Episode 431: Who would be in your dream "advisory board"?
In this episode, Fiona explores a fun and insightful activity to help you think about your business and life in new ways. Learn how to create your dream advisory board and discover the benefits it can bring to your personal and professional growth. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
Definition and purpose of an advisory board vs. a board of directors
Steps to create your dream advisory board
Identifying key areas of expertise
Examples of potential advisors and their roles
Utilizing available resources
Practical tips for leveraging your network
Encouragement to apply the exercise to both business and personal life.
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Connect and get in touch with My Daily Business:
Welcome to episode 431 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today is a quick tip episode, and honestly, this is a fun exercise to do and can get you thinking in different ways for your business, but also for life. This is an activity that crosses both. Before we get stuck into that, I want to let you know that Group Coaching is open. If you are keen to be part of our 12-month program where we meet in a very small, beautiful, intimate curated group of small business owners every two weeks for an entire year, and we go through every part of business and we have a whole bunch of amazing experts that come in to help as well as myself, I would love to hear from you. You can apply and find all the information at mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching. We have already had people apply, we are interviewing them as we speak.
This will probably kick off in August or September of this year, so please head on over and get in early. If you are interested in this, you can head to mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching. Also, some people do not realise we run a scholarship position for group coaching in pretty much all of our programs. We do offer a scholarship position for somebody who is a First Nations, BIPOC, LGBTQIA, or a single parent. We offer that because we know that many people do not have the same level of access and opportunity as others, so we make sure that we have that scholarship position open. If you're interested in that you can find everything at mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching. Make sure in your application that you let us know you would like to be considered for the scholarship position. Before we get stuck in, I also want to of course acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of these lands, which where I am is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into today's quick tip episode.
Today it is a fun activity and this can be a real eye-opener for what you're interested in in your business and where you see it going. I would love you to think about your answer to this question. If you could create your dream advisory board, who would be on it? Now, an advisory board for the people who don't know is different to a board of directors, a board of directors, which usually can be made up of a non-executive executive and an independent board of directors. The board of directors usually makes binding decisions. There's a whole bunch of regulations around it, legal requirements, all sorts of things. An advisory board often doesn't have that level of, they're giving their expertise and advice, but they're not necessarily like a board of directors where they are coming up with binding decisions and making changes and regulations and requirements and things to a company or an organisation or a foundation or a charity.
An advisory board is more informal, I guess you would say. An advisory board is usually made up of people who are coming because of their wealth and their knowledge, not their wealth, well, maybe their wealth as well, but they're coming because of their wealth of knowledge or expertise in a particular area. I have been on advisory boards. I am on one at the moment, I may be coming in as somebody who has an understanding of brand and marketing or in other cases like e-commerce, whereas other people in that advisory group might be coming in because of their understanding of art or design or culture or law or science or whatever it is. Usually, it's a group of people that come together to give their input and advice, but not in a way that is making the decisions about a company and how it operates.
But when it comes to you if you were to think about this dream advisory board, who would be on it? And firstly, what would be the areas that they'd be advising on? What expertise would they need? You might decide, I would love to have a style advisor, and I would love that to be, I'm going to think of somebody I think is quite stylish, Melody Ehsani. You might go, Melody Ehsani is going to come on and she is going to advise on my style. And maybe you are a professional of some sort who does a lot of speaking gigs. Maybe you're a scientist or a doctor or somebody incredible at what they do and do a lot of speaking gigs, a lot of media, a lot of public-facing stuff.
Maybe you are just not that interested in style, or maybe you just don't have the time to think about what you're going to wear to all of these things. you might decide, I'm going to have that person, and they're going to be a style advisor. You might then decide, I would love somebody who could just help me streamline things, I'm going to get the head of operations at Apple, and you figure out who that person is. But it's a fun exercise to do because it also opens up your mind to what is important to you. And even though this is a dream case scenario, it may trigger some ideas as to who in real life you might be able to meet up with more often for a little bit of advisory. You might decide that the style stuff sounds fun, and I would love that.
