By Jerry Chautin

Peer groups can help business owners succeed

Even successful business owners can feel marooned on an island when they don't have confidants with whom to discuss their challenges and fears. That is because most do not feel comfortable discussing intimate business matters with employees or spouses.

What is more, they rarely can afford a board of directors to help them with critical growth and management issues. As a result, peer-to-peer groups have emerged to fill the void.

That is why Steve Scott joined The Executive Committee, an international organization that gets non-competing business owners together. They discuss their challenges, acknowledge anxieties and learn ways to develop the leadership skills required for growing their companies.

"The reasons I joined mainly focused around feeling isolated with no one at the ownership level to talk with about the challenges that I faced," said Scott, president of Sarasota-based Scott Sign Systems Inc., a custom signage wholesaler.

TEC has two groups that cover Southwest Florida and approximately 60 other places throughout the state. Its Florida headquarters is in Jacksonville and you can check them out online at www.tecflorida.com or by calling (800) 733-4832.

Larry Face, chairman of a TEC group in Sarasota, said his organization "brings CEOs and business owners together in local roundtable groups around the world to share their experience and their skills in order to increase the bottom-line results of their businesses."

Furthermore, TEC sponsors workshops with professional speakers on a variety of subjects that are germane for growing companies. On a more personal level, Face coaches his members individually to attain higher levels of success.

Many entrepreneurs start their own companies because they have a concept or product to market, but soon realize that it takes more than a good idea or unique product to grow their businesses. Consequently, they look outside their companies for the marketing and management skills that they have not learned in school or even in their previous corporate lives.

Equally significant, entrepreneurs make daily decisions that can dramatically affect their companies' future. Although peer group colleagues cannot make the choices for them, discussing the options can relieve some of the angst.

Some business owners look to organizations such as TEC to help them attain the competencies needed to reach the next level. Others join to overcome boredom and burnout.

Now six months after affiliating with TEC, Scott says, "I don't think that the challenges changed. I think that my approach to the challenges changed and it made all of the difference in the world."

_______

Jerry Chautin was selected by SBA as the 2006 Small-Business Journalist of the Year. He is a local volunteer business counselor with Manasota SCORE, "Counselors to America's Small Business," offering free business advice. Contact Jerry with your business questions and stories through e-mail at jkchautin@aol.com. SCORE's phone number is 955-1029 and its Web site is www.score-suncoast.org.