Jenny Chapman meets Andy Wilson of The Alternative Board and finds out how he landed from a high-flying career in banking.
You have an idea, a problem, some sort of issue. It keeps you awake at night and yet you can’t discuss it with your own board of directors, you just can’t.
This is one of the scenarios behind the formation of The Alternative Board, which is likely to be a group of up to eight chief executives, none of whom have any axe to grind with any of the others, or any commercial interest in each others’ enterprises.
It started in the US 21 years ago, and there has been a board running in the Cambridge area for the past year, with another due to start soon. The chairman is Andy Wilson, ex-high-flying banker turned entrepreneur and songwriter, who decided that life was too short not to have a good time as well as make a good living.
I meet Andy in Starbucks in Saffron Walden. He is a hard man to pin down at the moment, as he is visiting chief executives in and around Cambridge to find the perfect mix for the city’s second TAB.
He tells me how Allen Fishman, the American founder, started out in retail electronics. He was ambitious, got some venture capital investment and along with it some new board members. The business did well, floated on the New York Stock Exchange, and Allen retired at 45 with enough cash to last him several lifetimes.
But, like many a successful entrepreneur in Cambridge, he just couldn’t keep away from the coalface. He started writing for a local business magazine in his home town, which meant he got talking to a lot of small business people, and realised they needed what he had found when the VCs had come on board – the trouble was, these businesses were all too small to get that sort of attention.
“It was the objective advice he got that made him successful,” Andy says, “but most small businesses can’t afford the sort of fees charged by non-execs – I should guess in Cambridge around £1k a day.”
Allen found eight non-competing businesses in his town and brought them together once a month. Each was invited to bring their own particular challenges to the table, suggestions would be made to solve problems, and each of the members of the board would know that what they said around the table was totally confidential.
It worked so well that Allen found himself with a second big success story on his hands, with The Alternative Board spreading throughout the US, Canada and into South America. And, 21 years later, that same original board of eight still meets up once a month.
“An ex-colleague of mine from RBS met Allen and bought a licence to run the idea in the UK. That was two or three years ago and he set up in Harrogate.”
Andy, who spent 24 years in banking, rising to the top level, left to start his own business, Mezzo, in London. This was about hand-held tablets on aeroplanes for in-flight entertainment and had investment from Rolls Royce Corporate Ventures.
The business flew, reaching £4m turnover in two years: “Then disaster struck. Sixty percent of our business was with Maxjet, Silverjet and Excel Airways, and all three went bust within three months.”
Mezzo had enough cash to keep going, but had to downsize: “I had just hired someone who I thought was better than me, and I also decided that I wanted a work/life balance, and there was my other passion, music. I like song-writing and singing, folksy, Americana.
“Allen had seen that there were successful people who were happy with their lives and successful people who were not because they had not had a work/life balance, and knew they could not put the clock back.
“He said The Alternative Board had to be about working for what the business owner wants, and this has been a revelation to me, seeing how it is working on the board in Cambridge.
“One member in particular has found that their life is much more in balance, they see their children twice a week, whereas they didn’t see them at all before, and they have taken up some sport.
“No, I am not talking about lifestyle businesses, it is about the owner deciding what they want from life.
“Board members have said it is like being able to take their armour off. They can talk about issues that really matter. Often these might be quite small, but they are keeping them awake at night, and they don’t feel they can tell their own board what’s going on. It’s a lonely existence.”
Andy chairs the board at the monthly meetings and members are charged between £500 and £750 a time, depending of the size of their business. From this they also get mentoring from Andy on how to implement the ideas and suggestions put forward at the meetings to solve issues. And these can cover just about everything you could think of, hiring and firing, succession planning, cash flow.
The Cambridge board which has been going for a year includes a food manufacturer, a large local firm of accountants, a large local solicitors, an audio company and a recruitment business, plus a home interiors wholesaler.
The monthly meetings, which last four hours, rotate round members premises and everybody gets a chance to have their say every month.
“People get very close. Four years is the average membership.”
At the moment Andy is putting together the second Cambridge board and expects to visit up to 50 firms before finding the right mix.
“People either get it or they don’t,” he says. “I did a lot of networking to begin with, but I found that the people I was looking for, owners running businesses turning over between £500k and £10m, tend not to network as much as smaller businesses.
“The Alternative Board is not about networking. I’ll give you some examples of how it has helped members, how you can be more likely to get a ‘left field’ idea than you might from your own board.
“A member had just inherited a garden centre. He was a builder and didn’t know much about the garden centre business, which was not doing very well because of a housing slump, people were not spending on their gardens.
“One of the board asked whether it had to stay as a garden centre. In the end the business was converted to a landscape gardening business and nursery supplying the plants to the landscaping part, which fitted in very nicely with the builder’s developments.
“Another member of a board, who was leading a management buy-out, said it was great to have a lawyer and an accountant on The Alternative Board while she was going through the MBO.”
Andy says he really enjoys TAB, seeing the value members get from it, but, like Allen, he is not content with one business. His other enterprise is Livewire Rock Academy, which takes children from as young as six and gives them the chance to play electric instruments such as rock guitars, drums and keyboards. Groups meet in school and town halls once a week for jamming sessions in Saffron Walden, Bishop’s Stortford and Epping.
To get in touch with Andy, email awilson@thealternativeboard.co.uk.
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