🌊 Deep Dive: Building Your Personal Board of Directors - The Small Giant’s Guide to Strategic Advisors

How to build a world-class advisory board when you can’t offer big salaries—and why mission-driven founders have an unfair advantage

I have eight advisors.

Let me be clear: I’m not a venture-backed start-up with a fancy advisory board assembled to impress investors. I’m a bootstrapped Small Giant trying to transform the Black hair industry while striving to approach break-even.

Yet I’ve assembled a group of advisors that includes ex-founders who’ve built and sold beauty booking platforms, technical leaders with decades of experience, celebrity hair stylists, executives from companies like Unilever and L’Oréal, and entrepreneurs who’ve successfully exited technology and beauty companies.

This didn’t happen by accident. And it didn’t happen because I had equity or cash to throw around.

It happened because I understood something fundamental: the right advisors don’t join your board for money. They join because they believe in the world you’re trying to create and want to be part of building it.

Here’s how to build your own personal board of directors when you’re a Small Giant with more mission than money.

The Advisor Reality: Why Traditional Board-Building Advice Doesn’t Work

Most start-up advice about building advisory boards assumes you have equity to burn and investor connections to leverage. It’s written for founders who can offer 1-2% equity stakes and name-drop their lead investor to attract impressive advisors.

That’s not our reality.

As a Small Giant, you’re protecting equity carefully because you’re not planning multiple funding rounds that will dilute everyone anyway. You can’t offer big cash compensation because you’re barely paying yourself. You may not be focussing on a lucrative exit because you’re building for sustainability and impact rather than acquisition.

And yet, you desperately need strategic guidance from people who’ve navigated challenges you’re facing for the first time.

The conventional approach won’t work. But there’s a better one that plays to our strengths as mission-driven founders.

The Unfair Advantage: Why Mission Attracts Better Advisors

Here’s what I’ve discovered: when you’re building something genuinely meaningful, advisors often come to you through recommendations rather than you having to hunt for them.