Small businesses to get help from directors (From Ilkley Gazette)

Small businesses to get help from directors

Small businesses in the Otley and Guiseley areas will be among those to benefit from the latest expansion of a peer group scheme.

David McCartney.

The Alternative Board (TAB), the peer-support and business coaching organisation, whose first UK franchise was established in Bradford last year, has set up its second operation in the district. David McCartney, a Yorkshire businessman who has run both public and family-owned businesses over 26 years, has bought the Leeds North area franchise, which includes Otley and Guiseley.

With expertise in sales and marketing, operations and strategic planning, Mr McCartney has knowledge of the distribution sector and the food and chemical industries. He is a former managing director of Fiske Food Ingredients, the UK’s leading food ingredient distributor, and chief executive of Nandi Proteins, the technology spin-out from Heriot-Watt University.

Mr McCartney said: “The Alternative Board format is very powerful because it combines practical experience with individual coaching and sophisticated online business analysis tools. “This access to multi-disciplinary expertise makes the TAB model ideally suited to the current tough economic environment.”

Mr McCartney is to invite local business owners to introductory ‘taster’ board meetings so they can see for themselves how the TAB model works.

Owner-managers who become TAB members meet regularly with their peers to share experiences and receive unbiased help and advice on the challenging business issues they face.

He said: “While at Nandi Proteins, I experienced the full benefits and value of a board of talented non-executive directors. I now plan to establish a number of boards that will provide real benefits to emerging and established businesses alike.”

TAB members all belong to local peer advisory boards which meet monthly; they are all carefully vetted and selected from non-competing similar-size companies, each with his or her own different skill sets.

Paul Dickinson, managing director of TAB UK, said: “David is an enormously experienced executive whose experience of running privately-owned family businesses will be invaluable to the owners of SMEs.”

The establishment of TAB North Leeds follows the launch last year of TAB Bradford, run by former Bingley Grammar School teacher-turned-entrepreneur Dr Nick Howcroft.

TAB is based on a concept popular in the United States for about 20 years where it has worked with more than 5,000 business owners to help them achieve their goals and improve the performance of their businesses.

Founded in 1990, The Alternative Board is based in Colorado, and now has boards in more than 1,000 towns and cities across the US and Canada.