Cerius Business Today

Pam:                      So what are some of the big differences between a non-profit board and a for-profit board?  Ginger?

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. So what are some of the big differences between a non-profit board and a for-profit board?  Ginger?

Ginger:                 Well, differences. I, uh, the first thing that comes to mind is not the answer to your question which is similarity. There’s still for board of directors and for non-profit, you have fiduciary responsibility to make sure that whatever monies are being managed properly and used according to the charter and all the agreements, the tenants of the organization. Some of the other benefits or differences I find is that for the non-profit there’s usually some sort of ultraistic motivator that you don’t see very often in the for-profit role. Certainly not in the board room. They’re much more interested in shareholder value than they are you know the other aspect. So there’s a lot of conversation around the ultraistic charter as well as how are we using the money and does it fulfill on the ultraistic side of what they’re trying to achieve. The best run non-profit boards that I’ve ever worked with, one example that comes to mind is the Susan G Komen organization. They are extremely strategic and have as highly functioning leadership and all the way from the way the organizations run, all the way to the advisory board and the board of directors as well. They are extremely professional in the way they approach running their organizations. And they’re very similar to my experience with for-profit public boards.

Pam:                      Interesting you should say that because I have the same experience being on the board of Orange County Head Start. They too are a very professional organization. One of the reasons being they get so much federal money that they really need to be, you know, held liable for what they do and making sure it matches their charter so there are non-profit boards that are very professional out there.

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. So here’s a question that’s always debated. Is it good for the CEO to also be the chairman of the board? So let me turn it over to your Merissa first. Give me your opinion on that.

Merissa:               You mean for an advisory board? Or board of directors?

Pam:                      No. Board of directors.

Merissa:               You know, I would defer to some of the other people on the call. My expertise is really in the advisory board realm and it seems like we’ve got some really good board of director’s experience on here. I will tell you the board of directors that I serve on, the CEO’s are the chairman but I don’t feel that I have enough knowledge on board of directors directly to say whether or not that’s the best practice.

Pam:                      Ok. Ginger, let’s move to you then.

Ginger:                 It is my experience that the CEO is the chairman and for-profit group. There is a practice in not-for-profit group where it is actually different and they do that by design, so that there is a kind of a built-in failsafe if you will. The 4 non-profits that I’ve served on there was a definite, there was an executive director and then a chairman of the board and there was, that made, that created some really good checks and balances.

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. Do companies need either or both board of directors and an advisory board?

Merissa:               You know, I think it also depends on the industry that you’re in and even geographical location. Like we’re on the east coast and I know the east coast is a lot more risk aversive when it comes to investment as opposed to the west coast. On the east coast, a lot of the advisory boards do not have investors on them because the structure and the advisory board members end up constituting a lot of presence from the government. So a lot of the advisory board members on the east coast, people who do business with the government. That is a huge presence on advisory boards. Whereas I know on the west coast where investors play a very large role in advisory boards. I think it really depends on where you are geographically in the industry that you serve. They can really drive the makeup of your advisory board. That’s been my experience.

Ginger:                 I agree with that and like to just add another point in that from my experience. The advisory board can, thinking of the west coast there’s so many startups, so much Silicon Valley and Irvine area startup activity, and the advisors that are typically brought in may or may not have the specific experience for the overall leadership of the company or directional set from the company. From the west coast side of things, my experience is that they can run more myopic, if you will. You know there’s not as much diversity of experience. It’s more narrow. And I think the broader a company can go to include more vast differences in experience in experience and contribution, the more successful the company will be. Now in the near-term that can create more conflict and discussion but the more that can happen from an advisory board level, I think the more successful the company can be. Same with the board of directors but again they have to deal with the pressure of the shareholders and the fiduciary rigor, and sometimes that can limit the range of discussion. You know you’re pretty locked in sometimes.

Pam:                      Absolutely Ginger. And Merissa, if I’m not mistaken, you’ve written on this topic?