Is there somebody in my life who is super stylish, who I value their opinion, and maybe I'm going to have a fun afternoon and bring them over to my house and do a bit of a wardrobe shop shopping your wardrobe because the cost of living, but going in and looking at what you already own and maybe just getting somebody else's eye over these things and thinking, you could like rock these five things, or maybe you have to go on a trip and this is what I love. I love doing this. I have done this for a few people. I love helping people pack what they're going on a holiday with. Even with my holidays, as I went to London and the US and Europe last year by myself, I love coming up with outfit ideas.
I don't tend to plan my outfits ever except if I'm going overseas, because you can't take that much with you. It's fun to be like, I could do this and coordinate this and mix and match these, but maybe you've got somebody in your life who you're like, I do want to do more speaking gigs, but it would freak me out thinking about what to wear, which may sound superficial, but if you're wearing something that you feel really good in, you feel great and you're more confident on stage. You might decide, there's somebody in my life that could do that. If there isn't somebody in your life, then you might go to the good old YouTube and look up these people. You might decide, let's say it's Melody Ehsani.
I'm going to look up if Melody Ehsani has done any, q and as or any YouTube videos about style. And maybe she has, maybe she hasn't. I had not looked this up before I did this podcast, but YouTube can be an incredible place, as TikTok, and all of the social media. You might just decide, I'm going to start looking at how Melody Ehsani dresses, and what is it that I like about it. And then thinking about and in style, this is a very common thing that you hear from stylists to grab three words that relay the style. If I were to think about Melody Ehsani, I would be like, the street is one of them. She often wears runners, sneakers, trainers, whatever you want to call them. She often wears tracksuits or hoodies or things like that, which also goes hand in hand with her brand and her business.
It might be like a street, but elevated. Or you come up with street elevated colour. you might go, these are the three words. When I look at my wardrobe, what are the three words, and how can I not necessarily copy her style, if she were to be my style advisor, what can I learn from her social media that I can then take into my way of dressing? Likewise, if you were to think about it, one of my dream advisors might be, Emma Grede. I don't know if that's how you say her name. I'm obsessed with this woman. I think she is just perfection and she seems so normal and real. I'm not sure who knows, you never know these people, but she seems wonderful.
And she's also behind so many massive brands. I also just love that she's got that London accent and is super cool, love how she dresses, but she talks about how she's got a stylist. She never comes up with what she dresses because she's got too many other things to think about that day. Let's say I imagine, I've got this dream advisory board and I'd love to have Emma Grede as one of the advisors, then you might go, I can't do that right now. However, how can I learn? Can I look up the podcast that she's been on? Can I follow her on social media? Can I think about how she might react to something? I don't even know, I've not put this into AI tools, but I imagine that you could go to Claude or ChatGPT or one of them and put in what would Emma Grede say about this problem and see if scouring the internet that they would come up with an answer.
The activity here is to start with who would be on your dream advisory board. What would be the areas of expertise that you'd want from these different advisors? And then who would be the dream person to give you that advice in that particular area? And then is there anyone in your life who could help you with that, who may not be that huge dream person out there, but is incredible and you don't tap into that ever? And how could you make that fun for them as well, because they're giving up their time? And then the last one is, if you can't think of somebody in your life who could help you with that, can you go to that dream person in your mind and start getting advice through the different interviews, podcasts, media, and social media that they've already done?
Because maybe there's going to be something in there that lights something in you and is incredible. And in a way, they have been your dream advisory group, even though they don't even know it. That is it for today. Think about who would be on your dream advisory group if you could create one, and then where you can go with that information. I'll have all of this in text format for this as usual over at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/431 as this is episode 431. And as I said at the start, if you are also looking for a group, whether they're your advisors to be, whether they are just having a group that you can meet up with every couple of weeks and talk about life and business and all the things, then please check out our group coaching program. You can find all the information and apply at mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next time. Bye.
