On August 28th, 2012, we had 43 leading coaches registered for the call about how to grow your business (or help your clients grow their businesses) through advisory boards with the inspiring Marissa Levin, CEO of Information Experts. You can access the recording below, and there are a ton of notes on the Leading Coaches Center Facebook page. You can listen to the recording of the call here, although please note that it drops off suddenly at the very end because I was dropped from the call right as I was acknowledging Marissa for her excellence, but all the great content she shared is intact in the recording:
DOWNLOAD the mp3
Or, if you prefer to download the mp3 for later listening, you can do so HERE.
SCALE MODEL
On the call, Marissa told us about her SCALE model, and she mentioned a PDF she said she’d share with us, which you can access here: Built to SCALE Presentation – Marissa Levin
Specifics about Marissa and Built to Scale:
Have you ever wondered about how to build an advisory board or how to coach leaders of organizations who are faced with wanting to grow by creating an exceptional advisory board to inject genius into the organization and create break through growth?
Then you won’t want to miss this call with Marissa about how to SCALE!
Marissa Levin rocks – see her full bio below. She’s one of my own advisers as a member of my mastermind group. She has a proven track record (as CEO, her company, Information Experts is a 17 year old global strategic communications/ education/ human capital firm that’s forecasting $20 million for 2012), and in the last year has started a new firm (she’s also CEO of Successful Cultures) and published two books (“My Company ROCKS!” Eight Secrets to a Growth-Driven Culture That Keeps Employees Happy & Engaged
and the new one that I’ve asked her to share with us: Built to Scale: How Top Companies Create Breakthrough Growth through Exceptional Advisory Boards
)
Marissa’s the first to come to market with a model and a book (based on experience and research) for privately held businesses to implement advisory boards. It includes the worksheets/templates, and processes that owners from start-up to $15 million can follow to surround themselves with who they need to get them from where they are now to where they want to be. She’s bootstrapped her firm for over 18 years, and her Board was instrumental in her growth.
SCALE (in the book title) stands for Select, Compensate, Associated, Leverage, and Evaluate/Evolve/Exit.
By sharing her journey, her lessons, and her model, her vision/dream is to transform the small business landscape. She want to transform how business owners think, operate, and grow their businesses.
In addition to sharing her personal experience of my board search and implementation, she surveyed 100+ business owners, and interviewed 25 biz owners as well as board experts. For example, she interviewed an expert in equity compensation to share how business owners can give equity to board members that is performance-based and mitigates risk. – perfect for the start-up that is bootstrapping and has limited cash reserves. This information has never been captured before and presented in an implementable model format.
MORE ABOUT MARISSA LEVIN
Marissa Levin founded her first company Information Experts, a global strategic communications and education firm, in 1995. She launched her firm with no outside funding after working for a man that capped her annual net worth at $34,000. 17 years later, Information Experts is forecasting $20 million for 2012. Marissa has led her firm through the implosion of the telecom and internet industries (her initial two primary markets), 9/11 terrorist attacks which shut down the DC business region, two recessions, one government shut-down, the collapse of the auto, finance, & housing markets, and two cancer scares – while raising two sons as a hands-on mom.
As CEO of Information Experts, Marissa leads the effort to define, shape, and evangelize the organization’s values, mission, vision, growth strategy, brand, and corporate culture. Marissa has led the organization’s entry into the federal market to achieve a sizeable presence in 17 agencies, while maintaining a strong presence in the commercial market. Under her leadership, Information Experts has won more than 100 awards for creativity & leadership, was named to the Inc. 5000 List of America’s Fastest Growing Companies for 2009, 2010, and 2011, and won the SmartCEO 2010 GovStar Industry Star Award.
Marissa’s passion of mentoring other business owners motivated her to launch Successful Culture in June 2011. Through Successful Culture she applies her 17 years of experience to help business owners build extraordinary organizations to attract and keep top-level talent & customers, which results in high growth.
She is the author of “My Company ROCKS!” Eight Secrets to a Growth-Driven Culture That Keeps Employees Happy & Engaged,” an e-book that provides specific strategies on how to build an culture that fosters employee loyalty, engagement, and excitement, and highlights the need for the CEO to always own the organizational culture.
She is also the author of “Built to SCALE: How Top Companies Create Breakthrough Growth Through Exceptional Advisory Boards”. The book leads businesses owners through her patent-pending SCALETM Model to strategically select, compensate, associate, and leverage advisory boards for breakthrough growth.
Marissa was named as a 2009, 2010, and 2011 SmartCEO Smart 100 participant by SmartCEO Magazine, which recognizes the top 100 CEOs in the region, and was named as a 2008 BRAVO Award winner, which honors the region’s 25 most influential women CEOs. In 2011, she was one of the first honorees to be inducted into the SmartCEO Hall of Fame for outstanding and exemplary leadership.
She was named as one of Washington’s Top 100 Technology Titans for 2009 by Washingtonian Magazine. She was a finalist for the 2002 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and for the 2004 Women in Technology Entrepreneur Leadership Award, and was also named as a finalist for the 2009 national Stevie Awards in three categories: Best Entrepreneur – Service Businesses; Employer of the Year; and Women Helping Women.
Marissa was selected as one of greater Washington’s “Women Who Mean Business” by the Washington Business Journal, which honors the region’s “most influential and powerful” women executives. In addition, she was nominated for the Women President’s Organization (WPEO) Outstanding Women’s Business Advocate Award. Marissa has been featured in USA Today, The Washington Post, The Washington Business Journal, Working Mother Magazine, Washington Woman Magazine, Washingtonian Magazine, Inc. Magazine, BisNow, Fortune, and on many TV networks as a successful woman business owner and working mother.
