Elena Verna: evaluation

Transcript context

…Amazing. Let's keep going. So we have three to go. Number eight. So number eight, this one's kind of a doozy and I think a lot of people don't do it. I don't know why they don't do it. I think it's such an incredible ability to propel forward. And that is, what doesn't work, as I said in the previous growth tactics, is trying to think that each problem is unique and you need to solve it on your own. Maybe this is not so much does it work, but not hiring advisors is something that I do not recommend for you to do. You can get access to anybody for one hour a week. Yeah, you'll have to pay them. So nobody's going to volunteer their hour. We're all very, very busy. But hiring advisors is the biggest career amplification and your business amplification can possibly do. Because to create a network of people that have all of these data points and those all of the other patterns that you can do is something that can just propel you so far forward. That doesn't mean you have to do everything advisor says. That's not the point. They're not the strategy setter. But they are additional input into your decision-making that you otherwise wouldn't have. You can go and hire somebody from Atlassian. You can go and hire somebody from Airbnb that have been and lived through all of this and they can help you solving your problem. So I think any growth team that does not have an advisor is a growth team that is underperforming. Because even me who I've advised so many companies, I've operated at so many companies, I don't know everything. Every time I take an operator role, I hire advisors for myself. Because that is the fastest way to learn anything, and I often see these teams that just try to figure out everything on their own and not have any advisors on their boards, so to speak. I'm not even talking like an official board. I'm talking not even an advisory board. But you can hire somebody as a contractor that will be your advisor, I think is a huge mistake, especially in this day and age. Because we have a big asymmetry of information. In our field, there's very little available to learn because we're all very cagey because of competition. But at the end of the day, people know a lot of the stuff and how it worked for them internally, and I highly, highly encourage you to not try to wing it on your own. Along those lines, there's also advice of just like, don't worry about advisors. You never know if they're going to be useful. There's all these hanger-ons that join your startup and want to help, but they're not helpful. If you give one tip for a founder or team that's interviewing advisors, looking for an advisor to vet them to help them find people that are actually great, what would your tip be?…

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