Merissa:               Yeah, I have a book out. It’s called ‘Built to Scale’, how top companies create breakthrough growth through exceptional advisory boards. And SCALE is a model I created that when I wanted to put in a board in my first company which is Information Experts, that’s a 20 year old multi-million dollar government contracting firm. I wanted to put a board in place about 7 years ago, and when I went to look for information on how to build a board there were lots of articles that said you should build a board. There was literally nothing out there on how to do it. So I created a model called SCALE and that is Select, Compensate, Associate, Leverage and Evaluate, Evolve and Exit. That is literally the full end and soup to that process on how you make sure that you are selecting advisors that really meet the needs of your company because typically what people do is they meet somebody, that they think is great and they say do you want to join my board but they haven’t really thought about how they sit them in to the board or what role they would play. And that’s kind of putting the cart before the horse, so in my model, the SCALE model, the entire Select phase is very strategic in making sure that you identify who you need according to your holes and your goals inside your organization and you put a very methodical approach to selecting and vetting and then bringing them on. There’s a whole way to associate them from a legal perspective as well as how you actually integrate them into the culture of your organization because your advisory board is really an extension of your company, it’s is an extension of your brand and if you do it well, if it’s a phenomenal recruitment and retention tool as well. So my book covers the whole model and the appendix has all of the templates, the worksheets, the tools, everything that a business needs to put this in place. And I typically provide those to the people that buy the book in Microsoft Word and it’s basically board in a box. They just build their board with the information in there.

Pam:                      Excellent Merissa. Excellent, excellent.

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. Since you mentioned compensation. How are boards of directors and advisory boards, let’s start with advisory boards first, how will they compensate it? Everyone think that you either give them stock or have to pay them a huge amount of money. What is it in reality?

Merissa:               So for advisory boards in my book, what I did was I interviewed a long-standing attorney that I’ve known for 15 years who is also a CPA and he is a compensation expert. And in there everything is transcribed. And the way I broke it down was monetary compensation, non-monetary compensation – because there’s creative ways to actually compensate your advisory board — and then also with equity. So what weighs out is that the person that I interviewed, he broke it out in 4 different ways that you can compensate with equity but his main role was that you never give more than one quarter to one half of one percent to each board member that you have. And you basically put in a 1 year agreement that with a restricted stock agreement that allows you to buy back that stock, basically at a penny, in the event that you roll off that board member. Because the last thing that you want to do is that you want to give a large chunk to somebody who’s working very part-time for you and if they don’t work out what happens is you’ve got someone who’s walking around out there that owns stock within your, you know, of your company. And getting back to the point that was made earlier about startups. They might have nothing. They might literally be under a million dollars in revenue and they think ‘oh, I’ll just give this person 5% or 6%’. Well 6% of nothing is nothing. But if you build a company to 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 million dollars, that’s a lot of money to be giving to somebody basically part blanch. And you’ve got think that you’ve got a board of 4, 5, 6 people, you have to make sure that you’re very judicious with the amount of stock that you’re going to want to give. You don’t know who you’re give stock to, whether you do like an ESOP, you want to give it to your employees, you want to give it partners, maybe you want to have an LTI, a long-term incentive agreement in place of your employees. So you have to be very, very judicious with the stock. So that’s kind of the, you know, the framework in a nutshell when you’re going to give equity. When you have money that’s involved-

Pam:                      So just for clarification, so at the end of the year you have a buy back for that whole quarter to a half of one percent? You have a buyback of one penny?

Merissa:               Yes. So the way, this what Wayne recommended in the book. Yeah, you put in a restricted stock agreement because in the event that it doesn’t work out and he recommends and I recommend that you basically do a 1 year agreement. Look, you know what, when you bring someone, when you bring anyone on whether it’s an employee or a partner or even a customer, a board member. Obviously when you first bring them on everybody gets along, everybody is, you know, happy and enamored with one another. You never know how a relationship is going to go. And so if you have an advisory board member that is not showing up and is not delivering, it’s important to get them out of your board because they’re taking up a seat that’s someone who actually could be delivering for you. And you want to make sure that you get them out and you get them out clean, so that they’re not walking around with your stock that you can give to somebody else. And also that they’re not a liability down the road when they actually own a piece of your company. So it’s really important to set that up with a restricted stock agreement and get them out cleanly if they decide to roll off.

Pam:                      I can’t tell you Merissa how many CEO’s I’ve heard say ‘gosh, you know I’ve got this advisory board that’s just really not very good and I give them equity, and how do I get rid of them?’ I mean I can’t tell you-

Merissa:               Well that’s how you get rid of them.

Pam:                      [laughs] Too bad.