NOTES FROM FACEBOOK PAGE DURING CALL:
SCALE your business;
Select
Compensate
Associate
Leverage
Evaluate/Evolve/Exit
- It doesn’t matter how large the business is…we are all going through the same things. Same challenges with processes and people, work-life integration. Know you have support systems around you and find people to help you push through your obstacles. Celebrate the wins every day. Focus on what you DID accomplish. Be kind to yourself.
Leading Coaches’ Center shared a link.
Go to www.successfulculture.com to sign up for Marissa’s blogSuccessful Culturewww.successfulculture.comWelcome to Successful Culture, created specifically to share with business owners and executives my insights, experiences, successes, and lessons learned on how to build a successful culture. Now in its 17th year, Information Experts has employees who have stuck by our side and trusted our leadershi…- Create platform to connect with other business owners and coaches.
- Attract the best employees. Core values. Authenticity.
- All business development leads from a place of trust. Authentically connect with prospects. Genuine interest in trying to understand what their problems are. People can see through BS and ulterior motives.
- respond to customer demand and market shifts; impact performance through communication and strategy
- Pivot…what matters is that you respond to the market and what your customers need
- when something happens in the marketplace, you have to be able to respond even if it means going outside comfort zone and initial plan…pivot
- I knew what I didn’t want and how I didn’t want my life to be…I didn’t have a strategic vision of what Information Experts would be when I started it.
Leading Coaches’ Center shared a link.
Marissa’s bio is posted here: https://leadingcoachescenter.com/blog/lcc-updates-for-members/scale-your-business-with-an-advisory-board-marissa-levin-shows-us-how-on-the-next-leading-coaches-center-mastermind-callScale your business with an advisory board! Marissa Levin shows us how on the next Leading Coaches.leadingcoachescenter.comTopic: SCALE your business by building an advisory board Come join us for the next Leading Coaches Center Mastermind Call featuring Marissa Levin who wrote the book on how to build an advisory board. If not for your own business,- When you’re in the middle of the ocean, you have to keep swimming…failure is not an option.
- launched business on a paper tablecloth at an Italian restaurant 20 years ago.
- Knee deep in revitalizing my board and rolling new people onto it. Business Development into new markets.
- Insight and guidance…advisory board would never replace a coach, but supplements. Be a catalyst to help them create a great advisory board.
- Everybody at top of game in their field has multiple coaches.
- Capture the data when you roll someone off the board. How was their board experience, what could we have done better? Have exit interview…don’t leave them hanging.
- E is evaluate, evolve and exit. The board should constantly be evolving, so you constantly evaluate others outside of org to see fit for where you’re taking your co. Future focused agendas. Board should be future focused.
- Leverage: 35 ways you can leverage your board members. Biz Dev, Sales, Process, Insource versus outsource, evaluate RFPs, tap into them for their expertise and introductions.
- Invite them to informal gatherings, all-hands meetings, strategic discussions when appropriate, get them their own business cards, email and extension at the organization to integrate them and establish that trust between board member and organization
- Board is a tool in the organization to develop the other leaders in the company because they have tons of knowledge to share.
- It can take 4-6 months to truly integrate and absorb a new board member…management team has to get used to them, etc.
- Whenever any change in any organization, the only question everyone want to know personal impact: “how is this change going to impact me?”
- Associate = legal aspects of implementing a board. Sign an NDA, a non-compete, board service agreement in place. Legal and logistical aspects. Equally important aspect is how you associate them into your organization?
- It doesn’t have to break the bank or impede cashflow to put a board in.
- Restricted stock agreements. Equity. Cash. Trade for Service.
- 4 different compensation methods biz owners can use to give stock to board members. Dispels notion that you have to give away a lot in order to get board service. Give away .5% or 1% for first year, then tie it to performance and do a review.
- How to find the people, how to compensate them, now to integrate them…90 minute interview with attorney CPA on setting up stock option programs for board members.
- False assumptions about how you compensate a board. There are 3 ways to creatively form a compensation model. People that serve on advisory boards are doing it because they believe in the business and the owner…they are not looking to build a resume with board service or create a steady cashflow from this…it’s not their main source of income. They are retired or sold their businesses and want to pay it forward and give back.
- How do you find the people you might need for your business, how do you interview, vet and qualify them? That’s the S part of the SCALE model
- Take a strategic look at holes in your business. Book includes list of 35 ways you may need to use advisors.
- Anyone who has a business at all can surround themselves with great advisors. The SCALE model applies most directly to the $3M to $5M size business, but any business can grow using this model
- Coaching business owners who might be putting in a board…entrepreneurs are a perfect market segment
- An advisory board is a fluid and dynamic entity if you’re doing it right…it will need to evolve and change.
- SCALE your business;Select
Compensate
Associate
Leverage
Evaluate/Evolve/Exit - Put in a Board of Advisors. Hand select people that specifically meet the holes in your org. Hold quarterly meetings. Dedicated advisors to help your business grow.
- People have their own agendas ahead of the business agenda. How do you get past the $5million mark for revenues for you business?
- SCALE your business;Select
Compensate
Associate
Leverage
Evaluate/Evolve/Exit - Surround yourself with great people…Marissa is talking about EO and her Advisory Board formation
