For those that are not aware, PBM is a partner with The Alternative Board to provide comprehensive solutions for businesses. The Alternative Board specializes in connecting groups of business owners and executives, from non-competing industries, to meet monthly and discuss challenges and opportunities. Recently The Alternative Board has started a monthly event called the Business Builder Roundtable in which we allow business owners and entrepreneurs to experience what a regular Board Meeting looks like. Our hope was to provide the attendees with some valuable insights into their businesses and themselves. I am very excited to say that we had our first Business Builder Roundtable yesterday and we accomplished just that.
During a Business Builder Roundtable, each participant gets to share a challenge or potential opportunity that they are currently dealing with. This can range greatly, but some examples would be needing more customer, how to start your succession planning, or how to best expand your store to a franchise model. Each issue is heard and then clarifying questions are asked by all participants. Each participant will then give their suggestions and feedback on how they would best solve the issue or take advantage of the opportunity. We then ask the participant who shared the issue to commit to one or two action items that they will take back and implement.
The great thing about the Business Builder Roundtables, and The Alternative Board model in general, is that you are getting insight from people who have had drastically different experiences than you, but who all share the common understanding of running a business. This allows for blindspots to be illuminated and old truths to be rediscovered. At our first Business Builder Roundtable this week, we heard so many comments about how the suggestions where things that they learned at one point, but for one reason or another, they had evaded them as a solution. These “Aha” moments are what we love to see on our roundtables and our sign that we are accomplishing our goal of providing the attendees with valuable insights into their businesses and themselves
Despite it being our first Business Builder Roundtable, we have received some great feedback and our excited to continue holding these events monthly. If you are interested in participating in a Business Builder Roundtable at no cost to you, please check out our events page to make sure the next roundtable works for your schedule and then contact us and let us know. We love to work with business owners and leaders from all industries and backgrounds and look forward to hearing from you!