Merissa:               And the thing is when you’re exactly right when you first get the group together, you got a vision and this is true for small family businesses as well that have been around for a long time and they first start to do it, they think they know what they’re looking for and then when the time comes that you’re in discussions and there’s significant issues that have to be addressed and conflict arises. Not everybody plays the same under conflict and stress that do when things are copasetic. So you just need to have some flexibility and for the long-term so that you’ve got options.

Pam:                      I totally agree with that.

Merissa:               But that is why you really have to let them upfront that is very specific selection model right. Because it isn’t just looking at the resume of the person or wondering you know what contacts they have, what experience they have. Like I said before, this is an extension of your brand and you’ve got to make sure that there’s a cultural fit. I know we had our advisory board. You know they were integrated into my company, my advisory board members I didn’t want them just showing up just once in a quarter, I wanted them to be accessible in between meetings and I wanted them accessible to my executive team. So that’s why putting all this out in front, you know, and really saying these are really the expectations, and this is the framework on how I want you to engage with my company. All that has to be decided and agreed to upfront and signed off on in a board agreement so that hopefully when you get to the end, everybody wants to continue. And you know at the E part of my phase which is evaluating all the exits, we, I actually have a full interview in there, an exit interview. You know I have the human capital background, and so when you’re rolling off an advisory board member the most important thing you want to do was keep the doors open and never burn any bridges because you don’t know if maybe you want them back or maybe they could lead you to another advisor. You want everybody to feel good about the experience so I have a full exit interview in there so that there’s closure in a very professional manner that makes everybody feel good about the experience and people aren’t left hanging, that’s the other thing.

Pam:                      Perfect, perfect. Jeff, let’s go over to the public board. So give me your advice on compensation for public board of directors.

Jeff:                       We did things a little bit differently. We paid every member a fee for the quarterly meeting. It wasn’t a large amount of money but there was a small fee. Plus, obviously we carried all their expenses. We had some people from the east coast and it’s good to have east coast and west coast kind of merged together to get different ideas and thoughts about business and regular trade environment, etc. And the last thing we did as an additional perk. We created a small pool, and it wasn’t a big amount like 1 or 2% of the company. And invested over 5 to 7 year period. So in order to earn that small amount, you had to have long-term plans and goals with the company. So if you left early, you didn’t get much of anything so the different aspect on the stock restricted plan we talked about earlier.

Pam:                      So Jeff what if somebody got, ended up being there for 5 years and then they rolled off or they left good or bad. What do you do? Get that equity back? Do you get that percentage back? Or would they keep it?

Jeff:                       No, they would earn that. They invested into it and they’d have the right to either take the stock or sell it back to the company. And again, it wasn’t 1 or 2% that was shared, wasn’t a total 1 or 2% per board members who wanted 2% put into a pool and was shared equally by the number of board members and it was just an idea. It was an additional perk outside the fee, paid you to come to meetings and be available and also to cover your expenses.

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. Great. Let’s move to another topic here Jeff, and we’re going to stay with you for just the moment. I hear a lot of references to inside, outside independent directors. Can you tell the audience what that means?

Jeff:                       To me the inside directors were the ones that were, you know, some had either a family member or a part of the management team that were on the board. We had both where I was. And also the outside where the independent or 3rd party investors or directors that would not have had an interest in the company, but they had valuable insight through their knowledge and experience to give direction to the board and help with the judiciary aspect to running the company.

Pam:                      Is there a ratio of inside directors to outside directors?

Jeff:                       That’s a good, good question. Where I did, we had a… the majority was the management and the family. I think it was like 7 on the board, we had 4 inside management and family members total and 3 outside directors.

Pam:                      Ginger-

Ginger:                 That’s been my experience with family run businesses as well. It’s that there’s a, even though there’s no on an advisory board capacity, there’s no voting situation or fiduciary control aspect to what the action is. But still because of the, I think the commitment from the family and the fear of bringing in outsiders. They may have the courage at some point to say that ok, I’m going to bring in a board of advisors. Still want to make sure that they have a controlling interest in the conversation which makes it challenging for advisory board members to really speak the truth and you’ve got to be very good at debate and consensus building you know to be effective I think. But it’s, so that’s one. And then again, I’ve consulted with others with a startup for example, where it’s not family. There might be one or two operating folks there like a high level executive who’s actually in the business day-to-day but there’s more variety and a pitch more collective.

Pam:                      Thanks Ginger.

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. Jeff, you actually have been on a fairly decent size board and how did you go about finding and recruiting your board members? You were on the NASDAQ exchange so you had to be careful.

