Advice: You know it

As entrepreneurs (or as humans I should say), we are always giving or given advice. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that sometimes we’ll ignore our own advice. From relationship to professional advice, we give to friends and peers, we’ll offer great advice but not even take it ourself.

I recently recall, I was giving advice to one of my entrepreneurial friends who was just getting started on their company. I give them the principals of what really matters with their company, as they felt like they were lost on what to do (since startups can have a lot of distractions — avoid them at all cost). I told her to focus only on:

• Talking to users
• Building product
• Making money

Anything else is probably a distraction and can wait. And this left me thinking, “damn, I should probably listen to more of the advice I take” because I have wasted some time on things that didn’t matter much. I truly believe in a startup all that matters is those three things for the most part — the rest will take care of itself.

Even outside of startups, I will give advise that I know I should take more often. I told a friend to not worry so much, over an issue they were stressing about. Obviously easier said than done but worrying isn’t going to change anything. This is something I need to do more (in this case less) of and just go with the tide and do what’s needed.

I don’t say all this to sound like a hypocrite who ignores his own advice. I feel I usually go with my gut but there’s some times when I’ll make a poor choice, when I know the answer to what I need to do.

So remember to take your own advice. You’ll get a lot of conflicting advice from peers but at the end of the day you have to come to a decision and most of the time, you know the right answer.

Now back to work :)

-Alex

Thank you to The Black Tech Guy (Mondo) for reading a draft of this.