Whose Advice Should I Take About Growing My Business?

When you want to grow, you ask the people closest to you.

They love you. They want you safe. So they give you their common sense.

Common sense is built from what is already in front of them. Your growth is, by definition, not there yet. That is why their best advice is often exactly what you do not need.

The people who love you most are often the worst people to ask about the thing you have never done.

I dropped out of a pre-law program at SUNY Stony Brook to do hair. Everyone told me it was a terrible idea. Four years later I was taking home more than my stepfather had ever earned.

When I said I would open a salon, I heard it again. Too young. No experience. Wrong neighborhood. The lease was too high. Eighteen months later we did our first million. In just over five years it was a multi-million dollar company.

When I sold the salons to build a marketing agency, the same voices asked why I would give that up for something I had never gone to school for.

None of them were bad people. They had simply never crossed that water.

So here is the filter I use:

Ask people who have built what you want to build. Not people who have read about it.

Ask what it cost them. Someone who has never lost money on a decision has not made enough of them to teach you.

Notice who gives you a plan and who gives you an opinion. Opinions are free. Plans are what you need.

Paul Cook, General Partner at Investor Gateway, sat down with me and Shane Gould, CEO of Fuel Clothing, on the Utah Business Spotlight to talk about the choice that changed everything for Paul. The whole conversation comes down to one line: it's not the events, it's the decisions.

Every owner has a day like that. Most can still name it. Almost none of them made it by taking a vote.

Go for it, and be ready to do what it takes. Then find people who have done it to show you the next step.

Who are you asking for advice about something they have never built?