Every Entrepreneur Needs a Personal Advisory Board, Not Just a Board of Directors

As a founder and CEO, I wish I learned much sooner that every entrepreneur needs a personal advisory board, not just a board of directors. When first building my business, I discovered not only how important mentorship is for everyone, but for entrepreneurs in particular.?

At first, the mentorship I needed was not easy to access. In fact, initially, I relied on the support of consultants and coaches in order to help me upskill and get expert advice. Though I certainly benefited from paid sessions, they were costly and unsustainable.?

Soon, I found guidance I needed from a mentor who since has helped me grow personally and professionally. Quickly, however, I realized that in order to fully realize my goals and scale my business, I needed the guidance of multiple mentors.

After forming a personal board of advisors, I was finally able to get the holistic advice I needed to achieve the success I envisioned for my company.

Everyone needs mentors, especially entrepreneurs

Everyone needs mentors. Everyone. No matter your age or your career stage – everyone can benefit from receiving support, advice, and industry insights from those who are more experienced.?

While some people enjoy learning more independently and enjoy trial by error, entrepreneurs don’t often don’t have those luxuries. Time and money are finite. Receiving information downloads from leaders in your industry or those who have already mastered your role in another industry can save you both.

Every entrepreneur, founder, and leader is likely familiar with statistics about the success rate of new businesses. The data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics has not changed much over the last 30 years: 20% of new businesses fail within 2 years, 45% within 5 years, and 65% within 10. Only 25% of new businesses survive 15 years or longer (Source).

One of the leading contributors to businesses shuttering is that their leaders lack mentorship. If entrepreneurs don’t have the guidance they need to overcome early obstacles, those obstacles multiply rapidly, become insurmountable, and lead to failure.?

More than half – 63% – of business owners do not have professional guidance when starting their businesses, yet 89% of small business owners without mentors wish they had one (Source). Not surprisingly, perhaps, we also see that 92% of small business owners feel that mentors directly accelerated their growth and helped the survival of their business (Source).

While many business owners and founders would love to hire coaches or consultants to help optimize their organizations, especially during early stages of development and growth, not everyone can access these options. I know my access was very limited.

Mentorship is a free solution to help ensure that your business isn’t part of the 75% that fails before making it to 15 years.

Is your mentor really a mentor?

As an advocate for mentorship for both individuals and organizations, I often encounter people who tell me, “I already have a mentor.” But usually, their mentors aren’t really mentors. As a result, they aren’t leveraging the full benefits of the lived experiences and insights of the person who is “mentoring” them.

More often than not, when people say they have a mentor, what they really mean is they have someone they can turn to for guidance and support on occasion as part of a regular, existing relationship. Occasionally, the “mentor” is a current boss or former boss who has given the “mentee” occasional advice, opportunities for growth, and information to help them upskill. But, unfortunately, those are all just things every boss should be doing in order to help develop their employees, improve their organization’s people culture, and ultimately improve the organization overall.

I’m often reminded of a remark by Peter Cappelli, who is a professor of management and director of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Human Resources. He said, “If you go back a generation ago, your immediate supervisor had the responsibility to develop you; the mentor was your boss.”

Workplace dynamics have shifted dramatically since. Many organizations no longer see developing employees through mentorship as an essential part of organizational operations. So, when professionals encounter a supervisor or other leader within their organization who does the bare minimum of helping them grow within their role, they assume that the relationship is a mentorship.

In addition to hearing, “I already have a mentor,” I also hear many folks say, “I already have a mentor, my mentor just doesn’t know it yet.”

If you feel a connection with a current or former supervisor or colleague – especially one who has already helped you achieve tangible outcomes to some of your immediate goals – why not make it official, and ask them to be your mentor?

In formal mentorship sessions, mentors are available solely to help guide and support their mentees. Sessions create constructive, open spaces where mentees can use 100% of their time for knowledge transfer and advice.

In our personal lives, we all have friends and family who give us advice when we need it. Sometimes, we receive that advice during typical social interactions, while other times we might need to schedule a phone call or a visit just to get some advice on any topic from buying property, personal relationships, childcare, or more.

