Some of my worst decisions in life and business came after asking smart, well-meaning mentors for advice.
They had the best intentions, but the outcomes were far from what I had hoped.
Why Perfect Advice Fails in Your Reality
Advice is often like being given the perfect recipe, but your pantry’s full of different ingredients. The context is never the same.
You’re working with different timing, a different team, and different tools. What worked flawlessly for someone else is being applied to a completely unique situation—yours.
The Hidden Strings Attached to Advice
Once someone gives you advice, they get invested in you following it. There’s a new pressure that didn’t exist before.
If you don’t follow it, they think you didn’t listen. If you do follow it, and it backfires, well, that’s on you. The responsibility for a failed outcome, stemming from someone else’s suggestion, ultimately rests on your shoulders.
The Unfiltered Power of Stories
Stories, on the other hand, don’t come with strings. They are a pure transfer of experience without the burden of expectation.
They let you hear what someone actually did, analyze the components of their journey, and figure out for yourself what pieces, if any, fit your situation.
Conclusion
The next time someone offers you advice, politely decline and ask for their story instead. Ask them to walk you through what they actually experienced—the messy details, the unexpected turns, the things that almost derailed them.
You’ll get something far more valuable: raw material you can process through your own judgment, shaped by your unique circumstances and constraints.
Because the best decisions aren’t made by following someone else’s blueprint—they’re made by understanding the principles behind their success and adapting them to your reality.
Your situation is one-of-a-kind. Your solution should be too.