Quick 5-Person Advisory Board

What You Get

A prompt that creates a virtual advisory board of 5 experts — each with a different specialty and perspective — to debate your business question and give you specific, actionable advice. Like having a board meeting without the board. No equity required.

The Prompt

Copy this into Claude and fill in your specifics:

I'm facing a business decision and I need a hard-nosed advisory board to help me think it through.

My question: [What's the decision or problem you're facing?]

Context about my business:
- What I do: [Your service/product]
- Stage: [Solopreneur, small team, revenue number if you're comfortable sharing]
- Team size: [How many people]
- How long I've been doing this: [Timeline]

What kind of advice I need: [Strategic? Tactical? Financial? Operational? All of it?]

Constraints I'm working with: [Budget limits, timeline, team capacity, anything that matters]

What I've already tried or considered: [This prevents you from rehashing ideas you've already rejected]

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Now create a 5-person advisory board for me. Each person should have a distinct role:

1. Strategist — Big picture thinking. Positioning. Market fit. Long-term positioning vs. short-term revenue.
2. Finance person — Money. Pricing. ROI. Cash flow implications. When to invest, when to hold.
3. Operations expert — Systems. Processes. Scaling. What breaks when you grow.
4. Marketing person — Growth. Audience. Messaging. How you'll find customers or reach the next tier.
5. Wild card — Someone from completely outside my industry who brings an unexpected perspective.

For each board member:
- Introduce yourself in 1–2 sentences (name, what you've done, why you're here)
- Give your specific recommendation for this decision
- Name one risk or concern nobody's talking about
- Agree or push back on what the other board members said

End with a board consensus: the 2–3 things most members agreed on, and the 1 thing they didn't.

Make these feel like real people with real opinions, not generic AI summaries. They should disagree with each other sometimes. That's the whole point.

How to Use It

Step 1: Prep your inputs. Before you paste the prompt, answer those context questions honestly. The more specific you are about what you’ve already tried, the better the advice gets. This isn’t a brainstorm — it’s a decision-making session.

Step 2: Run the prompt. Paste it into Claude and let the board do its job. Read each person’s perspective straight through. Don’t cherry-pick.

Step 3: Look for the tension. The value isn’t in any single board member’s advice. It’s in where they disagree. If all 5 agree, you probably already knew the answer. When 3 say go and 2 say wait — that tension is where the real thinking happens. That’s your signal to dig deeper.

Use this before any decision over $1,000 or any irreversible commitment. Before a pricing change. Before you pivot. Before you hire. Before you say no to something good that might be distracting you from something great.

Example Output

Here’s what a partial board discussion looks like. Let’s say you’re a fractional CMO thinking about whether to raise your rate from $100/hour to $175/hour:

Strategist (Former Chief Strategy Officer, Fortune 500): You raise those rates. Right now. If you’re good enough to be a fractional CMO, you’re underpriced. The jump to $175 signals confidence and attracts a different client — one who’s serious about results, not shopping for a deal. My only concern: you need to back it up with a clear positioning statement. “Strategic marketing guidance for B2B SaaS founders making their first major hire decisions” is stronger than “fractional CMO services.”

Finance Person (CFO, 3 exits): Let’s do the math. At $100/hour for 20 billable hours a week, you’re at $104K a year. At $175/hour, that’s $182K. But here’s what I see: you’re not raising rates because you’re scared of the number. So let’s split the difference. Test $150/hour with new clients for the next 3 months. You’ll know in 30 days whether the market will bear it. If it does, go to $175 in Q3. Lower risk, same destination.

Operations Expert (Built and scaled 2 agencies): Raise them, but lock in your client communication now. If you keep existing clients at $100 and new ones at $175, you create resentment and complexity. Your playbook is now managing two tiers. One clean way: all new work, new rate. Existing contracts, honor them through their end. Then no exceptions. This prevents you from spending energy on “but they’ve been with me since…” conversations that cost you more than the $75/hour difference.

Marketing Person (Growth lead, B2B software): Don’t just raise the price. Change the package. Instead of “fractional CMO, hourly,” position it as “Done-with-you quarterly strategy and implementation sprints, $X per quarter.” Clients hate hourly. You’re leaving money on the table by selling your time. This rate increase is perfect cover for the pivot. New model, new price, new perceived value.

Wild Card (Restaurant owner, completely different industry): You’re overthinking it. I raise menu prices every 18 months whether I feel ready or not. Inflation happens. You’re worth more than you were a year ago. Your hesitation tells me you’re still in the mindset of trading time for money. You won’t truly raise rates until you stop measuring your value in hours. Something to sit with.

Board Consensus:

• Everyone agrees: raise the rate. The only disagreement is timing and positioning.
• 4 out of 5 want you to pair the increase with a change in how you position or package the service (not just a price bump on the same thing).
• The wild card just nailed the real issue: your head’s in hourly mode, and that’s the actual thing holding you back.

Tips

Change the wild card role every time. That’s where the best insights come from. One week it’s a therapist, next week a SaaS founder, next week a middle school teacher. Outside perspectives expose blind spots.

Save your board summaries. Keep them in a decision log. In 6 months, you’ll look back and see exactly what you were worried about and whether the board was right. This teaches you which board members’ instincts you trust most.

The “what you’ve already tried” input is a lifesaver. It prevents Claude from circling back to ideas you’ve already rejected. “We already tested that pricing and it didn’t work” stops the board from wasting time on dead ends.

If you find yourself shopping for the board member who agrees with you, you’ve already made your decision. Just own it. Admit it to yourself, then tell the board what you’re actually going to do. There’s no prize for waiting for unanimous consent. Business is full of decisions where smart people disagree. That’s normal.

Ready to Go Deeper?

Want help building yours? Book a Build Session — $350 for a 90-minute working session where we build your permanent advisory board prompt, customized for your business and the decisions you face most.

Built with Claude. Every prompt in this playbook library has been tested in the latest Claude model.