It’s pretty easy to see that we have become a culture obsessed with “advice” from headlines like “10 Things Successful People Do before They Drink their Morning Coffee” to ” 5 Ways You Can Eliminate Fatty Foods from Your Diet Today.” The impression on us as the reader and the consumer is that if we do these 10 things, our problems will be solved.
The hard truth is that it won’t.
No system is going to work exactly the same for you as it has for someone else.
If it did, we’d all look like super models and have bank accounts busting at the seams with cash.
Instead, we end up spending a lot of our time looking for “advice” on how we can make our lives like someone else that we see and ignore the fact that wherever we are right now, we are enough.
Naturally, some would argue that there are people out there who have great advice to give and I am not discounting that at all, but there’s also A LOT of bad advice out there and I meet people all the time who are in a much worse place because someone convinced them to do something that they shouldn’t have done under the guise of “good career advice”
So what do we do if we don’t ask people for advice?
We ask good questions.
If you ask someone for their advice on something most of the time, they are going to feel put on the spot. They also will start to think of things that have been told to them and they will inevitably try to impress you with whatever they come up with. This often means they will tell you something that sounds good to them as opposed to something that will actually help you. It’s better to just ask questions about your business or your project and get someone’s honest opinion and gut reaction. This is the most straightforward advice you can get. 3-step processes and 5 tips are great for SEO, but they’re not the gospel truth. I always look at advice as a buffet.
Take what you need and leave the rest.
Otherwise you’ll eat too much and you’ll get sick. What I’ve learned from building my own business is that no amount of advice can trump getting out there and talking to actual people about what you are doing. There’s so much content that you could easily spend every hour of your day reading about the “Five Ways You Can Start a Business Today” and “How to Make Six Figures in Five Days”, but none of that will matter if you don’t get out there and do something.
So no matter where you are in your career at this very moment, make one promise to yourself:
Don’t only consume.
Produce too.
And that’s the best “advice” I can give you.
Take it or leave it.
Excelsior!