72. Get more value from your startup advisors

Strong advisors can make or break your startup.

If you have not yet recruited a group of rock-star advisors, go back and read "Create the Perfect Advisory Board."

If you have already have a set of exceptional advisors for your startup, are you getting value from them?

My experience is that most founders fail to use me as effectively or as much as they should. Often months pass between phone calls with the founder. When they do happen, I struggle to recall the company's current situation, diminishing my ability to help.

In this article, I will discuss how you can better leverage your advisors and some processes for making that interaction more effective.

Working with advisors can feel like a distraction. You're busy down in the weeds, trying to build your business and execute your plan, and your advisor wants you to drop everything and spend time answering their questions. And it's true that impacts your short-term productivity. However, in the long term, they can add immeasurably to the company's growth.

Advisors are more than attractive faces to decorate your pitch decks. They are deep wells of experience, knowledge, and relationships. Why even have advisors, to whom you give equity in your company, if you don't intend to make good use of them?

Start by thinking about the kinds of assistance each of your advisors can provide that would be more than worth your time to talk to them. If you can't think of any, perhaps you need to replace that advisor!

Calls with your advisors are a forcing function, requiring you to get out of the day-to-day execution rut and think strategically. Preparing for and conducting these meetings is a perfect time to work "on the business" rather than "in the business." I wrote a whole article on Founder Time Management explaining why that is important.

It is critical to set up regularly scheduled meetings with your advisors. I suggest somewhere between weekly and monthly. If you wait longer than a month, you will spend the whole meeting getting them up to speed again. I have found to be bi-weekly meetings to be ideal in most cases. It gives you time to make some meaningful progress before our next conversation.

Send out an agenda at least a day before each call. Let us know the topics you want to discuss and any homework we should do in advance. If you need feedback on a web page or slide deck, don't wait for the meeting to show it to us. Sending it in advance means we won't waste time in the session while we read it, and we will have more time to think about it.

If we have to react and answer questions in real-time, you will only get the first thought that comes to mind. It might not be our best thought. Given some time to contemplate, we might come up with something much better.

Additionally, writing an agenda forces you to consider what issues you want to cover. Consider the strategic problems facing you and the obstacles blocking your progress.

One way to make this more efficient is to start with an agenda template. That should list all the general topics you might want to discuss. It might look something like this:

• Fundraising

• Product Development

• Marketing

• Sales

• Hiring

• HR Issues

When you start work on the next agenda, look at the template. Eliminate any items you don't need to discuss right now. Write down some details about the particular issue under each of the ones you want to cover.

While you are at it, write up your status update as well. Too often, I see most of the meeting time consumed with updates, leaving little or no time to discuss issues or receive feedback (the whole point of the meeting). When I have the update in advance, we can spend 100% of the meeting solving your problems and adding value. This update can also be a core part of your investor update emails. You are sending those too, right?

People often call your group of advisors an "Advisory Board." That begs the question, should you be having advisory board meetings where you are all together live, either in-person or virtually?

The meetings can be valuable when you have topics to discuss about which more than one advisor is qualified. Working through multiple opinions on an issue can be incredibly illuminating. Your advisors will build on each other's ideas and highlight weaknesses in each other's arguments. I usually set aside a few hours for these meetings. Scheduling these can be challenging, so I don't suggest doing them more than quarterly.

Remember, your advisors want to help you. That's why they came on board. However, unlike employees, they can't help unless you actively reach out and engage them. The more frequently you communicate, the better they understand your current situation and challenges, and the more they can help you.

I encourage you to join our community, the Founders Alliance.

If you would like to get personal advising from me, subscribe to Boot Prints. In each issue, I include a link to my Calendly so you can schedule a free half-hour session.

Until next time, Ciao!