Overview

Founders and CEOs need one thing above all when the next move is not obvious: clarity on what to do, and the honesty of someone who has stood in the same seat before. Whether the company is three years old or thirty, the work starts the same way: I read your business the way you can't from the inside, then narrow the choice set to the two or three decisions that actually matter.

Whether you're preparing for a capital raise, planning a market entry, or making the call between growth and survival mode, the objective is the same: turn the fog into direction, and the direction into movement. Strategic advisory here is not a slide deck or a framework. It's a founder-operator sitting in the room, calling what's true, and building the muscle that turns strategy into outcome.

What I Do

Strategic advisory engagements are scoped to what your business actually needs at this moment, not a template pushed onto you. Every engagement starts with what's in front of you, and every recommendation carries a cost, a probability, and a name attached to it.

Strategic advisory engagements include:

• 1:1 advisory sessions and executive sparring
  
  

• Board-level positioning, board pack review, and board preparation
  
  

• Scale, consolidate, or pivot: the calls that set the next twelve months
  
  

• Business model evaluation, unit economics review, and pivot or repositioning decisions
  
  

• Market entry strategy for cross-border expansion into EU, US, and Asia
  
  

• Product roadmap prioritization and go-to-market strategy
  
  

• Team structure, leadership team development, and executive hiring support
  
  

• Strategic option evaluation for M&A, partnership, or exit preparation

  
  

• Coordination of the specialist stack: legal, financial, marketing, PR, sales, product development, capital raise, and M&A — all through an international trusted-partner network

  
  

Advisory shape ranges from a single 4-week diagnostic to multi-quarter fractional strategic partnership. Structure follows the problem. Engagements are scoped and priced as a fixed fee. There are no hourly rates.

How I work

The work starts with a diagnostic phase: two weeks of listening, reading the financials, meeting the team, and understanding the market context. What comes out is not a report but a shared read of where the company actually stands, what's true underneath the numbers, and what tradeoffs the leadership is ready to make.

From there, we narrow to the two or three decisions that will move the company forward. Each option carries a cost, a probability, and clear accountability. I stay in the room past the strategy phase: weekly cadence, real accountability, and course correction the moment the data says so. Strategic advisory doesn't end when the deck is signed off. It continues through execution because that's what turns clarity into outcome.

Strategic advisory rarely happens in isolation. When the plan needs execution across legal, financial, marketing, PR, sales, product development, capital raise, or exit, I bring in trusted specialists from my international network. You get one point of contact and a coordinated stack instead of managing five separate advisors. That's what turns strategy into delivered outcome.

Why It Matters

The people running companies rarely lack effort. What they lack is the outside read from someone who has actually built and run a company through the same weather. Most advisors offer frameworks. What you actually need is decision quality: which two or three moves will make the next twelve months different from the last twelve.

A structured strategic advisory relationship means fewer wrong turns, faster course corrections, and higher confidence in the biggest calls. It compresses the learning curve on unfamiliar terrain: cross-border scaling, capital markets, executive transitions. And it gives leadership a sparring partner who has been through the same fire.

What You Can Expect

Founders, CEOs and leadership teams working with Szel & Partners typically see:

• Clearer strategic direction and decision-making cadence

• Stronger board and investor relationships

• Sharper market positioning and competitive read

• Faster identification of pivot points before they become crises

• Higher-quality growth vs. survival decisions

• Improved execution discipline across the leadership team

• Coordinated access to a full stack of trusted specialists across legal, finance, marketing, PR, sales, product, and capital markets

  
  

The engagement is scoped to your reality: what you know, what you're missing, and what's in the way. The outcome is a company that's stronger the quarter after we start than the quarter before.