What 6 Months of Weekly Advisor Calls Taught Me About Building a Company

I first met Itay Forer when I was 16.

I was on a platform called Growthmentor, trying to learn marketing and connect with people who'd actually done it. Itay was one of the mentors giving his time for free to help people like me - kids with more ambition than experience.

We stayed in touch. When I started Ken AI years later, he was one of the first people I called. That turned into a weekly call that's now been going for over 6 months. No formal agreement. Just two people talking through problems every week.

Here's what I learned.

I went in expecting strategy. Industry maps, competitive frameworks, the kind of stuff that sounds smart in decks.

What I actually got was questions.

Not "have you considered X market?" type questions. More like: "Why are you spending time on that?" or "What does success actually look like for that hire?" or "What happens if this breaks while you're away?"

It took me a few sessions to stop being slightly annoyed by this and realize that being questioned well is rarer and more useful than being given answers.

Good advisors don't tell you what to do. They help you see what you're actually doing vs. what you think you're doing.

These aren't inspirational quote material. They're the ones that stopped me mid-sentence and made me realize I didn't have a good answer.

"Are you doing the highest-ROI thing right now?"

Itay asks some version of this almost every week. And almost every week, the honest answer is no.

I'd walk in talking about a new tool I was evaluating, or a feature we were scoping, and he'd just ask it plainly. It's uncomfortable because there's usually no debate - you know the answer. You just needed someone to ask.

"What happens if this person leaves tomorrow?"

I used to think about key person risk in theory. This question made it real. If a key person walks out, does the company slow down? Collapse? Or does it keep running?

We had a few spots where the answer was "honestly, we'd be in trouble." That's a systems problem masquerading as a talent problem.

"Are you fixing the delivery problem or working around it?"

This one hurt the most because the honest answer, at the time, was: working around it.

We were patching things client by client instead of solving the root cause. Every workaround created a new dependency. Itay spotted this pattern before I'd named it.

"How long does your cash runway give you to be wrong?"

Not in a panic-inducing way. More like: do you have the time to run experiments? Are you making decisions with the urgency of someone who doesn't have room to be wrong, when actually you do?

This reframed how I thought about decision speed. Sometimes "move faster" is the wrong advice. Sometimes you have 6 months of room to think carefully, and you should use it.

"Is this client a results person or a process person?"

Simple question. But I'd never categorized clients this way. Results people judge you by outcomes. Process people judge you by how closely you follow their preferred workflow.

You need different communication styles, different cadences, different success metrics for each. Getting this wrong is why some clients churn even when the numbers are good.

In early 2024, we were booking 200+ meetings per month for our own sales pipeline.

I thought that was a sign we'd figured something out. More meetings, more clients, more revenue. That's the logic.

Itay asked: "Can you actually onboard everyone who says yes?"

The answer was no.

We were generating demand faster than we could fulfill it. Our delivery wasn't ready to scale. If we'd converted even a fraction of those meetings at full speed, we'd have overpromised, underdelivered, and burned through clients who might have stayed for years.

He flagged this before it cost us anyone. We slowed sales intentionally, fixed delivery first, and then scaled again on a foundation that could hold the weight.

I think about this a lot now. Growth that outpaces your ability to deliver isn't growth - it's debt.

I'd find an advisor 12 months earlier.

At 18, I thought advisors were for later. For when you're bigger. When you have something worth advising on.

That's backwards. The earlier you get good questioning in your corner, the fewer expensive mistakes you make in the foundation years.

The things Itay caught in our first 3 months of calls would have taken me 12-18 months to figure out on my own, maybe longer. That's compounding time I didn't lose.

If you're under $500K MRR and building without an advisor, you're probably paying for that with time.

Show up where experienced people are giving their time. That's the only real advice I have.

I was 16 on Growthmentor, asking basic marketing questions. Itay didn't have to help me. He chose to. And I stayed in touch for years before I had something worth advising on.

The best advisor relationships aren't transactional. They start with genuine curiosity, not a pitch deck. You show up, ask good questions, and follow through on what you learn. That's what makes people want to keep talking to you.

Don't ask for a commitment upfront. Don't send a deck. Just find a specific problem you're stuck on, ask for their perspective, and see if the conversation is good enough that both of you want another one.

The best advisor relationships I've seen - not just mine - started the same way. A small interaction that built into something real over time.

You don't need an advisor who has all the answers. You need someone who asks the questions you're too close to ask yourself.

The most valuable thing Itay has done over 6 months isn't tell me what to do. It's helped me see clearly what I'm already doing - and whether I actually believe in it when I have to say it out loud.

If you're building something right now and you don't have that kind of feedback loop, it's worth building one.

If this resonated, share it with a founder who's building without a sounding board.

Cristian