A mentorship is a relationship that can grow to include more personal exchanges and social activities outside of mentorship sessions, though it exists primarily for the benefit of the mentee’s personal growth.

Asking someone to officially act as your mentor provides you with the opportunity to create constructive spaces where you can focus solely on your own growth, or the growth of your businesses.

Personal Advisory Boards vs. Boards of Directors

While mentorship can accelerate professional growth and help scale businesses, having many mentors as part of a personal advisory board catalyzes change even more rapidly because you can benefit from the perspectives of multiple experts in their respective areas.

Many entrepreneurs likely already rely on one or more board of directors for their organizations to operate. A board of directors is a group of individuals elected to represent shareholders and oversee the management and governance of a corporation or organization, and is usually responsible for setting strategic direction, making major decisions, overseeing financial performance, ensuring regulatory compliance, and protecting shareholders' interests.

There are many ways to build a board. But none of them function in the essential way a personal board of advisors can.

An executive board, because it is composed of senior leadership, is too directly involved in the day-to-day management of the organization sometimes to see the forest for the trees, and ultimately make the best decisions.

Independent and advisory boards are often useful supplements to executive boards, because they’re composed mostly of independent directors who have no material relationship with the company. These types of boards can provide non-binding strategic advice to the management, but do not have the formal decision-making powers of a traditional board. Still, however, these boards are usually too invested personally in particular aspects of the company’s mission, vision, or values to offer truly objective advice.

Even governing boards, elected ostensibly to avoid subjective interference and focus more on compliance, can sometimes get mired down with so much bureaucracy that ultimately, they are unable to enforce the best policies.

A personal board of advisors provides the perfect solution to supplement any entrepreneur's growth and the growth of their organizations. Entrepreneurs can curate a board of local and global experts that fill essential knowledge gaps preventing them from achieving the next stages of their success.

In my own journey growing as a founder in tech, it was liberating to know that I did not need to wait to build the perfect board of directors to launch my business. Instead, I knew that I had a powerful, global support system behind me and my business through my personal board of advisors. My curated group of mentors can not only help fill in my knowledge gaps, but also the knowledge gaps of my board of directors.

Without all of my mentors on my personal board of advisors, I would not have the broad perspectives I need to make the best decisions for my business and ultimately increase revenue. And I’m not alone.?

Of all executives, 75% say their mentors contributed to their success (Source). 84% of CEOs said mentors helped them avoid costly mistakes” (Source). 84% of CEOs also said mentorship helped them become proficient in their roles faster” (Source). The majority of CEOs –?69% – said they were making better decisions because of their mentors (Source).

Why you should join someone’s personal board of advisors

Seeking mentorship and building a personal board of advisors is essential for everyone. Giving back as a mentor is equally important.

We all suffer from imposter syndrome on occasion. I’m not different.

But we also all have unique experiences, backgrounds, knowledge, and skills that we can share to accelerate the growth of others.

A study by Kabbage, Inc. shows that 61% of current small business owners mentor others, and 58% specifically mentor younger entrepreneurs, particularly in real estate, property management and construction (Source).

Mentorship gives entrepreneurs the opportunity to give back, develop leadership skills, transfer essential knowledge, and create lasting change and impact that ripples far beyond the individual relationship between themselves and their mentee.

When entrepreneurs mentor other entrepreneurs, they also impact their businesses, their customers, business partners, communities, and entire industries. For some professionals, serving as a mentor on a founder or CEO’s personal board of advisors allows them to receive all of the benefits of serving on that business’s board of directors without any of the additional commitments.

Be a mentor, find a mentor, build your personal board of advisors

I, like all founders and entrepreneurs, don’t want my businesses to be part of the 75% that fail within 15 years.

After my own experiences with mentorship, looking at the data about the power of mentorship and how restricted access to mentorship can be, I wanted to find solutions to make mentorship available to all professionals, for free.?

That’s why I created Uptnoch? – a global mentorship platform that’s free for all individuals. Join the international community of Uptnoch? today to start building your personal board of advisors today.?