How Superior CEOs Create Prosperity in any Economic Environment  

Thursday, September 24th 8:15 - 10:15AM, Breakfast  

or                                                      

Tuesday, September 29th 11:45AM - 1:45PM, Luncheon

Exclusively for CEO’s, Presidents, and Business Owners

What: This is no time to be alone. In these uncertain times, business owners who are members of The Alternative Board have a distinct edge. Instead of facing critical issues and challenges alone, they work on their businesses in collaboration with other successful CEOs and Presidents using a proprietary process, world class assessment and planning tools, professionally-facilitated Board meetings and coaching sessions to ensure that critical success factors, essential metrics and revenue goals are accomplished.

In fact, 75 percent of TAB Board members reported increased revenues in the past six months despite today’s turbulent economic situation.

Join us for lunch and hear from successful local business owners, who are TAB members, to discuss how The Alternative Board is helping them and prosper in today’s turbulent environment.

When you become a TAB member, you can expect:
• Meaningful business solutions and emotional support from owners just like you
• Different and refreshing perspectives on the common challenges all owners face
• Accountability to and from a board of peers and your business coach to help you achieve both the personal and professional levels of success you desire

Location: Chase Bank - Directions provided upon registration

Cost: Complimentary

By Richard Ryman • rryman@greenbaypressgazette.com • August 9, 2009

Jim Overly has an issue. He’s found a way to get more business into his Cyber Works computer repair shop, now he has to figure out how to get the work done.

He’s got an architect, an engineer, a blue print shop owner and a jeweler to help him. They and others are members with Overly of one of The Alternative Board’s local strategic boards, a gathering of noncompeting businessmen who share ideas, make critiques and generally act as a support group and sounding board. In essence, an alternative board of directors to companies not big enough to have a board.

“Ultimately, we make our own calls,” said Joe Pankratz, owner of Avenue Jewelers in Appleton. “It’s very, very beneficial to know multiple perspectives instead of one. You get the comfort factor that you are not out in left field because you react to something emotionally.”

Overly’s strategy is summed up by his advertising slogan, “48 hours or free.”

His computer sales and repair shop guarantees that any computer repair or upgrade will be done in 48 hours or the work is free. He has four computer techs and a limited physical space, but business has already increased and usually doubles in the months following Christmas, which is what he’s planning for now.

“We have to maintain the same niceness and ability to get things done even though we are doing it twice as fast,” he said. “I don’t want to keep adding techs. I don’t want to work twice as hard for the same amount of money.”

After quizzing Overly pretty thoroughly, suggestions flowed: use a triage system, use prices to control flow, think about what to do next when competitors begin matching 48 hours or free.

“I definitely got great advice from the other guys. One of the things we do in that meeting is throw out stuff we are doing, thinking about doing or doing and it’s not working,” Overly said. “I liked some of the ideas. I’ve already given them to my service manager to run by his guys.”

Alternative Boards are franchised to business consultants, who recruit members, lead meetings and provide one-on-one coaching sessions. The board to which Overly belongs is administered by Michael Audit, president of Benchmark Consultants Inc., Oshkosh. Audit and his partner, Jim Marshall, oversee three groups each.

Audi said the optimum size for a group is seven to nine members. In deciding to invite new members, he looks for a willingness on their part to be open to change and for chemistry, which is critical to a successful group.

“It’s really an appreciation that ‘there is more potential in this business and I need to get it,’” he said.

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Accountability to each other really works

Rick Spence, Financial Post  Published: Tuesday, July 28, 2009

How do entrepreneurs learn from each other? And how do you get them to do the things they want to do, and need to do, but never seem to find time for?

Last week’s column focused on one answer to those questions: peer advisory boards. These are confidential forums in which owners of non-competitive businesses meet regularly through a trusted facilitator to share problems, explore solutions and encourage each other to keep going.

Last week, I told you how I was invited to sit in on the meeting of one such group, an Oakville, Ont., chapter of The Alternative Board, a Colorado-based group that manages peer boards across Canada and the United States. Although these meetings are strictly confidential, I was allowed to observe the process on behalf of the Financial Post as long as I didn’t name names.

The first hour involved basic leadership coaching and member updates. After that, things got serious. Facilitator John Womack (the only participant I’m allowed to name) asked his members what progress they had made in the business plans they’ve been working on for the past month.

Howard looks guilty: His plan called for a 10% sales increase for this year. So far, he’s been struggling just to stay even. He’s been working on introducing some new products, but the launch has been delayed. And he’s been meaning to work with his partners to complete a shareholder’s agreement, but no one has had time to sit down and get ‘er done.

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‘Leadership not what most people think it is’

By Rick Spence, The Financial Post  July 21, 2009

I wrote a column recently on peer advisory boards, and why every smart entrepreneur should belong to one. These confidential forums bring business owners together to talk shop, compare notes and mentor each other. But then I named a few of those organizations, which wasn’t so smart. Because it’s too easy to leave people out.

Sure enough, I got a call from an organization I’d neglected to name: The Alternative Board, or TAB, which has 1,000 peer groups across North America, each dedicated to helping their members make better business decisions.

To prove it, they invited me to sit in a top-secret session.

We met in a boardroom on the second floor of a printing plant in Oakville, Ont., owned by one of the members. Chairing the meeting was John Womack, an experienced manufacturing executive and entrepreneur, and now a business coach and certified TAB facilitator.

He used to teach a leadership course called “From Cop to Coach,” and as the meeting kicks off he announces he’ll be sharing excerpts from that program during the next few months.

“Leadership is not what most people think it is,” Womack says. It’s basically “working as a true team toward shared goals,” using three key tools: communication, motivation and respect.

He sees lots of companies, he says, where there is no internal communication, no standards, no shared goals. It’s a common problem with a simple solution, he says: “Just talking about your company’s goals, and measuring progress, that’s motivational.” Sounds easy, right? But then Womack asks the owners at the table to write the names of three good leaders they’ve met in their lives. The tension is tangible.

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