Gillen & Associates

GULFSHORE BUSINESS

Feeling lonely at the top? Take heart; The Alternative Board is there for executives, providing a confidential haven to air challenges and get advice from others on issues from staffing to finances. Another plus: the opportunity to learn cutting-edge business strategies from top speakers and executives worldwide.

Though each board is unique, they all require one crucial element — commitment. Members must regularly give their time, money and business acumen. The results, executives say, are personal and professional growth, improved decision-making, increased accountability and networking.

ST. LOUIS DISPATCH POST

Alternative Board is a sounding board for small businesses

Bruce Shapiro is the third generation to run his family business, Shapiro Sales Co., an industrial scrap metal recycling company started in St. Louis 70 years ago by his grandfather. But Shapiro is the first in the family to look outside for advice on running the company.

BLOOMBERG SMALL BUSINESS

Listen to Allen Fishman, CEO and founder of The Alternative Board, explain the idea of TAB. Fishman discusses the dynamics of a TAB Board as well as benefits and challenges faced when beginning the TAB concept.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Proponents of peer advisers say company boards can be compromised...The best thing an entrepreneur can have is someone who can help him or her step up higher than day-to-day responsibilities. A board of directors might serve that purpose, but in small companies, the boards often are made up of insiders. Or, in the case of a TAB Board Member, the owner is the board.

ST. LOUIS BUSINESS JOURNAL

Whatever difficulties they bring to the table, those who attend the monthly meetings of The Alternative Board come hoping to find solutions and advice from fellow small business owners. Their problems can range from having trouble managing cash flow to dealing with insurance and health-care costs to reducing over-head and overall expenses.

Small Business Consultant and Syndicated Columnist

If you are worried about the direction your firm should take and how to better market your products or have questions of any kind that directly affect the long-term health of your firm, you need help, and chances are the typical board of director members, such as your attorney, banker, supplier and so forth, are not the people to help you. They all have too big an interest in their part of your pie.

You need another approach. The Alternative Board (TAB) helps small corporations and sole-proprietorships set up boards of directors that actually work for the entrepreneurs.

ENTREPRENEUR

To deal effectively with such a range of issues, groups should be careful to select members from a variety of fields. “One of the Major benefits is a cross-fertilization of ideas from people who are not in your field,” says Allen Fishman, CEO of The Alternative Board TAB, a Denver-based peer group. “Some of the best ideas will come from people who aren’t locked into your historical ways of thinking.”

BUSINESS WEEK

BY INVITATION ONLY. Allan Adams, founder of Adams Translation services in Austin, belongs to a networking group as well as The Alternative Board...Adams often taps the local group for help with personal issues but turns to the more high-powered CEOs at The Alternative Board for advice on corporate matters.

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