Ignore Most Advice
My advice to you is to ignore most advice.
Talk about a contradiction.
Most advice is worse than worthless. Most advice will end up hurting you if you listen to it.
It is not that people want to get in your way or throw you off course. People want to be helpful (and feel important), and in doing so they give advice that they don’t understand or never truly lived through. It is like someone who has never run a business telling you that “you got to spend money to make money.” Is the advice valid? Possibly. But, I would not take it as a fact or let it influence your decision-making.
Good advice exists, but the world is full of bad advice.
So, how can we find good advice?
When someone gives you advice ask yourself these three questions.
Is the person qualified to give this advice? Have they learned the advice through first-hand experience or did they just read it on Twitter? Just because someone is not qualified, does not immediately mean the advice is bad, but more often than not the advice is better to ignore.
Does the person have ulterior motives? You will come across people who either want to feel important, portray themselves as smarter than they are, or sell you something, these types of people tend to give you bad advice, disguised as good advice. It is like the person managing Facebook ads telling you that you should advertise on Facebook.
Based on your experience does the advice seem to make sense? Let’s say you are a fisherman, and someone tells you that in order to lure fish to your fishing spot you should jump in the water and splash around. That advice is not going to help you catch more fish, in fact, you will probably catch significantly less fish if you follow it.
Here are a few people to look out for.
The egotistical expert: this is perhaps the most dangerous type of advice giver. They will go on and on about how smart they are, how rich they are, etc, and will work to convince you that they are a god amongst mortals and you would be an idiot to not follow their advice. They will then proceed to give horrible advice or give advice on areas where they have no experience. These people are dangerous because of their experience which will blind you to the fact that they are full of it.
The insecure beginner: this is an individual you will encounter early in your career. They typically will be around the same stage as you, yet they portray themselves as having all of the answers. They act as if they are going to rule the world, it is now a matter of time. The conversation you have with them will feel forced and uncomfortable. They will critique areas of your business in ways that show they don’t understand your business. Avoid these people.
Getting high-quality advice is incredibly important. Being able to discern good advice from bad advice is perhaps one of the greatest skills you can develop.
So once again, my advice to you is to ignore most advice.