Jeff:                       Right well we used a combination of well knowledged individuals in the industry, so that they could give us feedback. We put a team of financial experts in that knew financials and knew the regulatory requirements. One, another one was a retired accountant that was with the business. And the last one was an attorney that could help give us guidance during the meetings or anytime we publicized or put out anything making sure it was regulatory compliant.

Pam:                      Ok and Ginger, what about the boards you’ve been on?

Ginger:                 They’re different depending on the board and the industry, and the stage of the company also. When the participated in a lot of early stage startup boards and in those situations there tends to be more of a focus on opportunities to open and support the growth of the company, the early stage growth and exposure of the company and risk assessment along the way. As opposed to the more established companies that maybe have the round, well-rounded approach that was just described a few minutes ago. It just, I think the stage of the company really has an impact, and my other comment here is to go back to Merissa’s description of the book, early stage companies would definitely benefit. I think from having a more methodical approach. There tends to be random, in my experience, there tends to be ‘I just met this person and I think they could maybe invest in my company’, whether or not they have a strategic capability or experience that could be a long-term contribution and I think it’s short-sighted if you only look at possible investment potential for an advisory board or a board or directors, but speaking specifically here an advisory board.

Now, Ginger you mentioned startups a couple of times now. So if a startup doesn’t have a VC or investor and they’re just starting up, do they need an advisory board?

Ginger:                 Uh, I believe they do. The primary reason I think is for the strategy and being able to identify gaps, as you said, holes and roles for where the company is going, what it’s going to do, its primary point of difference, value proposition. All of those things can. The board can be a sounding board typically, my experience again, that the folks who have a startup, an idea, an incubated idea, are very, very passionate about what they’re doing. And sometimes that can keep them from seeing the bigger picture or seeing their vulnerabilities. An advisory board can provide that sounding board and be the devil’s advocate for an enthusiastic, zealous startup originator. So that’s one reason. Another reason to have a board of advisors is that it can be a financial, an investment syndicate. You know, where there’s a syndicate of investors, and then there’s representatives from those investors that represent a role on the board. And typically they will request that because they want to make sure that the money that they’re investing is being utilized in a way that is compatible with what they understood the proposition to be. So it’s in a way, similar to the fiduciary response on board of directors but different in that it is different, it is startup and early stage. And they’re basically shepherding their own investments.

Pam:                      Great. Excellent. And one other, since you have actually have a lot of expertise in the family owned business world. You know I’ve noticed that a lot of family owned businesses, they do have a board that is all family members. Do you recommend that family businesses also have outside directors? Whether it’s a board of directors or advisory board. Do you recommend that?

Ginger:                 Absolutely. I have over the past 10 years, I’ve worked with several companies that were long-standing family owned businesses that had changed leaders because of inheritance. The founder of the company had aged out and then the siblings or the children of the company had to come in to the leadership roles. Well that’s a perfect storm of problems for companies because they can be stuck in their old ways. They have a heritage which is wonderful, a legacy that’s gotten them to where they are. But if their competitive environment has changed, which I can’t think of an industry where it hasn’t, a lot of times that entrenchment can keep them from being objective about what they need to change. I’ve had the good fortune to work with several family-owned businesses that had the foresight to put together a board of people who were. For example digital, many old-standing companies, 25-35 years old, have just ignored the digital world. And you can’t be in business today without having some sort of digital presence. Not necessarily social media but certainly internet. And they don’t know how to do that themselves and many of them are frightened of it. So by having a board of advisors who can help them overcome their fear of it, it can definitely help them transition into the new millennium from a marketing positioning and value proposition to their customers.

Pam:                      Excellent. And Merissa, I’m going to go to you for just a second.

Merissa:               Sure.

BT:          Hi and welcome to Business Today, brought to you by Cerius Executive Solutions. Today we are joined by Kristen McAlister and Matt Sauer from Cerius Executives. How are you guys doing today?

Kristen: I’m great, thank you.

Matt:     Great, thank you.

