Soul Proprietor - Four pieces of business advice you can ignore

There’s a lot of business advice out there. Some of it is accepted as business as usual. But there are some practices that gurus like to preach that may or may not be right for your business.

Here are a few to ditch now:

Stalk your “competition”. The first time I heard this advice, my skin crawled. The idea behind this is to see what successful people in your industry are doing and then copy their methods. While that may make sense, do you really want to waste your time worrying about what your peers are doing? Do you fancy being a carbon copy of someone else? The bigger question: why on earth would you want to treat a colleague like a enemy combatant? Ditch the stalker moves and keep your eyes on your own page. (Psst…treat your peers like friends. They are in the same boat as you.)

You must be on social media or you won’t have a business. I’m a huge fan of social media (and it works for me) but it’s not for everyone. There are plenty of people who have gone social-media-AWOL and their businesses are doing just fine. (My friend Alexandra Franzen is a glorious example of a social media free business.) If you are not feeling it, feel free to walk away from it.

You need to hire a team or you won’t grow. Remember: having a team means you’re paying people out of your pocket. Which means less money in yours. For some businesses, this is not even feasible. If a team costs so much that it’s impacting your bottom line, is it really worth it? Probably not. Also consider this: while a virtual assistant may take some of the load off of your back, in some cases, having one doesn’t make sense. For example, I would never have someone digging around in my inbox because I practice strict client confidentiality.

Offer free “mini” sessions to give people a taste – and then do the hard sell once you get them on the phone. Um NO. One, you’re going to waste a lot of your time giving away freebies. Two, a hard sell feels awful. (Psst…lots of people are getting wise to this strategy and showing up to those calls with an excuse to get off the phone as soon as possible. Just sayin’….)

While business gurus do have fabulous advice, not all of it is applicable or necessary to your business. The best business guru is inside of you – let your own common sense help you to sift through the myths and gems. If it doesn’t feel right for your business, it probably isn’t.

As Thomas Edison once said: “The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.”

Blessings,

Theresa