What does a Business Sounding Board do?
You’re a ‘Business Sounding Board’? What’s one of those? What does a ‘Business Sounding Board’ actually do? I get this question all the time.
The simple answer is that I work as a personal sounding board to owners of SMEs (think £500k – £4m turnover). I allow clients to discuss the ‘what if we….’ or ‘how about this…..’ or ‘what does this sound like…..’, in total confidence. To use an analogy, does the image below represent your current state of mind as a business owner?
The best way to explain is for you to ‘Sounding Board’ yourself. Be your own Business Sounding Board. Try this;
Grab a pen and paper and put your ‘do not disturb’ sign up for 10 mins.
1) Without thinking, write down the one issue that’s your biggest pain in the arse (PITA) business problem right now.
2) Close your eyes. Take 30 secs imagining how you will feel when you solve that problem. Keep that emotion in your head.
3) Write down three potential solutions for how you could solve that PITA problem. They can be as extreme and far out as you want.
4) For each of those three solutions, write down a list of pros and cons.
5) Review your three lists. Decide which solution to go with.
That’s pretty much what I do with my clients.
I sometimes call the above the ‘PITA Patter’ (…..yeah I know…. 😬).
I’ve also created the PDF below to help you with the above process;
There is also a webinar example of this exercise on my YouTube channel.
Of course, working with me will take longer than the 10 mins you’ve just taken. And it will be over a number of sessions, over as many weeks and months as you want to work with me for. These sessions cover whatever topics that you wish to talk about. They will include me asking questions, prodding & poking you, teasing thoughts out of you, but the end is the same; You come up with the answers…. and they usually ones that you didn’t think you had in you, but were there all the time. And hopefully, too, each time, you’ll get that emotion from step 2 above. And get your state of mind to this image…
If you’d like me to help you through the process, or you’d like me to become your Business Sounding Board, give me a shout and we can arrange an initial discussion. You can contact me through all the routes below.