BT:          Great. So today we just want to kind of get right into it. Today’s conversation is about contract executives, interim executive and consultants who were once CEO’s, C-level executives that are either trying to make the transition, have made the transition or are looking for ways to find more consistent work and some tips that may help them. You mentioned a little bit about client expectations [0:39]and I wanted to kind of get into another question, and it’s still along the lines of things executives need to know to be successful. When I was in college, and I’ll forgive me when I was in college I wasn’t really paying attention a lot, but when I was in college there was this sociology class and in that class we had discussed 3 different types of leaders. One leader was effectively very aggressive and it was one of those you steal, your hand gets chopped off. Second leader was overly understanding and compassionate, and then the third leader was actually a mixture of both. The society that actually ended up lasting the longest was the society that had a mixture of both good strong beliefs in terms of punishment for crime, as well as, a good compassionate understanding personified in general. Now I bring this up because one of the biggest changes that executives go through when they leave a organization and they start their own consulting business, or they start getting into consulting. Even though you’re a good leader in you executive days, one of the airier C-level days, one of your tricks in your back pocket constantly is the ability to become aggressive if needed or become assertive if needed by working on writing employees up, having the final say on their employment status. Kind of being the final word in the organization. Now when you make this transition that goes away. You have any advice on how a former CEO, now executive, can kind of manage client expectations as well as get the job done without having their, you know lack of a better phrase, normal superpowers?

Kristen: Some of that’s going to depend on why they’re being brought in and the type of project. Because looking at the 3 that you described, interim executives or management consultants could be brought in specifically to help change or form the leadership process in the organization. Especially when you’re looking at an entrepreneurial organization [2:38] by the seat of the entrepreneur’s pants not necessarily because they’re a good leader, but because they’re a good businessman as well. So in some cases they actually step in and they take that leadership role and they spread it out throughout the organization. So sometimes Cerius is more of a driver in what a temp, seen as a temporary situation than what they were in a more permanent situation. There’s probably more consistency there. In these situations there’s a lot of inconsistency and the executive is there to bring consistency to the situation. In whatever manner it takes. Sometimes it probably feels like Jekyll and Hyde, and you’ve got multiple personalities in a given day depending upon what situation you’re in, which company you’re in, what that culture is, and who you’re working with throughout the organization. But in most cases, the executives that we work with haven’t made it to the point in their careers by being that aggressive over-bearing type, and there’s a fifth where the individuals who are not looking to do interim executive or management consulting work. So some of that is just a natural selection, they vet themselves out or they’re vetted out at that point. We keep that expectation management separate from that but I’d love to hear Matt’s thoughts on that. I know you’ve come across and you’ve really talked to executives on a daily basis. I’d love to hear some of their perspectives, you talk first.

Matt:     You know, I guess what I would just add to what you said Kristen, and that is that most of those who realize that they are no longer going to be in charge, let’s say, and are going to have to persuade and have to provide information and that they’re not necessarily going to be whatever they recommend is not necessarily going to be followed depending on the situation there is. You’re right, they do, they self-select out. When you start talking about what an interim assignment is and the company that they’re going to be going into and who they’re going to be working for, whether it be a board or a CEO or the owner of the company, and what their role is going to be. I think that those that realize that they, hate to say it this way, but they have to be in charge and they realize that they can’t be in charge. That they realize that you know I think I need to go look and do something else. I need to back into Corporate America, I need to be on a board, I need to do something different because I want people to listen when I have something to say, and I want them to act on it. As opposed to, I just want them to hear what I have to say and I need to try to persuade them to follow my lead. And I think that’s a big change.

Kristen: When all else fails that has a great assessment tool. That doesn’t necessarily look at culture and the personality of an individual but the work style. If we can easily change, and alter and adjust our personalities, our work styles are a little more consistent in what we are most, what type of work style we are comfortable with. So looking at that you go through an assessment of what work style works best for this company and the world that they’re looking to fill their needs, and what’s the work style of the executives that we work with. So again another tool in ways of leading [5:59] and figuring out does the company really need a hug-in-the-mug and compassionate executive, and not even so much a mixture in this situation. Because many companies in that case situation are alike. Matching that leadership style with the situation is key. You can have two executives with the exact same skill set. It’s how they address the situation, how they work within it and their approach that can make one successful and one fail.

BT:          Interesting. Well Kristen and Matt, I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for listening to all my questions and answering them. And for everybody else that is listening you can find Business Today on iTunes, the Play Store and off of the Cerius Executives website as well as Podbean. Please visit us at www.ceriusexecutives.com. Thank you!

BT:          Hi and welcome to Business Today, brought to you by Cerius Executive Solutions. Today we are joined by Kristen McAlister and Matt Sauer from Cerius Executives. How are you guys doing today?

