The best advisory boards are made up of business owners and professionals who will ALL benefit from its formation. Here’s how to put one together:

Itemize the “give and take.”

Make two lists: one of the skills and expertise that you have to offer others, and another of the skills and expertise that you need (from others) to better operate your own business.

For instance, are you a whiz at dreaming up great promotions but a bust at understanding the tax laws that affect your business? Can you cold call with the best of them, but unsure of how to put together an impressive client presentation?

Knowing what your strengths are and where your weaknesses fall will help to determine whom to approach about forming your mutually beneficial advisory board.

Seek out potential board members.

Finding your board members may be easier than you think.

Do you belong to an association or the local chamber of commerce? Don’t just attend the meetings – network to find good board member candidates and to spread the word about what you’re trying to accomplish. Ask contacts for other names of entrepreneurs, chief executive officers of small, privately held companies or consultants to small businesses. Talk to your banker, vendors or accountant and ask them for leads. Review the business section of your local newspaper or specific business listings from the yellow pages of a telephone directory.

Contact each prospective member individually.

Once you’ve chosen candidates, call each one to introduce yourself, discuss your objectives and determine mutual benefits of forming the board. If you do not personally know the individual, invite him/her to lunch to get acquainted. Tell prospective board members about your business, market and specific challenges. Invite them to tour your offices and meet your employees. Give them your company brochure and relevant industry information.

Know what you want to accomplish.

How often you meet will be determined by what you want to accomplish. There may be times when one-on-one meetings will be more productive, but schedule full board meetings no less than quarterly to solicit input and feedback about your specific business objectives, progress and accomplishments. Remember that members are there to ADVISE you, not to do the work FOR you. While you may eventually decide to barter for services with other members, that is a separate action from the intent and purpose of an advisory board, and should be negotiated outside of the board meetings.

Be prepared to get what you ask for.

Understand that when you ask for advice, honest feedback and others’ opinions, criticism will often creep into the mix. Suppress your natural reflex to defend your actions, listen to your peers and use the information constructively.

Final thoughts . . .

If an advisory board sounds too formal for your fledgling business, but you still need access to one-on-one expert advice, contact the nearest chapter of SCORE. This organization of retired executives can prove to be an excellent resource to help answer your questions and connect you with free or low-cost resources.

Most of us find ourselves in the typical entrepreneurial Catch-22. If business is on the upswing, you’re working long hours to meet deadlines and keep customers happy. If business is shaky, you spend as many or more hours just trying to find new solutions to bring business up. Yet, whether you are struggling to revive a sluggish bottom line or trying to keep up with an unplanned surge of customer demands, you need to take a step back, reassess your challenges and make room for the solutions to come to you instead of you trying to find them.

What the heck does THAT mean?

It means that your mind, your business day and your life have become so crammed with day-to-day, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute worries about NOT finding the “glue” to hold things together that there’s no room to allow your creative, natural instinct for resolve to get through.

You’ve buried your can-do attitude under a pile of can’t-do excuses.

Let me ask you this …

Have you ever wrestled with trying to remember the name of a person or a place and the harder you think about it, you just can’t come up with the name? You get all around it … you can name that person’s spouse and kids, recall how you first met, where you were at the time and, perhaps, be able to give a perfect recitation of your first conversation. But you can’t remember that person’s name!

Then, suddenly later that day as you’re watching the news or reading a book, or in the middle of the night … voila! The name comes to you out of nowhere.

Now think about how this same of concept of distraction applies in your own business …. You solve your clients’ problems every day, yet, your own seem to be building a barrier between you and your next step forward. That’s because you are detached from your client’s biggest problems but you are engulfed by your own. You bring new perspective to your clients’ problems; you bring only your own emotional perspective to your own.

It’s time to create a PURPOSEFUL distraction (a.k.a. take a vacation) to challenge your business perspective. I like to call this “positive vacationing” because a vacation from business-as-usual usually results in new and positive revelations on how to conquer the challenges that previously seemed monumental.

Here’s an example of how the power of positive vacationing has worked for me.

The last vacation my husband and I took was to the coast of Maine. I came back with two new book ideas and a marketing strategy for one of my clients that brought in phenomenal business for her grand opening.

The book ideas were sparked by a casual conversation I had with the owner of a small restaurant we visited for a late afternoon lunch. The marketing strategy was the result of putting a new twist on a tactic I noticed being used in a newspaper ad by a small coastal retail shop.

