Only listen to people that have done what you want to achieve

Take advice from people who have not done what you want to achieve with a grain of salt

Social media is awash with advice from Jane, Tom and Harry and everyone seems like they’re an expert at whatever they are talking about.

I know because I used to be one of the people falling into the same category (thank heavens for growth, yey!).

After reading books or blogs, I used to think that I really knew whatever the heck I had read about. I would come to learn later on that no matter how much reading you do, without empirical experiences, it is not grounds for regurgitating information as expert advice to your audience.

For example:

When running a startup, it is very easy to tell a founder about what they should do in their businesses by outsiders, very easy to say a founder is short sighted when it’s not you looking at first hand data generated by the business systems/processes.

When GoLemon announced that they were shutting down, this is what a Linkedin user had to say:

Shut down? No! That’s too quick a decision for a business that has been around for over two years already. Make time to reflect, re-strategize. Let every investor do some thorough re-evaluation as to what went wrong and how to come back better and stronger.

At the surface, it is someone well meaning. But deep down, it is a very naive and very informed opinion about:

  • The business and how it was run
  • The data that informed the decision to shut down
  • The decisions that only remain in the boardroom of the founders and investors

Did the Linkedin commenter really think:

  • they know the business better than the founders and investors?
  • they have access to the data that informed the decision to shut down?
  • they have first hand knowledge of the decisions that were made in the boardroom?

You should not take advice from people who have not done what you want to achieve because had it been that easy to do what they are telling you to do, they would have done it themselves.

  • If running a startup is easy, how many startups are you running?

  • If you are telling a founder to pivot, how many pivots have you done in your life?

  • If you are telling a founder to raise more money, how many rounds of funding have you raised?

This does not apply just to business and tech. It applies to any area of life.

  • If you know what it takes to have a successful marriage, why are you divorced?

Empirical and lived experiences should be the benchmark for advice. Everything else is just an opinion (most times uninformed) and should not be taken as gospel truth.

If you have not done it, you cannot advise on it. Or rather, only take advice from the ones who have done what you want to do.