Ep135: Why following others' advice can hurt your business

00:52 Welcome to Unfrazzle, a podcast for solo business owners with a big vision who are ready for a kinder more sustainable approach to productivity. I'm Louise Miller and each week i share bite-sized insights to help you step away from the hustle stop faffing and stay focused so you can make your brilliant ideas happen and make a bigger impact in the world Before we dive into today's episode, if you enjoy what I'm sharing here on Unfrazzle and you'd like to support the podcast. You can buy me a cuppa by going to BuyMeACoffee.com slash Louise Miller and making a one-off donation. I'll pop a link to that in the show notes Okay grab yourself a cuppa and let's get started

01:30 A little while ago I saw a post from a well-meaning business coach who said, most of the time you don't need more information. So far so good that's what i tell people too but the next thing they said ruined it for me they said most of the time you don't need more information you just need the right person to say here's what I'd do And I couldn't disagree more. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that people saying here's what i do is actually incredibly harmful because doing what they do and expecting to get the same results will only work if you are them If your business is the same as their business, if your definition of success is the same as theirs, if you have the exact same personality life experience opportunities hours in the day energy levels... The list goes on and I think you get my point

02:15 So, take my client Teresa. She is running a hugely successful online business and is at the absolute top of her game and if I told her about the challenges I face in my business and she said here's what I'd do And I then acted on that. I would spend a ridiculous amount of my time recording and editing videos for YouTube, so she's in her element and is an absolute natural on camera and has a brilliant editor on her team. I am most definitely not natural on video and don't have the team she has, so what takes her a few hours would take me at least a few days and the end result would be Be terrible. So if I was trying to do what she did, I would be applying to speak on big stages and then i get rejected because I'm not someone who speaks on stages and I don't have the credibility that comes with her level of name recognition at least not yet

03:04 So, thankfully Teresa is not the sort of business coach who would ever tell someone to do what she does. She takes the time to get to know someone and then helps them figure out what would feel good and what is most likely to work for them And I know this because we spent some time together last year or the year before creating a strategy that felt so right for me it was ridiculous! If I was in the early stages of running my business Or if I was feeling vulnerable because things were feeling particularly hard for me Someone saying, here's what I would do would be no help whatsoever. But it will be very tempting for me to listen and want to replicate what they're doing so over the years i've been told that i should add more content to Make It Happen Club if i want people to stay and i should franchise the process i use in Make It Happen Club so that i can scale and make more money back in the day when i was a VA

03:55 I was told that I should bring in associates so that i could grow. And those are all perfectly valid suggestions but they're not right for me and if I'd been paying for a program where that's the kind of advice I was being given, where the people giving it hadn't taken time to get to know me first I'd have been seriously annoyed. So, i absolutely agree that unless you're just starting out and still figuring out what on earth you're doing you probably don't need more information but what you do need is to figure out what success looks like for you? What feels easy and in flow for you? What your values are? What the rest of your life looks like and how to balance that with your work because that depth of understanding and self-awareness is what's going to bring new growth

04:35 In a much more aligned and fruitful way than listening to what somebody else would do. So as always I hope that this helps and i look forward to seeing you again soon! Thank you for listening to Unfrazzle, if you enjoyed this episode please subscribe and share it with a friend who needs a dose of calm productivity in their life And I'd love it if you could leave me a rating or review as that will help more people discover the podcast And if you're struggling with productivity right now, take my free assessment to find out what's really getting in the way of you getting things done. It takes less than three minutes to complete and I'll send you tailored resources and insights that will help based on your score You'll find that at louisemiller.uk slash quiz and there's a link for that in the show notes So thank you so much for being here and I look forward to seeing you next time