#Advice #Quality #GarbageAdvice #SocialMediaHelp
Hey, friends! 👋 Let’s chat about something that’s been on my mind lately – how do you know what advice to take and what to leave behind? 🤔 I recently asked for social media help and got flooded with messages offering me advice (and trying to sell me stuff!). It can be overwhelming to sift through it all, am I right?
So, how do you decipher what’s garbage and what’s not? Here are a few things that help me navigate the sea of advice:
– Consider the source: Is the person giving the advice reputable and credible?
– Trust your instincts: Deep down, you know what’s right for you.
– Do your own research: Take the time to educate yourself on the topic.
– Seek multiple opinions: Don’t rely on just one person’s advice.
At the end of the day, it’s all about finding what works best for you. Trust yourself and your judgment. You’ve got this! 💪 Share your tips on how to distinguish between good and bad advice in the comments below. Let’s help each other out! 🌟
Most advice is garbage, including this one.
Have a mental framework that built on hypothesis testing. If people give suggestions, take it as a hypothesis first. See if any existing evidence / experiences (can’t be a single experience has to be N> 32) corroborates the point.
If you don’t have enough evidence, think of a test that will let you figure out the validity of it. Do a risk/reward analysis and go in that direction.
Ultimately, don’t take any of it at face value. All of it is just an opinion, but no one truly understands your business more than you. They can tell you about their choices, or the industry, or even which way the winds are blowing, but your job is to make the hard calls and figure out how to navigate the ship.
At best, you should treat all advice as no more that one piece of data. Even when the motivations of people are aligned, they may not have the same insight you do. My board is capable of giving bad advice (eg. Hiring someone for marketing before we had a clear path to sales. It was a massive waste of money because Success in biotech requires personal contacts, not google adds or LinkedIn posts.)
Listen, think, evaluate, and then choose how to apply or disregard every piece of advice as though it came from an anonymous source. In the end, no one should tell you how to run your business.
This is all just my opinion. Quality input comes from people who have struggled and had some amount of success. Both are key. The struggle doesn’t have to be existential and the success doesn’t have to be world beating. Don’t take advice from people who just “had things magically happen” and don’t take advice from people who haven’t really turned the crank on success.
Focus on people who can express methods, processes and systems they’ve struggled with and achieved success. There are people who intuitively accomplish great things. They are awesome, but they aren’t great mentors. They will often talk about complete bullshit because they really have no idea how they accomplished something.
The truth is somewhere in the middle.
Read everyone’s advice and create summaries of it. List out some of the most common elements you are seeing. Find patterns, themes, and threads than run through it all. Take the average of everything.
This is really easy to do with AI chatbots. Drop a bunch of the messages in one and ask it for an analysis.
Trust your gut, but also do your research and seek diverse perspectives.
Another great way of deciphering the difference will be to seek a mentor. Having a mentor is great as you can often rely on their experience when seeking advice.
Get into the weeds!
Personally, one of my personality traits is that I want to understand how everything at our company works. I am uncomfortable not knowing the details about something that we rely on, so let’s say, in the case of something like SEO… I will go research that topic myself. This way, when I read something, or am interacting with someone about this topic, I have enough knowledge to know whether I need to pay someone else to do this, or whether this is something that I or my teammates can do internally. We’re a pretty big company, but I am still like this!
As well as that, I ignore 99% of stuff coming at me that is a sales pitch. I get quite literally hundreds of solicitations everyday and you really can’t decipher unless you’ve heard of something before.
Finally “warm” intros are interesting. When someone I trust through personal experience/dealings says something, that’s when I’ll listen!
Motivation and experience. If it’s from someone that has relevant experience – it’s valuable to consider. If you know that person’s motivations are aligned with yours, it’s even more valuable.
That’s right..life coaches are worthless for the most part.
It’s a bit like the law of averages.
If you are receiving similar advice from numerous people, there is some credibility behind the advice.
Now and again you will get some maverick giving you advice that goes against the norm… that’s when you have to look at the individual’s track record and understand if they truly are a maverick or a Charleton.
I hope that helps.
Actions speak louder than words. If someone’s actions do not align with what they say, then do not trust them.
I mentor a lot of startups (honestly I am more active with a lot of them than their advisors.)
The absolute #1 piece of advice I give them about taking advice and listening to feedback is to have a strong, opinionated idea of where you want your business to go and what’s best for it and to frame every single piece of advice under the lense of growing that business.
It sounds really simple but esp when it comes to investors, elephant hunting or advice from “celeb” mentors or entrepreneurs, it’s really easy to get excited and think “if I only do that thing we will get the $$, customer, fame” whatever.
Don’t fall prey to this. If someone gives advice that you think is novel and interesting, def listen and absorb. Then take a step back and ask “is this meaningfully moving my business towards it’s north star?” If the answer is no or you’re not sure, take a beat and further examine what they said and also what you’re drawn to it.
I hope I articulated this well. There can be lots of whiplash within startups.