Tapping into TAB
Fort Worth couple provides alternative to run-of-the-mill board leadership
The husband and wife team saw a need for this type of interaction in Tarrant County during a “Growing Your Business” series directed by Ed at Texas Christian University’s M.J. Neeley Entrepreneurship program.
“During the program, they would break out into teams to discuss their issues and would report on what worked and didn’t work,” he said. “The thing they most liked about the program was the time they spent with each other. They asked what was next, and there was nothing next. So then I came across The Alternative Board.”
The Alternative Board, or TAB, is a way for business to give and take advice from other owners and managers. TAB is a franchised business that trains facilitators in different regions to assist companies in need of corporation-style board leadership that donÂ’t have the resources to put one together.
Ed, the director of experiential learning for TCU’s MBA program, is involved with the Neeley Entrepreneurship Program and is managing director of ROI Associates. He started setting up the TAB business last fall. The first “boards” he set up started operations March 20, 2006. They will have monthly three-to-four-hour meetings in addition to consultations with the Riefenstahls. Companies purchase memberships to the program and the Riefenstahls use various assessment tools and criteria, including annual revenue, to place the companies in the board most suited to their needs.
The Riefenstahls have formed three boards so far, the Presidential board, the Strategic board and the ChairmanÂ’s board. The Presidential board members typically have under $1 million in revenue and less than 20 employees. The Strategic boardÂ’s members will have higher revenue, more employees and more complex business issues. The ChairmanÂ’s board will be made up of members with the highest revenues and most complex issues.
“I realized the Dallas/Fort Worth market was pretty untapped, even though TAB has thousands of members and hundreds of facilitators like us across the U.S. and Canada and Latin America … because of my experience here in Fort Worth working with the grow your business program, I saw the need and just felt like Fort Worth was the community that would really take to the concept,” said Ed.
Most of the membersÂ’ companies range in size from a few hundred thousand dollars in revenue to $90 million, but 75 percent of the companies have revenues under $30 million.
“Maybe they have informal advisors but they don’t have a board of directors because they’re not public companies,” he said. “Board members have nothing to gain from each other, other than sharing their objective experience and trying to help the other party deal with his or her issues they may bring to that board.”
Boards consist of four to 10 members, each with different types of businesses and experiences. Members are not only divided by revenue and size but the industries they are in, growth strategies, management experience and behavioral styles. The Riefenstahls also compiled biographies of each member and sent it to the other members before the first board meeting, so that people can tell them whether or not they can be in the same room with a particular person.
“They may be next-door neighbors who keep running over each others rosebushes or something,” Valerie said. “We don’t want that.”
The first order of business during the first meeting will be to sign confidentiality agreements to prevent members from revealing sensitive issues, such as revenues, to outsiders.
Many of the businesses signed up are young and growing, such as the five-year-old Internet marketing agency, Rassai.
Chad Horany, co-owner of Rassai, said he and his partner, Judge Graham, decided to join a board because “it seemed like something that could do nothing but benefit us.”
“As any type of issue arises, we’ll bring it to the meetings and have the opportunity to talk to 10 other business owners in the community, one of which has probably dealt with that issue before,” he said. “To be able to get that kind of feedback is why we joined.”
Horany and Graham started Rassai while they were seniors at TCU in 2001. Both graduated from the schoolÂ’s e-business program. They started the company in an apartment they lived in near campus and now, five years later, have 18 employees and office in a building downtown.
Ed and Valerie have around 50 years of business experience between them that makes them. Ed founded ROI Associates, a business consulting company, in 1992 and before that worked in various sales, product launching and consulting positions for several companies. Valerie worked in the finance department at Zales before forming Sonoma Custom Jewelry with a partner. She sold the business and joined a pool and fountain company where she was involved in the design and marketing of products. The company was sold and Valerie joined Ed at ROI Associates. The couple also spent two years, from 1980 to 1982 with the Peace Corps. They worked with small businesses in the Dominican Republic, helping the people to create a savings and loan bank and uniting the small grocery store owners in several villages to mass-order food from suppliers.
The couple has lived in the area for 20 years. They have three sons, Alex, who is 23 years old and attends Tarleton; Austin, who is 19 years old and attends Texas Tech; and Andrew, who is 17 and is in high school.
Contact McClellan-Brandt at smcclellan@bizpress.net.
