Stall The Ball

Damien has gone public on an idea he mooted to me about 6 months ago. A not for profit Advisory Group for small businesses. Have a read of his initial draft.

My take on it was that it was an excellent idea, and that the secrecy aspect of it as a private mailing list was also its strongest selling point. As he states who would like it if they went public with an idea in order to get some feedback and suggestions only to find out some other company saw the idea, went "WOW! That’s great" and beat you to the punch.

But to take a more mundane approach, the following are some ideas/areas I think this sort of advisory group could help small companies with. And I don’t see this being limited to web/IT/software type companies. From Johnny Appleseed setting up an orchard to provide fruit to a drinks manufacturer to Mr Hardwood building cabinets to Mr Blogman basing his entire vision on web popularity the principles can expertise available to these types of companies would be very similar.

The list is in no particular order

• Tax
• Limited v private companies
• Funding
• Banking
• Employing your first employee
• Legal rights
• Legal ramifications of doing x
• Other companies people in your area
• Networking (social type)
• Software licensing
• Copyrights
• Publicity
• soho recommendations
• Time management
• Separating work from social interactions (particularly online)
• Accountants / financial advisors
• Hire Purchase versus purchasing outright
• Customer feedback
• If at first you don’t succeed
• Stillborn ideas versus ideas with potential

The list goes on but you get the idea. Ok, so not a lot of the above is technical in a WEB 2.0 sort of way, but they are very technical if you haven’t got a clue about them.

A key part of this would be trust. Trust that the advisory board keeps its mouth shut. Trust that the advisory board will make good suggestions as opposed to giving you a bum steer. Trust that the small companies approaching the advisory group are indeed small companies.

Of particular note is the following paragraph from Damien’s post.

So why would people want to be on the Trust if they get nothing out of it? Well, they themselves would probably learn a lot from their peers. It might also mean business for them where they could sell consulting services to the people that are seeking Trust advice because while the Trust would give advice I’m adamant we would not be redesigning a whole system for a guy with an idea for free.

This is where it could get messy but a clearly defined charter would go a long way towards fixing any conflict of interests. Ireland Offline has used this type of idea for years and it has proven itself time after time. Having seen it working in a small scale I am sure that a similar venture on a larger scale is very workable. My one caveat on this is that in a list where several “Type A” personalities reside one person needs to have final say, if only to stop endless bickering.

Way back when, I gave my whole hearted support to the Advisory group idea. I thought it was an excellent suggestion then. I think it still is. Don’t leave comments here; leave comments on Damien’s site so that they are easily collected.

Links of use
http://eirepreneur.blogs.com/eirepreneur/2006/01/fantasy_busines.html
http://eirepreneur.blogs.com/eirepreneur/2006/01/heres_a_reading.html