Last week’s post on the Kitchen Cabinet hit a nerve. Our DMs exploded with questions about Champions, Compensators, and Connectors—the three types of advisors every entrepreneur needs. Specifically, everyone wanted to know: “Wait, what exactly IS a Compensator? And how do I find one?” So let’s start there.
The Blind Spot Problem
Here’s the thing about building a business: You’re going to be terrible at some parts of it. Not “needs improvement” terrible. Not “could use some polish” terrible. Actually, genuinely bad at critical pieces of running a company. And that’s fine. Expected, even.
Victoria is a visionary. She sees the big picture, connects impossible dots, and can sell ice to Eskimos. But financial modeling, billing systems, and cash flow projections make her head spin. She had to find a Compensator for that. She reconnected with an old friend who is now a CPA and helped her set up a financial background. A friend’s husband who is a CFO that helped her understand leverage. And finally, spent hours on the phone with our accountant making sure we understood our cash flow and collections flawlessly. Got a financial billing expert who actually knew her stuff.
Beth had a different gap. She didn’t understand the mechanics of Washington, DC, or how key securities regulations actually began to percolate there. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly when the chatter in DC around a potential rule becomes something CEOs actually lose sleep over. That was never my superpower. We both had massive blind spots. The difference between entrepreneurs who scale and those who stay stuck? Compensators.
What a Compensator Actually Does
A Compensator fills the gaps you can’t or won’t fill yourself. They’re not cheerleaders. That’s your Champion’s job and we will hit them next. They’re not door-openers. That’s what Connectors do. Compensators are the people who understand something critical that you don’t, and translate it into action you can actually take.
For Victoria, that meant financial systems. She needed someone who could look at our billing structure and say: “This is broken. Here’s why. And here’s exactly how to fix it.” She didn’t just hire an accountant and walk away. She spent hours on the phone learning the systems. Understanding why our current approach was leaving money on the table. Getting educated enough to know what “good” looked like. When her financial Compensator rebuilt our billing systems, revenue collection improved immediately. No more chasing payments. No more leaving money on the table because our invoicing was a mess.
For me, it was ESG. I knew environmental, social, and governance issues were getting attention. I saw headlines. Heard buzzwords at conferences. But I had no idea when it would actually matter to our Fortune 500 clients. My Compensator did. She understood the regulatory process at a level I never could. And more specifically, she knew the exact point in that process when a potential rule stops being “interesting” and becomes “the CEO is calling emergency meetings about this.” That knowledge,that one critical insight about regulatory timing,helped me put the puzzle together. We launched our ESG business segment, and it became one of our fastest-growing service lines. One conversation. One Compensator filling one blind spot. Seven-figure impact.
The Compensator vs. The Employee
You might be thinking: “Can’t I just hire someone who knows this stuff?” Eventually, yes. But early-stage entrepreneurs can’t afford to hire for every gap in knowledge. And even when you can hire, you need to understand the opportunity well enough to know when to move and what to look for. That’s where Compensators come in. They don’t just give you information. They give you the education and insight that makes everything else click into place.
Unlike employees, Compensators have no stake in overselling you on an idea. They’ll tell you when something’s not ready. When you’re too early or too late. Because they’re invested in your success, not their paycheck. Victoria’s financial billing expert could have easily sold her on expensive software or complicated systems. Instead, she taught Victoria what actually mattered and what was just noise. My ESG Compensator didn’t hand me a white paper on proposed regulations. She told me exactly what to watch for. What signals meant “get ready” versus “move now.”
How to Identify Your Compensators
Start by asking yourself: What critical piece of knowledge am I missing? For most entrepreneurs, it falls into one of these categories: finance (billing systems, cash flow, pricing models, knowing what the numbers actually mean), market timing (when is the right moment to launch, expand, or pivot based on external forces you don’t fully understand), regulatory or policy changes (what’s coming that will create urgency for your clients or customers), operations (systems and processes, knowing what will break when you scale), or technology (tools or platforms that are about to become table stakes in your industry).
Victoria’s blind spot was financial systems. She’s brilliant at selling and strategy, but billing infrastructure? Not her zone of genius. My blind spot was the ESG regulatory landscape. I could see the general trend, but I had no idea how to read the signals that would drive actual buying behavior. We both needed people who lived in those worlds, who understood not just what was happening, but when it would matter and how to act on it.
Look for someone who has deep expertise in the specific area you’re missing, can translate complexity into actionable insight, will tell you when you’re wrong or too early, and understands your business well enough to connect the dots for you. This might be an accountant who becomes more than just a tax filer. A former regulator. An industry expert. Someone willing to spend hours on the phone teaching you what you need to know. What matters is that they help you see what you’re missing and know when to act on it.
The Mistake Most Entrepreneurs Make
Here’s where people get it wrong: They try to muscle through their blind spots alone. Victoria could have kept trying to figure out billing systems herself. Watched YouTube videos. Tried different software. She would have wasted months and still gotten it wrong. Instead, she hired someone who knew the answer. Spent the time learning. Built the system right.
The other mistake? Trying to find one magical advisor who does everything. The person who champions your vision and compensates for your weaknesses and connects you to opportunities. That person doesn’t exist. Or if they do, they’re too busy running their own empire to be your Kitchen Cabinet. Your Kitchen Cabinet is a team—three to five people who each play a different role. Champions believe in you when you don’t believe in yourself. Connectors open doors you can’t open alone. Compensators translate the complexity you don’t understand into opportunities you can actually capture. You need all three.
The Moment It Clicks
When my Compensator explained the regulatory threshold to me, everything shifted. Suddenly, I wasn’t guessing about market timing. I knew exactly what signals to watch for. I understood when our clients would go from “that’s interesting” to “we need help with this yesterday.” That clarity let me build the business segment with confidence. Hire the right experts. Position our services at exactly the right moment. We weren’t too early, burning cash on a market that wasn’t ready. We weren’t too late, watching competitors grab the opportunity. We were right on time.
The same thing happened for Victoria with our forecasting systems. Once she understood what she’d been doing wrong and why it mattered, she could make decisions with confidence. She knew what to look for when evaluating systems. She could tell if the team was executing properly. She wasn’t guessing anymore. Because our Compensators filled the gaps we couldn’t fill ourselves.
Start With One
If you’re reading this thinking “I don’t have any of these people,” that’s okay. Start with the Compensator. Because the fastest way to miss game-changing opportunities, or hemorrhage money on broken systems, is to keep operating inside your existing knowledge base, making decisions based only on what you already understand.
Find one person who knows what you don’t. Pay them if you have to. Spend hours on the phone if that’s what it takes. Then actually act on what they show you. That’s how you build a Kitchen Cabinet.
Next week, we’ll break down Champions—the believers who keep you going when everything feels impossible. If you want the full Kitchen Cabinet framework from Entrepreneur Like A Mother, send me a DM with “CABINET” and I’ll share it with you.