Kristen: I’m great, thank you.

Matt:     Great, thank you.

BT:          Great. So today we just want to kind of get right into it. Today’s conversation is about contract executives, interim executive and consultants who were once CEO’s, C-level executives that are either trying to make the transition, have made the transition or are looking for ways to find more consistent work and some tips that may help them. So let’s talk about that a little bit more. I mean, I think that’s kind of a good thing to discuss. As an executive you do have a diverse skill set that you had to have to get the level that you are. How do you focus on that? How do you focus on one specific expertise? For example, let’s say you’re a marketing executive who eventually ran your own company so now you’ve got an idea of sales, you’ve got an idea of marketing and operations, and you’ve done various amounts of business deals that have given you lots of experience in contract law, and so forth. So you see, quite a few different scenarios in front of you. So how do you focus on that? I mean is it focused on per assignment, I mean when you’re out there in the field and you’re trying to find work, you’re looking at some point, the best opportunity whether it’s experience, financial, compensation, whatever it may be. So how do you focus on your expertise without it becoming more of a full-time executive’s lesson?

Kristen: Matt, do you want to take that one? Or do I need to?

Matt:     Well I’ll start and then you jump. One of the things that we do is that, again, our team works with both the client and the executive in creating a statement of work. And in that statement of work, we make sure, we don’t create it when we work with interim to create a statement of work. And we coach them on how to do a great statement of work. So we make sure it includes the beginning date, we make sure it includes an end date. And we make sure that we put in all of the details in between. And the reason for that is that it’s for both sides. It’s the client, as well as, the interim so that no one gets off track. You know, clients have a tendency that when they get a really seasoned, C-level executive with lots of experience they have a tendency to want them to start doing a lot more than what they were originally engaged to do. And because the executives can do more, they have a tendency to veer off track and start doing more. So the purpose behind the statement of work is just to make sure that both sides stay focused. Which is exactly what you just asked Raj. It’s that we help them to stay focused on what the assignment was. Not that they can’t do more. Not that the client doesn’t want them to do more. But really they were brought in to get something completed within a certain period of time. And if they, either side starts to veer off then the time starts to expand, which means it costs the client more money which you know is not a satisfying solution to why they brought us in. So we’re very focused on making sure that that SOW is making a thing or two which helps most sides stay focused on exactly what they were brought in to do. And it also helps the interim stay focused on what their background is. Whether it be marketing or whether it be sales, or finance. Whatever the case may be, it helps them stay focused so that, that is how it’s accomplished.

Kristen: I’d really like to go back to the example that you gave for the marketing exec. And that’s absolutely right. Making it curt. Not just figuring out what that expertise is, it’s making clear to the company here’s what they’re being brought in for. Do we need to expand on that? Do we need to stick to it? And we’ll get to, I’d love to hit on expectation management between interim executives and [3:36] the very subject. Going back to your marketing example, that’s probably not a more common situation we run into is, I... Executives have been doing, have been taking on executive involvement [4:10] credified companies, and sometimes they are supervising variables of their own. And they’ve gone out and they manage their own company, a marketing services company and they had to go out and sale in business development. The question for figuring out what are you an expert at [4:26] executive is, right now if I had to get up on stage with, in front of 50 of your peers, what subject, and what situation could you talk about and give a lecture on as an expert? You could cite more than one case study. A case in point, walking them through here’s how we’ve done and here’s how it was done then, sent on successfully. If you can’t stand up in front of your peers and sell confidence that you are an expert and you’re teaching them something that they likely don’t know, probably not your expertise. So when you look at an owner of a small marketing services company, could they stand up there and talk about sales and business development in front of 50 other sales executives? Probably not. But they stand in front of other marketing service company owners and talk about  business development and sales within a small boutique marketing services firm, if they’ve been doing it long enough, they’ve trading up things and giving up examples, probably so. So then it should take just a matter of narrowing it down and focusing it to what situation can you be dropped in when you’re the expert on, stand in front of the audience and lecture on it.

BT:          Wow, that’s excellent. Excellent advice. I mean I think that’s great when someone would know where your great expertise would be. Right to be able to, kind of, where will you be able to be a thought leader and have actual presentations and be basically a source expert. So excellent advice. Well Kristen and Matt, I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for listening to all my questions and answering them. And for everybody else that is listening you can find Business Today on iTunes, the Play Store and off of the Cerius Executives website as well as Podbean. Please visit us at www.ceriusexecutives.com. Thank you!

