also got a percentage of profits. But here's the thing. It was capped so you're not stuck with me forever. So for me to get my big money you gotta make way bigger money and then you're an expert and you're on your way and you don't you're not stuck with me all the time. And another big thing is once those people got their big money upfront why would they. You know there's no incentive for them to kill themselves to help you. Well with me you've got you know you know I'm not going to disappear on you because I won't get my money. So it's a really great program it's the longest running most successful ever. On this topic in the Internet on internet marketing we've got the full details the greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and of course that'll be in the show notes. And I took it further even I got this gorgeous retreat center where you spend an immersion weekend as part of your yearlong program and you get it a scholarship to my school that you can use yourself or gift to somebody. So it's that's got massive benefits so check it out when you can at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com. But don't wait too long. Every day that goes by you could be making a whole lot of money online.

[00:04:26] ALL RIGHT. LET'S GET TO THE MAIN EVENT advisory boards now. The one difference this episode is going to have as opposed to my other Monday training sessions is that normally my training sessions is about something that is either made me or saved me a lot of money over a long period of time. This episode is different in that I'm right in the middle of implementing the idea that you're going to hear today and I haven't made any money on it yet. However I expect to and it's a good solid idea used by many small businesses.

[00:05:07] Now the reason an advisory board came about is because of my school received Internet marketing Training Center of Virginia. And even though it says Virginia it's a distance learning school so you can be anywhere in the world and still take classes anytime day or night. It's at IMTCVA.org and of course that will be in the show notes. Now I've been running it for quite a few years but recently the school got approved by the Department of Defense to be an a military spouse scholarship program. Now even though I've helped lots of military people. I was kind of getting the cold shoulder from Military Spouse podcasts because I was not one of them. And of course I wasn't allowed in Military Spouse Facebook groups and places like that. You can see the military page at IMTCVA.org and click on military.

[00:06:14] So what I did is I put an email out to my list asking for help and some highly qualified people responded that I've helped tremendously over many years. Heck I don't even know many of them had a military background. See I thought these people if they would agree to help me. They would be not only helping me reach the Military Spouse market so that those people could hear about the scholarship but they would also be doing great things for military families. So I started to think about how I could formalize my relationship with these these wonderful people and immediately having a board of directors came to mind.

[00:07:03] The hang up was that I didn't really want to make it so formal that I would scare these people off see an actual board of directors has legal liability and would require insurance and a formal agreement that would hold up in court if necessary. And most likely require a significant payment for the people to be on the board. That's when I started researching advisory boards. Basically I just bought a book on a Kindle book on it. Let me give you the title because I really want you to get this book. Built to scale how top companies create breakthrough growth through exceptional advisory boards and it's by Marissa Levin.

[00:07:51] Now built to scale or the scale part of that in the title stands for select. Compensate associate leverage and evaluate or evolve. I'm not going to go into all that. Each of these sections of what they're about because you can always buy her Kindle book for the for the deep details but I will tell you some of the highlights and what I expect to accomplish with this board. Now having the right people on the board is critical. Now these people would not necessarily be friends. They must be picked on the basis of what they can bring to help the organization meet the mission of the organization or of the board.

[00:08:39] All right so before we get into talking about the people let's talk about why you want or need a board in the first place. Now you have to ask yourself what are you trying to accomplish. Are you trying to crack a market that hasn't been available to you. Are you a little shaky on business operations and would like to have some more experienced entrepreneurs on your team. I mean are you trying to go international and need assistance of a native of a particular country. I mean whenever it is an advisory board may be the ticket to as Ms Levin says break through growth and that's what I'm expecting for that division of my school. Once we get rolling with this.

[00:09:28] Now to have a good direction to start I created a tentative mission statement Now I called it tentative because I had not yet had any input from the Advisory Board and the changes they felt that would be appropriate. So here was my first stab at it before one of the board members got to hold it as I heard it to create and implement a marketing plan to get the word out to military spouses about the MYCAA scholarship program. That's the one for the Department of Defense folks. And to help applicants through the process. Within the boundaries set by the MYCAA program. And then one of the board members asked me Hey Tom. Have you considered first responders and law enforcement.

[00:10:22] Well this led to the evolution of the mission statement which board members are still tweaking I might add. We just had our first meeting. So here's the current version. To create and implement a marketing plan to get the word out to first responders and law enforcement personnel about the opportunities our school presents and to inform and assist military spouses in using the MYCAA scholarship program. So it evolved already in the first meeting. All right so so you don't have to be carved in stone right off the bat to get this going.

