Who would you take advice from? Who will you give advice to, and what kind of advices would you give? I was thinking about this issue lately. When taking your startup to the next step, whatever step it may be, how do you know what the correct way is? I usually consult with friends. With many friends. The more friends I consult with, I find out that there are too many advices. Some are great, some will work for me too, but some will not. So who do I listen to?
My rule of thumb is: if you want to quit smoking, the worst thing to do is to take advice from someone who has never smoked. The better option is to ask someone who is currently smoking and failed to quit how to not do it. But the best is to ask someone who has quit smoking successfully. The key word here is successfully.
So if you want to do something:
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Find out what not to do by asking someone who failed to do that something.
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Ask someone who had done it successfully how he had done it.
Let’s say you want to take your startup to the next step, to a place you have never been to before. Surely you will ask for advice, and assuming you’re using the rule of thumb above and asking only relevant people, you will still probably end up with too many advices. So what do you do with them? Which one do you adopt? How do you handle different advices from different people?
Naturally there is no categorial answer to that, but I can only give an advice:
Avoid giving advices. Just tell your story and let the listener decide.
When you’re the listener, try getting the talker’s story and extract the advice by yourself.
And always remember: what worked for someone may fail for the other, as similar as the cases may be.
