The challenge
In early 2022, the Mayor’s international Business Programme at London and Partners reached out to Invigorate to support their current cohort of businesses through the process of engaging and managing their external support and building advisory boards.
Scaleups often struggle to get the most out of their board and advisors. The average scaleup will spend more than 2,000 hours a year looking for appropriate advisory support and business-advisor fit problems are common. Yet advisors and advisory boards are also a vital resource for quickly growing scaleups – allowing them to move quicker, troubleshoot more effectively, and navigate business challenges with years of experience.
One of the most common reasons that scaleups fail to access the right advisory support is that of lack of information on the process – with many businesses unsure what to look out for and what best practice is to make sure they get the most from these engagements. So London and Partners partnered with Invigorate to help them provide their businesses with resources and support negotiating advisory relationships through an online masterclass.
Our approach
Invigorate divided the session into two halves. The first half was used to deliver a thorough grounding in the external support available to scaleups such as those attending, best practice when finding and engaging this support, and tips and tricks to ensure they received maximum value. The second half of the session was then devoted to taking questions from participants and providing more tailored support to the challenges the attending businesses faced.
For a closer look at some of the questions attendees asked (and the answers) check out this article on the session.
The masterclass was delivered by Invigorate CEO Lauren Stewart.
Following the masterclass, Invigorate also offered follow-up consultations to the attendees to help them work through their business support challenges and requirements.
The impact
The masterclass Invigorate delivered was very well received, and Invigorate arranged several follow-up consultations to provide more in-depth support for several businesses. Invigorate were then asked to return and deliver it again to the next cohort in the winter of 2022, again to excellent results.
London and Partners were very satisfied with the quality of content and the support delivered to their businesses, with the programme manager for the Mayor’s International Business Programme, Guillermo Huertas Guillen commenting that:
“The “How to Build Your Advisory Boards” workshop was fantastic! The qualitative feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive, and the poll results reaching almost top scores. The session was jam-packed with valuable information and the participants were very impressed with Lauren’s expertise. We’re looking forward to having Lauren again in a future workshop!“
Invigorate continues to provide the businesses which attended with access to resources and best practice, to help them make the most of their advisory relationships.
