Yes.

Okay, next question!

But seriously, let me explain we feel so strongly that an advisory board is vital for running a healthy business, with a bit of help from a virus, some of the world's fastest growing tech companies, and some respected agency leaders...

Unforeseen events

We set Convivio on a mission of helping agency founders run their businesses more strategically and proactively after the initial waves of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It became clear that most agencies didn't have any concept that a pandemic was a likely threat to their business, let alone having a business continuity plan for how to survive it. To 99% of founders it came completely out of the blue. And the same with the inflation and recession that followed.

This left agency founders in the position of constantly reacting to events, rather than getting ahead of them.

One of the main reasons we found for that, when we investigated, was that agency founders hardly ever wore the 'top three hats' in their business — the owner, director and CEO hats. They were too busy down in the details.

We believe that having an advisory board, taking time to wear the 'director' hat — even if it is still just the same founders or management on the board — creates a vital time and space for higher-altitude thinking about the agency.

And here, we believe, agencies can learn a lot from the world of venture-backed tech businesses that are on a fast-growth trajectory.

Learning from fast-growth tech companies

Respected VC Fred Wilson, of Union Square Ventures, is adamant all small businesses need advisory boards:

"A company should have a board the day it is formed. Every company should have a board of directors. At the start it can simply be a one person board consisting of the founder. But it should not stay that way for long."

Clint Korver teaches a course on startup boards at Stanford University called “Startup Boards: Advanced Entrepreneurship.” Clint says: