Great advice, just not for you

Hello again, my friend

It feels like there are so many more people offering advice. Podcasts, threads, courses, frameworks, and all of these people are so confident in their opinions, at least at first. But with a deeper look, it feels even more fake than ever.

The thing is, no one teaches you how to tell good advice from bad advice. Or worse: great advice that’s wrong for you.

Even when people even have ‘credentials,’ I just don’t know if I can really buy it anymore. You can literally go and book a thirty minute session with the Founder of Reddit, The CEO of Match Group (owns Tinder), and world renowned designers on a single platform.

But it’ll cost upwards of $1,000 for 15 minutes of their time in some cases. I’m not convinced their advice would be better than an hour with ChatGPT. Especially if I give ChatGPT real context and spend time going deep into the subject.

Being able to figure out if advice is right, for us, is one of the greatest challenges facing the modern business world today. Because the ‘secret sauce,’ isn’t so secret anymore. You can upload entire books to ChatGPT and it’ll memorize the author’s words and give you advice in their likeness (it’s very accurate).

If every business is using ChatGPT’s strategies, how do we win? It’s about how well we can connect the advice to our context.

Let’s get into it.

Many years ago, my university’s career office gave me advice on how to get a job out of school. They suggested updating my LinkedIn, applying to every job I could, and gave me very specific steps to follow every step of the way.

None of it worked. It was awful. After several months of not getting a job their way, I gave up. So I did something nobody suggested. I wrote a blog on psychology and behavioural economics, with conversational tone.

Later, a friend who loved the blog shared it with someone else, and that guy ended up hiring me. That’s how I got my first job out of uni.

Sometimes, all it takes is one well-timed piece of advice to unlock a promotion, land a job, or solve a thorny problem. But following the wrong piece of advice can be devastating. That’s what happened to me. And it’s all on me.

We choose what advice to follow, and we live with the consequences, good or bad.

It’s so easy to stop and say “an expert told me to do it, but it didn’t work, they’re a fraud,” when in reality we chose to follow their guidance. I’ve learned this lesson myself countless times (the example above is just one of dozens).

I’ll be the first to tell you this, at the risk of looking like an awful person. Likeness matters.

If someone gives you advice, but their background, stage, or circumstances are wildly different, their suggestions are not relevant

You can learn principles, sure. But the specifics may be useless or even harmful.

Ask yourself:

You wouldn’t ask a lottery winner for advice on how to make money.

Is the person trying to tell you what to do actually familiar with your shoes?

It’s not about dismissing success. It’s about understanding what translates to your context.

Just because advice is popular doesn’t mean it’s effective. Just because someone was successful 20 years ago, doesn’t mean their advice is useful (or even relevant) today.

That university career center had advised over 100,000 students. But here’s the kicker.

58% of BA grads were unemployed within a year, according to Inside Higher Ed. That stat came out after I graduated, but it tracks. If I’d known that walking into the career center, I would’ve walked right back out. Doing what all the other kids are doing means a 50/50 chance of being unemployed. That sucks.

But you know what’s insane? I never stopped to ask any questions about the office’s results. I mistook ‘credibility’ for talent. The fancy job title, office, website completely got me.

Now combine this with how well they know (or don’t know) your context.

If we’re judging whether advice is good or bad for us, we also have to judge the person giving us the advice. I know how it sounds, I really do, but if your cousin that could barely hold a job is giving you business advice to “transform your business with AI,” consider they don’t actually know what they’re talking about. Again, ChatGPT can give you the same advice for free.

And if some online guru who made their money 20 years ago is giving the same advice, same thing. Consider that they knew what they were talking about 20 years ago, but are now out of touch.

Track record matters. But context matters more.

When I’m confident enough to tell someone with the credentials, the titles, the degrees, and the fancy office: “you are wrong” (but politely).

Until then, it’s a professional opinion and taking at face value. I wouldn’t recommend taking opinions at face value in business at all. I think to even consider taking advice, you have to have an opinion on what’s good or bad. What works and what sucks.

Until then, you’re outsourcing your decision making and letting someone else dictate your career, your business, and your life. I did this for a long time.

So if you need help with marketing, make sure you’ve actually tried selling before you run to ask an ‘expert’ for advice (and certainly before you pay $1,000 for 15min of their time). Is giving someone $1,000 for 15min of their time really that much better than giving ChatGPT real context and spending a day actually working on the problem? No. It’s not.

Again, I didn’t even stop to ask questions when I went to that career center. Because I had no idea what it was like to look for a job. I took their word for it at face value. For the last three years, I’ve only bothered listening to advice when I’ve done something enough times to understand what works and what fails. Then, it’s a conversation. I can share more context. That person can better assess the situation, and either point me in the right direction, or admit they can’t help me.

My career changed for the better when I listened to the smart people and did the opposite of what they suggested.

And if I could go back today, I’d spend more time talking to AI apps and less time taking advice from people who were doing no better than I was. Then, I’d work. If I was trying to get a job, I’d take ChatGPTs advice, see what works and what doesn’t, and try again. And then, after I have a rough idea of what’s effective or not, then I’d seek out advice from another person who I feel has been in my shoes, and thrived.

The future of ‘advice,’ or ‘consulting’ or ‘professional education’ or whatever you want to call it is simple. It only works when two conditions are met:

And until then, there’s no need to judge advice as good or bad. If an hour with ChatGPT gets you better outcomes anyway, why bother?

If you’re looking for advice on marketing, you better have done marketing, and you better be asking someone who’s delivering great results in marketing today (preferably in your industry).

But assuming both conditions are met, the next step is determining if the advice is good for you, and if they have the track record to give real credibility. Not titles, offices, fake testimonials, or nonsense. Ironically, by having context on what you’re asking about, you’ll be in a better position to determine both.

With this in mind, you may stop listening to 90% of the advice you hear.

That’s what happened to me. And my career has been so much better because of it.

But that’s just my advice.

Thanks for reading!