A Founder's Diary | What to discuss in an advisory board meeting ??

Welcome to A Founder’s Diary! Every night, I grab a cup of peppermint tea, light a candle, and journal about my day. This newsletter is a summary of those thoughts and pages.

In this edition, I dive into:

• How to structure your advisory board meeting
• Tips on how to create a strong investor outreach blurb (as taught to me by Hustle Fund)
• The personal scorecard framework
• New grants & resources

Keep reading to see my learnings and reflections for this week!

What We’ve Been Working On: Our Advisory Board Meeting

Every 2 months, we host an advisory board meeting to present updates to our investors and advisors and get feedback on a challenge we're working through.

Many founders often ask me when it is the right time to create an advisory board and I think it's never too early! Especially as a first time founder, it's helpful to have a group of individuals with diverse experiences that can help you think strategically about the direction your business is going. As a founder, you're working on your business day in and day out and sometimes you need someone with a bird's eye view to catch things you may not have even realized.

So what do we discuss in an advisory board meeting? Here is the agenda/structure I usually follow:

• Recap of the last meeting: We find it helpful to recap the last meeting and the items that were discussed especially if someone couldn't make it to the last meeting
• Review of strategic priorities: We have a list of annual priorities that we're working towards. During our meeting, we have a colour code system (green, yellow, red) to show if the priority is on track and the key tasks that were accomplished since the last meeting or are in progress related to each priority.
• Review of key metrics: We review our sales, COGS, marketing spend, CAC, churn rate, burn rate, cash runway, and more
• Key learnings: We summarize key learnings and insights. It's helpful to review these to show we're constantly testing and iterating and sometimes advisors catch new insights that we didn't think of.
• Deep dive into a challenge: This is where we typically spend the bulk of our meeting time. We present a challenge we're facing, potential solutions we've brainstormed, pros/cons of each solution, and the direction we're leaning towards. Then we get the advisory board to provide their input. In the past, some challenges we've discussed are inventory financing, fundraising timelines, retail strategy, and more.
• Next steps: We summarize the next steps and actions coming up

Now you're interested in building an advisory board but how do you choose who should be on it?

We have a mix of individuals on our board with diverse backgrounds. We have some of our investors, marketing experts, a gynaecologist, retail experts, and more. Before we onboard an advisor, we spend months getting to know them so that we can understand how we work together and the types of feedback they provide.

My Learning: The power of a good investor outreach blurb

In a past newsletter, I shared the power of creating a strong investor blurb. This week, I had a networking chat with another founder who is about to start fundraising and it reminded me about this tip!

When reaching out to an investor, a warm introduction goes a long way. However, it's not always easy to secure a warm introduction so in that case, creating a strong cold outreach blurb is very important.

An investor at Hustle Fund once taught me the key elements to include in a strong outreach blurb including: quick explanation of what you do, the "sexiest" details about your company, flexing your team, and a link to your teaser deck sent through Docsend so you can keep track of where the investor spends the most amount of time when flipping through the deck!

If someone is making an introduction to another investor for you, send them a version of this blurb called a "forwardable" to make their job as easy as possible to facilitate the introduction.

See Hustle Fund's tips

Personal Life: Personal Scorecard

Growing up, I went to a leadership camp. Many of the goal setting and personal development frameworks I learned were during my years at camp (think Landmark Development Conference for Kids).

One of my favourite frameworks that I learned and still use to this day is called Personal Scorecard. The idea behind the scorecard is you "evaluate" yourself on key categories that pertain to your overall happiness, success, and fulfilment. The key categories are: career, relationships, health and wellness, community impact, and hobbies and interests. I've seen other frameworks that incorporate other key factors so it's important to consider the factors that matter to you and to revise the categories accordingly. Once a month, I rate myself on what I am doing well in each category and what I want to improve and set goals for myself to action in the next month. If you have time this week, I recommend setting aside 30 minutes to an hour to reflect on how you're doing in each category as well!

Learn more about Landmark

Mental Health & Wellness: The formula to becoming superhuman

When it comes to health and wellness, I often find that people have an "all or nothing" mentality. If they can't fit in the time to do their one hour full strength training circuit, or go on a 5km run, they think they should skip the workout all together. However, lately, I've been trying to embrace the mindset that even if I only have time for a 20 minute walk, that's better than nothing. I loved the way that Robin Sharma put it in his book the 5am Club on the formula to becoming superhuman. What else would you include in this formula?

Upcoming Events, Resources, and Grants

• Female Founder World x VistaPrint $15,000 Grant: Apply now
• SAAS North Pitch Fest $10,000 Prize: Apply now
• TELUS Stand with Owners $200,000 grant: Apply now
• Elevate Festival Pitch: Apply now
• eCommerce North Accelerator: Apply now

That's all for this week. Thank you for being here and reading my journal. If you ever have any feedback or thoughts, reply to this email! Otherwise, until next time ??

~ Nadia

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