My husband came home with a new idea on how to expand his business. Yup, you guessed it — another inspiration from “purposeful distraction”. While taking a foot tour of a quaint coastal town, he noticed the signage on one of the Main Street storefronts and an add-on service idea for his own business just popped into his head.

Just as importantly, we both came back with gorgeous photographs taken while driving from Bar Harbor to Kennibunkport and the taste of fresh Maine lobster still in our mouths. Other benefits?

• We spent valuable time together away from home and business.
• We’re more interesting to our friends and family because we have more than just business to talk about when we get together.
• We’re more energized and interested in our clients and our businesses.
• We both found solutions to some challenging aspects of our individual businesses without even looking for them.

Set the stage to reenergize your business using purposeful distraction — take a vacation. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, expensive or even very far away. And it can even be a working vacation if you set some ground rules.

Your reenergized spirit will show in the way you feel about yourself, relate to your family, and treat your clients, employees, associates and vendors.

I love that stuff. It’s amazing. It’s magic.

But it wasn’t until I tried to learn a few simple magic tricks myself that I discovered the key to such effortless success. It didn’t come from the words being uttered, or the brand of top hat being used, or the type of cape being flung … those are just the props and tools of the trade. The success of the magic comes from  something we don’t see on stage … the endless hours of repetitive practice. Even simple slight of hand isn’t really simple … it is practiced and perfected before it is ever performed. The resulting trick performed to an audience must become seemingly effortless and automatic. It can be re-choreographed. It can be reinvented. Yet, the success is in being able to do it over and over again; not in being able to do it once every third or fourth try.

Can you guess where I’m going with this in how it relates to your business?

You are the magician of your business, and your customers are your audience.

Your customers are the ones who pay to receive whatever you promise to deliver. Whether it is a magic show, a product, or a service, you owe your audience (customers) an experience they’ll want to have over and over again.

The goal of simplicity begins with focused, rehearsed, and perfected behind-the-scenes work to achieve consistency.

Give your customers consistency, and you’ll solidify loyalty.

If you embellish with a few magic words and a prop or two, that’s great – but if you aren’t consistent, your audience (customers) won’t be loyal enough to keep paying the entry fee to see your show, or buy your products and services.

My long time followers of my former ezine and this blog know that consistency is my droning mantra of just about everything I write or try to advise on. And I’ll continue to drone on and on about it because it holds tremendous value to the ongoing success of your business.

Many of us focus on the props – promotions, signage, advertising – yes, these things are extremely important to attract people to your services and products. But if you are not delivering consistency to your customers and clients who are attracted to your props, they will not come back for more. Roughly 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your customers. That’s right, long-term success is in repeat business, not in pulling in new customers with gags and gimmicks only to have them leave after the first show.

Build consistency into your business by remembering the magician.

An audience may be dazzled by the words, hats, and capes, but if the tiger doesn’t disappear every single time, that audience won’t likely come back to see a second show.

It’s a little overused these days.

It’s an age-old buzzword that has surged back into popularity with the advent of doing business on the Internet. Why? A turnkey business is an automated business. And, on the Internet, this automation is imperative to be successful and serve customers who are fast becoming accustomed to getting products and services in lightning fast time.

Ironically, this concept of automating the business process makes sense to successful online business owners, yet the benefits of an automated, turnkey business often escapes offline business owners – even though the development of a ‘turnkey’ business has been a business-builder for decades. Perhaps it’s because there is an assumption that turnkey directly relates to technology.

It doesn’t. The definition of turnkey is nothing more than, “ready for use or operation.” Here’s a great example of a turnkey system.

A few years ago the PGA Championship Golf Tournament was hosted at the Hazeltine Golf Course in Chaska, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis, not far from the suburb I live in.

One of our local television news stations did a week long broadcast from Hazeltine. The crowds were record-breaking and the media coverage was constant. In one of the early morning interviews with the local person in charge of the tournament media relations and marketing, he was asked about how he was able to prepare and cope with the throngs of media attendance from all over the world. He said, “It’s amazing. The PGA brought their system and we were able to just plug our volunteers into it.” The PGA system provides quick training for a streamlined, effective way to work with and accommodate media.

The system goes wherever the tournament goes and “plugs in to” the host city’s operation. The PGA is happy. The media is happy. And, the host city is happy.

