Take The Advice Before It Makes Sense

“You need to add a cute dog picture to your follow-up emails and send 2 emails to each customer.”

I didn’t understand and I didn’t want to pay additional monthly charges to send twice as many emails, which may be annoying to customers.

“You need to let people make their own mistakes.”

It’s expensive to let someone make a mistake in your company, so I didn’t like this.

“You lose just as much money when you’re under-stocked as when you’re over-stocked, you just can’t see it.”

I didn’t understand because money sitting in stock would be cash if I’d ordered less.

“You should spend $100/month on that business intelligence software.”

I’d rather pocket the money or buy inventory I can sell at a profit than spend money for ‘awareness’.

Truly Game-Changing Advice Doesn’t Make Sense

In almost every case, advice that really changes my game isn’t comprehensible when I first hear it.

1. I have already made decisions about my ‘best’ actions.
2. I know the required time/money investments, and the expected money/results/ROI.
3. When someone tells me to do something new, I see only the investment and I don’t understand where I’m getting the ROI.

This is why advice often sounds expensive or like a lot of work or why it simply “does not compute”.

What I’m currently doing makes perfect sense to me, and doing anything different doesn’t make sense.

1. I didn’t want to add a cute dog picture to follow-up emails, or pay $40/month to send twice as many emails, until I saw the new organic reviews on all our products, which drive huge ROI for Amazon merchants.
2. I didn’t want to let co-workers make expensive mistakes, until I was forced to have an awkward conversation after 12 months, explaining to someone who thought they were a Rockstar how they weren’t really that helpful. (Who’s to blame when I fix the problems and don’t tell them?)
3. I wanted to avoid overstock-situations at all costs, until I did the math. Not selling $500/day means not earning $100/day profit.
4. I didn’t want to spend $100/month on ‘business awareness’ software, until I realized I was losing $2,000/month due to my lack-of-awareness.

If it’s already working for someone else, most advice I receive and don’t understand will make sense later.

What makes no sense is me continuing to work harder and longer than others while getting poorer results when I know someone who is getting better results with less effort.

Furthermore, what makes no sense sense is me not taking sensible advice, simply because it doesn’t make sense to me.