No woman is an island

Many businesswomen attribute their success to a mentor or a group of people who’ve advised them in some way. These women realise and acknowledge to themselves that they didn’t necessarily have all the answers, or all the skills and knowledge and contacts to take their business to the next level. They weren’t afraid, or too proud, to approach people who were experts in their field and ask for their help and input.

Jane Hunter, of Hunter’s Wines wanted an effective team but not a top-heavy staff so she relied on the use of consultants in the areas of winemaking, management, accounting, advertising and PR. Jane, whose expertise was as a manager and viticulturist, said “I believe no one person has a monopoly on good ideas, the more people involved managing a business the more innovative you get. All these people work really well together and it gives me confidence to know I can call on them but they’re not actually sitting at the winery.”
When her company experienced a difficult vintage back in 1995 she said her various consultants who were away from the problem could look at the situation quite logically and in a different light than those caught in the middle, getting stressed out. The consultants put together a plan for the company for the next year to work their way through the difficult time.
Julie Dalzell, past publisher and editor of successful Cuisine magazine, called her advisory group a ‘maverick team’ – a handful of advisors with backgrounds in advertising, direct marketing and finance. Julie said her team were lateral thinkers, who helped to generate ideas and make them happen.
“We sat around with our advertising manager and said we’re either going to stay still and battle for the advertising dollar all the time or we’re going to try and beat the pack.”
The team developed a business plan, a marketing plan and an advertising brief containing some fairly challenging goals for the Cuisine team. Part of the plan was an eye catching and controversial advertising campaign that resulted in a 79 percent increase in circulation.

Napoleon Hill in his classic book ‘Think and Grow Rich’ devotes an entire chapter to the power of the Master Mind. He attributes Andrew Carnegie’s and Henry Ford’s success to their master mind alliances.
There are many variations to the Master Mind and they can be easily set up to assist you in your own business. Some of these include:

Advisory Council
Your advisory council could be made up of consultants, key stakeholders or staff, or experts in their respective fields. Their role is to advise and guide you – so you can learn from their mistakes - not to work for you.
An advisory council may also have networks and connections that can be invaluable to you as you grow your business.
Approach and appoint people into key advisory positions; operations, management, marketing, financial. Aim to meet monthly and from the beginning clearly set out each person’s role, responsibility and your expectations as well as their remuneration.

Mastermind/Brainstorming Groups
While publishing Her Business I set up an informal brainstorming group with a group of four or five business owners from a diverse range of businesses. We met every three weeks at my offices over a bottle of wine and nibbles. We each had 20 minutes to raise an issue or problem in our business and the rest of the group would brainstorm or offer suggestions, and then we’d move on to the next person and so on.
The group offered a popular forum where we could explore staff issues, practise presenting proposals, ask for contacts or referrals and get feedback and a different perspective on issues.

Buddy Partners
I’ve also had a ‘goal setting buddy’ – and again we met every three weeks or so. We’d begin with a ‘check in’ of personal happenings. Then we’d take turns updating each other on our progress towards our goals, we’d discuss any obstacles or issues, as well as share successes and we then set actions to complete over the next three weeks. The meetings were informal, but the discipline of meeting, reviewing our progress verbally and planning ahead pushed our goals forward.
We set parameters around our expectation of accountability to each other (how tough were we going to be?) and in the early stages spent the first few meetings defining our goals and getting an understanding of the other person’s vision for themselves and their business.

Running your own business, whether self employed or leading a team, can be lonely but having some type of advisory or sounding board prevents isolation, and injects fresh ideas as well as making you accountable to your vision, so you don’t get side tracked with the trivialities of day to day issues.

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