That’s a perfect example of a turnkey system at work.

You don’t have to be a golfing fanatic to understand how valuable the PGA system is to every course they choose to host a tournament. And, hopefully, this example inspires you to start thinking about how finely-tuned your business runs – or could run – if you think in terms of “turnkey” operations.

Whether you start a new venture online, or do business in the traditional brick and mortar way, the more ‘turnkey’ your business is, the more you increase your chances of success … and making more money.

How will a turnkey business make you more money? Here are just 7 ways:

1) Eliminates redundancy

We (and our employees) are notorious for doing things that have already been done, or redoing something that’s been done incorrectly. That wastes time (and, after all, time is money). Something as simple as a written instruction on a quick To Do checklist that says, “the last person on the last shift of the day is responsible to vacuum the floor before leaving for the day,” eliminates any doubt that the first person on the first shift of the next day should be doing something else.

Sounds pretty petty, doesn’t it? Yet, without a clear understanding of who should do what, those 30 minutes of redundancy each day add up to 10 hours of wasted time a month  — more than a full day’s pay. That’s pretty expensive vacuuming time!

2) Reduces training costs

How do you train a new employee? Do you ever forget to tell him/her something until it’s too late? A turnkey system includes tasks, responsibilities, how-to checklists, and more that make it easy to quickly train someone on procedures without ever having to say, “Oh, I forgot to tell you to …” – this phrase alone often comes after a costly blunder by a well-meaning new employee. At the very least, it interrupts workflow through the office.

A turnkey system comes with its own self-study guide to quickly train someone who’s never worked for you before. Remember the PGA example above?

3) Streamlines productivity

This one is the hardest to do but gives you the greatest reward, whether you have employees or are a self-employed, one-person operation. As a turnkey system is developed, careful thought is given to how the entire operation runs, start to finish. This overview of the entire operation puts control directly into your hands to objectively evaluate how each department or function affects another department or function.

By taking the time to see your business as a whole instead of as separate functions or departments, you can determine what’s missing, getting in the way, or slowing things down. Then you can change it, improve it, eliminate it, or revamp it.

4) Increases efficiency

Just as a clogged up filter can significantly reduce the efficiency of your furnace (costing you big bucks in heating bills), so can a clogged up operation reduce the efficiency of your business.

Once you see your business as a whole operation, you can focus on improving the individual functions of each department that will contribute to a more efficient whole.

5) Ensures great customer service

If you want your customers to love doing business with you, it starts with a solid, reliable, core business. When your employees (or you) know  what to do, when to do it, and how to do it efficiently, you will truly serve your customers and clients in a way that will make a big impression.  You build their confidence in your business and that brings them back to you for more products or services.

Unfortunately, in many cases, businesses get business because they are “the lesser of two evils” instead of being the first, competent choice. Don’t let this be you!

6) Protects against economic downturns

When the economy slows, every business owner gets a little nervous. With a turnkey business, there is a built-in plan for getting new customers, and keeping old customers. Turnkey operations have an established, proven marketing plan to follow. You know your business cycles and can plan for them. You know “what’s next” to fire up business. You are prepared to respond quickly, and with confidence.

7) Adds value to your business should you ever want to sell it or pass it on

You know how to start a business, but have you thought about how to end it? What happens to the business when you’re ready to retire? Will you pass it on to your children? Or maybe you just want to build a business, sell it for a hefty profit and then go build another one.

Whether it becomes part of your legacy (and your children’s inheritance) or you seek a new buyer, the value of your business increases significantly when you can offer it is a turnkey operation. “Here are the keys. Here is the manual. You’re ready to make a profit your first day in business.” Now, THAT is a business that will attract buyers (and bankers who have to finance them).

TIP: Here is one BIG way a turnkey operation won’t make you more money: If you let it become stagnant.  Your market, industry, and potential customers demand change. You need to change with them. Once you’ve developed your turnkey system, if your first instinct is to say, “Whew, that’s done,” and check it off your to-do list, you need to reconsider that position. True, the biggest part is done. Yet, it needs to change and transition along with the market.  Review your system every year; make adjustments that will benefit your business as you go. Do your homework on your industry. What’s changed? How does that affect you? What can you do about it? How can you improve on what you’re doing?  As you make improvements to your business system, you’ll also see big improvements in your profits while making your job as business owner easier and easier.