[00:11:03] All right. Let's talk about choosing members for your advisory board. So. So how do you pick a good board member. Now I'm really sorry I can't remember who told me this but. But he or she said only take advice from someone whose past is your future so someone's actually done what you're trying to do. So your advisory board members must have certain traits or are you really asking for trouble or at the very least you'll be frustrated if they don't have these traits. Now here's a couple of the ones that I look for. Enthusiasm to help is really important however. Enthusiasm to help without actually helping means you have recruited an excited do nothing person who will not help you achieve your goals. And they're harder to get rid of because they're so enthusiastic and probably nice and friendly. You'll feel bad kicking them off the board. So enthusiasm is important but it must be coupled with action. Next a board member should have an influence and credibility because of who they are. Maybe they have a big email list. Maybe they have an enormous and engaged social media following. Maybe in my case they are a military spouse or a veteran or an active duty person who can get to places on my behalf. Heck it's always better to have someone highly trusted in your target market vouching for you than you vouching for yourself. Next is reliability. If they tell you something you want to be able to depend on it. Especially with deadlines and when you can expect what they promised to do to actually be done. You don't want to get a bad reputation of promising something and you can't deliver. Because they didn't deliver to you.

[00:13:21] And now let's talk about thank yous and paybacks. Even though some people would be happy to volunteer to support your cause or business I always want to make sure they know how much I appreciate them so I'm providing things of value to them instead of cash. In my case I give them a scholarship to the school that they can either gift to someone or use themselves. I offered to be their adviser on Internet related things or public and professional speaking and entrepreneurship topics. And even though this is not technically a gift I told them they could get big affiliate commissions for promoting me and my stuff. The only thing I am prohibited of incentivizing or giving a commission on is the Department of Defense Military Spouse scholarship program. That's that that's the DOD rules. I can't do it. I can't give commissions or incentivize people but everything else I can. So whenever possible try to see what you can help them with when this division of the school gets profitable I also offered to add some cash to the deal for their time.

[00:14:42] All right you've got to have an agreement. Even though it's not as formal as a board of directors agreement. So in the show notes I've included a copy of the agreement I wrote myself. Now you should have yours checked by an attorney to make sure everything you're putting in the agreement is solid. Now if you copy mine all right you do so at your own risk. I'm not an attorney and I never played one on TV. All right. Got to have an agreement.

[00:15:14] Now agendas. Now each meeting you have should have an agenda and a specific amount of time allotted to that agenda item or the agenda items that are on the agenda. You really need to respect your board members time. I had 90 minutes set aside for my first meeting and we finished in 67 minutes. And even though we had a few minute technical glitch we still finished early and we met by zoom by the way in case you're wondering. Now my agenda had things like a welcome and thank you. Expectations of the board members remunerations or or what you know of course I was giving them as a thank you I explain them introductions of all the board members and we had each board member give their ideas and one board member right off the bat increase the size of our market exponentially and had a way to reach them. Boom. That's that's what I'm talking about. That idea came from them and we picked the time and a date for the next meeting and we each left with an action plan.

[00:16:24] So let me recap some of the benefits of advisory boards. You can reach markets you couldn't reach. You can get access to expertise that you may not have. You have sounding boards for ideas you've got help with strategy you've got help with business processes and it's cheaper and way more invested than a consultant would be. So this was a short episode but I highly suggest you get the book built to scale how top companies create breakthrough growth through exceptional advisory boards by Marissa Levin and see if you if you can put together an advisory board to help grow your business. You can do it way faster get that growth way faster than you could by yourself. Now I'm going to do some update episodes in the future to let you know how my advisory board is doing and what I learned after actually running one for a while. And I invite you all to tell me how yours is doing and maybe you'll get a shout out here on screw the commute podcast. Now if you'd like someone to hold your hand through this and all the other things you need to know to be successful online. Check out my mentor program it's the longest running most successful and most unique of any thing on earth. I mean and I even have the longest. Well it used to be one of the top three longest Internet seminars called butt camp because I'm making so much money sitting on my rear end I call it butt camp but it caught on. I've done them all over the world but there was three about three major seminars at the time and the other two were defunct. And I'm the only one who's still standing after all these years running a specific seminar. I think those guys are still around but I don't know. I haven't heard much from them.

[00:18:25] But anyway check it out at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and you'll see all the massive benefits you get. You might even get featured here on screw the commute when you're a member of my program. All right everybody I'll catch y'all on the next episode.

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