Here is how you can get the most out of us:

1. Commit to a regular meeting schedule.

If you are a startup that is in rapid iteration, experimenting wildly and learning heaps every week, connect with your key advisor every week. If you company is in the scaling stage, every two weeks works better to give you enough time in between meetings. As the company moves through different stages, this rhythm can and should change. Think of each meeting with your advisor as a shot of guayusa for your business — a jolt of energy, nutrients, clarity, and focus. Take these shots regularly when needed.

2. Ask for introductions.

Your advisors might know the perfect copywriter for your website or they might be well connected to your dream client. Be clear on what types of people you need and your advisors will tap into their deep networks to help you hire a strong team, to make introductions to critical customers and partners. Advisors can help you skip far ahead of your competition with the right connections.

3. Celebrate your victories.

Most people will not be able to share the joy of getting your first paying non-beta customer. Even the best of your friends and family won’t understand your small wins. Share your highs with your advisors and they will cheer. Your advisors are mainly spending their time and energy with you to help you succeed — the odds of them making millions off your startup are still pretty low. So all the good news, small and big, keeps them inspired and excited about your business.

4. Leverage their expertise.

Do your home work on your mentor. If you are in an accelerator, ask them for a nice long list of the mentors, their names, their roles, their linkedin profiles. Pour yourself a beer from the resident kegerator, grab a highlighter and go through every person on that list. Identify the people can help you in every part of your business, even personally. Read through your advisors’ tweets, skim their blog, check out their linkedIn profile. What experience is most relevant and interesting to you? Know our strengths and leverage them for yourself — we welcome it.

5. Be proactive and follow up.

Constantly. Its your job to push yourself forward. Astia, an phenomenal accelerator, consistently does a great job in priming their entrepreneurs to proactively drive relationships with advisors. If the advisor doesn’t respond to your emails — follow up. They will be glad you are taking the responsibility. Oh, and please dont make them be in charge of setting the next meetings and sending out email reminders. Their other businesses and personal commitments leave them without any time to chase after you and check in — doesn’t mean they don’t want to support you. Just means they need the reminder, so send them a note and get into their queue, they will appreciate it.

6. Listen to all their advice, follow some of it, challenge the rest.

A good advisor will often play devil’s advocate on every assumption you make. This is one of the most valuable features of a great advisor, so embrace it. Push back and use them as a sounding board to get clarity on challenges. Ask them to question your thinking and so your decisions and perspectives are strengthened. Listen to them fully so you take what they offer. But don’t take everything an advisor says as gospel; the most important thing is for you to learn and grow into a confidant leader, so take their words with a grain of salt. Ultimately, trust yourself to do the right thing but use them to gain different perspectives.

7. Get them on speed dial.

I might regret saying this one, but it makes a point. Every meeting with your advisor doesn’t have to be a long formal meeting with a heavy agenda. Be informal, you can call on them for a few minutes to help you navigate critical and unplanned situations. Check with your advisor first before you bombard them with calls, but most often they will trust you to reach out when you need them.

8. Be accountable.

One of the joys of being the CEO of a startup is that you have no one to answer to. Unfortunately, this quickly turns into a curse when there is no one to hold you accountable — especially if you don’t have a strong team or a co-founder to rely on. Set milestones and goals for yourself with your advisor, it creates a healthy pressure on you to deliver on your promises.

9. Sanity check your deals.

Run your big business development deals by your advisors – its likely they’ve read through many of these types of deals so they can make sure you don’t make obvious mistakes and help you negotiate better terms.

10. Send them the long emotional email written at 3am.

Send us your angry, emotional, freaking out emails intended for your partners or your clients (true story!). Use your advisor’s email box as the proverbial therapist’s couch to vent. Its better sent to us than to your customers or partners, since the situation will look a lot different once you aren’t so riled up. You’ll be glad you didn’t send that emotional or aggressive email inappropriately, and we will have something to chuckle about.

11. Introduce them to each other.

Build a community around your company, connect your advisors to each other successfully and you’ll make magic. The pooled resources and experiences of a strong team of advisors is exponentially more powerful for your company than each of your advisors in a silo. This is an other reason way to reward your advisors, they probably would love to network with other rockstars.

12. Pitch constantly, get feed back constantly.

Ask your advisors to give you feed back on your pitch at the beginning of every scheduled meeting: whether it is your pitch for recruiting new team members, for investment or a pitch for your customers. The more you practice the better you get, so practice on us, experiment and try out alternatives on us — you’ll get quick honest feedback.

13. Navigate strategic decisions

This one is obvious to me, but I am often surprised when entrepreneurs make big decisions with a lot of uncertainty and fear without seeking counsel. Be humble and get a new perspective, your advisors may not have the right answer but they can empower you to make the right decision. Even the simple act of identifying your critical challenges enough to communicate to your advisor is immensely valuable to you.

14. Review your marketing copy.

Have your advisors read through your web copy or any other significant marketing material. They don’t need to give you detailed notes (some might, which is awesome) but they can quickly let you know if its compelling or if its cheesy. I am surprised by some of the terrible marketing copy that gets sent out by startups with phenomenal mentors on their board. Ask them to review it before you send it out.

15. Review your products.

This goes in line with #15. Get your mentors and advisors to actually use your product or service, they will give you tons of valuable feedback.

Don’t worry too much about over using your advisors.

If advisors dont want to be involved in a particular way (ie. please for godssake dont email/call/text me every day), they will gladly tell you. This is the beauty of valuable advisors: they help you overcome your shortcomings instead of abandoning you when you need guidance.

Setting a good agenda for your meetings with an advisor communicates the following to them:

- your meeting will not be a waste of their time

- you are proactive and take full responsibility for moving your company forward

- you have the presence of mind and insight into what is holding you back, what you need help with

- your challenges, your opportunities, where you need help

Sample agenda:

1. Practice pitch and get feedback
2. Updates from you — good news, bad news, and progress made from the last meeting
3. Single biggest challenge right now + feedback
4. Other issues you are facing, questions, concerns, opportunities that you want to strategize
5. Set the appointment for the next meeting

Take notes during the meeting. Afterwards, email them a copy of your notes along with any action items for both you and your advisor. This reminder is immensely helpful to your advisor, it also gives them something to review before your next meeting.

Please steal this agenda and use it.

You dont have to be very formal about it, just thinking through these things before your meeting makes sure your time with the advisor is spent wisely. One big benefit of setting this agenda is that it requries you to think critically about your business as a whole and forces you to identify the biggest problems you are facing.