Create Your Own Personal Board of Directors
Building your own Personal Board of Advisors is not a difficult task, but requires some thoughtfulness. Below are the recommendations based on my experience.
- Choose no more than three people for your Board. This guarantees all three will contribute. They will actually feel the need to contribute. A mix of men and women would be ideal, I think.
- None of the three should know each other prior to the meeting. Take steps to prevent them from discovering who each other are (use bcc on emails). This ensures that they won’t commiserate beforehand, and will result in more unique ideas and discussions.
- Your meeting should be in a fun but private “neutral” space. It should NOT be at anyone’s home or at anyone’s office. We did ours at a co-working space. Use a library conference room if you have to.
- Send out a brief presentation beforehand, with notes that very basically explain your finances and the opportunities or challenges you’d like to discuss. My presentation was six pages of very high level notes and numbers. You do not want them making conclusions until they meet with you and hear your version of the facts.
- After all is done, create a follow up for 60-90 days later. Ask for them to hold you accountable to the conclusions made at the meeting.
- Reward/thank them for attending. A book, a dinner, etc.