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. OK, what role do board members and advisory board members play and are they different? Ginger, let's go to you.

Ginger:                 In my experience they are definitely different. I've served on many advisory boards for small and big companies and I can talk from my experience. The level of tender and hands on tactical advice is higher for me on the advisory board capacity. The board of director’s role, when I was acting in that capacity, it was much higher level. It was more strategic, and again shareholder focused. So you really had more high-level impacts to consider. The advisory board work for me has been more specific to the actual changes that are happening in the company, are the future vision of the company and there's more active participation in an advisory board.

Pam:                      So Ginger, the advisory board is not strategic?

Ginger:                 No no, it is strategic. It's just when the differences. There's strategy on both sides but when I served on advisory boards, the work has been more hands on tactical operationally focused if you will. It is, when I was hired to join an advisory board the work was specific to the expertise that I brought so I was able to advice and then actually, in some ways participate in the execution of what was being discussed and agreed to in the advisory board. My role on the board of directors was higher-level. More strategy, less hands on. Where there was guidance provided but then there were other folks who were doing the operational execution of those.

Pam:                      Excellent.

BT:          Hi and welcome to Business Today, brought to you by Cerius Executive Solutions. Today we are joined by Kristen McAlister and Matt Sauer from Cerius Executives. How are you guys doing today?

Kristen: I’m great, thank you

Matthew: Great, thank you

BT:          Great. So today we just wanna kind of get right into it. Today’s conversation is about contract executives, interim executive and consultants who were once CEO’s, C-level executives that are either trying to make the transition, have made the transition or are looking for ways to find more consistent work and some tips that may help them. Quick question, you both have mentioned the making yourself memorable using numbers and marketing yourself and so forth. Now what’s the best way to do that, because let’s say you are one of those executives who have achieved some ridiculous amount of success in your life and sometimes when you put things on paper, people will find it to be a little, I guess I’m looking for the right word, exaggerated. How would an executive kinda deal with that? Especially if you have a résumé that is filled with one amazing feat after another, how do you position yourself so you don’t look fake? Because I mean I’ve seen that in the marketplace where anytime I meet a consultant or an executive or former executive, I mean, their papers, their marketing documents are very, very strong in terms of this is what I’ve achieved. How do you bring a level of authenticity to that marketing?

Matthew: I’ll go first this time if it’s OK Kristen? What I would say that, that’s where Cerius comes in. You know that’s where our regional VP’s come in, the business development team. Because they have to talk to the client and make sure that they understand that it is that level of expertise, it is all of that knowledge that that senior executive is bringing to the table, that is what they need for to help them transition through whatever issues they have or help them grow their company or whatever it is that they were hiring Cerius to do that they want that person who has that you know that huge amount of experience. Our team has a way of being able to tone it down some, so that the client is comfortable with the fact that we are bringing in this level of expertise, but that this is really what they need to turn their business around, or to solve the problem. Or again, to grow the business to do a merger, to do an acquisition. That’s what our interims bring to the table that they don’t have on their team.

Kristen: Yes. And at that point bringing in interim executive management consultant is very different than hiring for a full time executive. For a full time executive if you were to put down on paper that you have had incredible, amazing results in these five different areas it might be a little more than attractive to me, and I am certainly going to follow up to verify that it’s accurate, but we are looking at in interim or management consulting it’s going to be less believable and I want someone who is an expert in one area who can come in and be the best at solving my problem. So I’m going to look more for consistency and not stellar résumé. At executive level I better see a stellar résumé, you’ve had twenty to thirty years in order to reach that level of competency, so it had better be stellar but I’m going to look for it to be consistently stellar and incredible results and a more narrow set of areas and competencies in order for me to gauge are you the expert I’m looking for. Which is certainly where you get into the challenge of most executives we talk to or come in from [3:47] and want to make a career shift is, how do I take thirty years of work experience and all that I’ve done and narrow that down into either resume or profile, or narrow it to expertise. This is probably one of the most challenging things that executives could possibly go through.

BT:          Well Kristen and Matt, I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for listening to all my questions and answering them. And for everybody else that is listening you can find Business Today on iTunes, the Play Store and off of the Cerius Executives website as well as Podbean. Please visit us at www.ceriusexecutives.com. Thank you!