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Startup Story

My Hopes for the Recently Laid Off

I remember the first phone call that I got from a friend who was laid off last year.

“It didn’t make sense,” he said. The late-stage startup hired him less than two months before, and yet they didn’t have enough cash to justify keeping him or dozens of the other recent hires.

He was confused, hurt, and most of all scared.

Many of us seek jobs for the stability they provide, and when that’s ripped out from under us, we’re in fight or flight mode. Do you run away for a while? Take a break from reality? Or immediately start calling up everyone you know for a job?

I’ve been there – stuck in a situation that you didn’t want to be in with no idea what to do next.

It’s hard.

You may feel like crying, screaming, or just withdrawing for a while.

That’s okay. It’s okay to be emotional about work.

We spend much of our lives working and often wrap our identity around what we do. Having that taken from you without warning is like taking a bottle away from a baby for the first time. You’ve always known where your source of income (and for many of us, worth) is coming from. And now you don’t.

Layoffs Hit Close to Home

When I quit my stable job, I had a startup idea and venture funding promised by an investor. It didn’t feel risky; it felt like the next logical, safe move in my career.

Then, shortly after we started working together, the investor made a move on me. Not like a jab in a basketball game or even a dance move at a party; he expressed sexual interest in me.

I had to get out.

So I left the company… technically by choice but more because of the circumstance. And then I had nowhere to go. No idea what to do next. For a few days immediately after leaving, I felt like a vegetable in my own skin, barely surviving.

Then, reality set in.

Never in my working life had I gone without a paycheck. I needed to make money.

I didn’t want to go work for someone else. Believe me, if you’ve experienced the kind of behavior that I did, you need space to recover, and your confidence does too.

So I started exploring other ways beyond the traditional, career-oriented methods to make money.

How to Hustle a Side Hustle

The year before, I helped a friend edit her book on how to set up your house as an AirBnB. That sounded interesting and fun, I thought. Why not give it a shot? I love hosting friends; what better way to show your hospitality and make new friends than invite them to stay in your home?!

I had a blast coming up with the welcome letter and description too.

^my AirBnB welcome letter

Next, I started reorganizing my home. Weeks in, I finally made it to the furthest back closet – you know, the one we all have where we store all our junk that we hope no one finds.

That’s when I found a couple of old boxes of Pokémon cards. I seemed to remember my Dad trading them on eBay when we were kids, and with his permission, I listed a couple of them on eBay.

One of those cards made me (and my Dad) more money than I made in a full weekend of AirBnB!

I had always wanted to learn about OCR and saw this as the perfect opportunity. Painstakingly, I took pictures of each card and sorted them into bins. Then, I uploaded those photos onto my computer. With a few lines of python code, I was able to quickly read the description of each card and organize it into a Google Sheet for my Dad and me to share. He and I spent hours combing over cards, deciding what to buy or sell.

We continue to trade Pokémon cards to this day. Unfortunately, with my startup, I don’t often have as much time as I’d like to spend with him on this. I will always value and treasure our early Pokémon card trading days.

With the combination of AirBnB, Pokémon, and a handful of side-of-the-desk-consulting jobs, I supported myself. I certainly wasn’t making the kind of money I did before, but I slowed the bleeding.

Not only that, I discovered new, interesting hobbies that I can continue for the rest of my life while also becoming closer with friends and family. 

Make the Most of a Bad Situation

For all of you going through a layoff right now, there is hope. I hope that you will use this time to explore your passions.

Did you really love your job? If so, by all means, go after another version of it somewhere else.

If not, is there another way that you can make money doing more of what you love? Let yourself explore your interests outside of the traditional career mold. You may surprise yourself – use this gift of time to become closer with a loved one. Or perhaps begin to carve out a new career path.

I recently listened to a podcast by Mel Robbins where she interviewed Jamie Kern Lima. Jamie described the difficulties she encountered while starting her business. Many investors told her – straight up – that women wouldn’t buy makeup from someone who looked like her. She took beating after beating from people who said she was crazy, not smart enough, and not good enough. She worked odd jobs to support herself, never letting their words convince her to give up. Instead, she framed her experience as this:

“The seasons in life that are setbacks are actually setups for what we’re called to do.”

Jamie Kern Lima Tweet

I hope that you will use this time to set yourself up for what’s next. I’m convinced that incredible careers, companies, and life experiences will be born out of this difficult season. I can’t wait to see what you do.

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Startup Story

Indifference to Rejection

Getting used to bad stuff happening to you

Vimal Vachhani writes an amazing weekly newsletter. Drop what you’re doing and subscribe to it here.

NOW.

I said NOW.

Great! Thanks for subscribing… and coming back.😊

Vimal confessed to me that he was nervous about putting himself out there with his newsletter. It was strange, he said, because he’d been writing blog posts for well over a decade, co-authored several books, and taught classes. Somehow though, the idea of committing to a weekly newsletter with his name on it was scary.

Naturally, I asked him why.

“Because I’m putting my name on it. This is me,” he said.

Ah, I get it.

It is absolutely terrifying to put yourself out there on your own. To be creative and risk someone sh**ting all over your hard work because they didn’t like it (or even worse, if it wasn’t good).

My experience with rejection

Sam Zell once said, “Indifference to rejection is a fundamental part of being an entrepreneur.”

In other words, part of being a successful entrepreneur is getting used to people not liking your work.

To be fair, indifference to rejection is hard.

One time, when I lived the Power Point life, I spent all weekend crafting new strategy slides. I’d never done this type of work before, and I was excited to breathe life into my ideas.

Finally, Monday morning came, and I was ready to present my work.

I remember anxiously sitting in the conference room. My deck was on the projector, my heart was racing, and I felt like I had some strange pounding in my ears that I couldn’t identify. 10 minutes late, my boss finally shows up.

He walks in and says, “What do you got?”

I proceeded to walk him through my carefully and thoughtfully prepared deck.

Before I even made it to the third slide, he said, “This is total shit.”

I’ll never forget the way my heart felt like it dropped out of my chest and slammed into the floor like the anvil in Looney Tunes.

Except it wasn’t funny. No one was laughing.

My face was most certainly red, and I fought back tears best that I could.

My boss walked out of the room, mumbling about how he shouldn’t have wasted time on me.

Now, it’s easy to focus on the tragic part of this story: how rude and inconsiderate my boss was. About 15 minutes later (after a good cry on a toilet in the women’s bathroom), I took a hard look at my deck. I started googling comparable decks, something that I admittedly should have done that weekend before presenting my pitch.

While my deck wasn’t “total shit,” it certainly could use improvement. The design wasn’t clear, and my language could have been more concise and direct.

In fact, the older and more experienced I’ve become, the more I value criticism.

Achieving indifference to rejection

Sure, the initial shock of a critique *may* still hurt my ego. But over time, it hurts less and less. Instead, I focus on the WHY, the WHAT, and my VALUES.

  • Why did that individual dislike my work?

  • What could I have done differently to avoid that criticism?

  • Do I value their viewpoint, i.e. do I believe that their views are consistent with the views of my target audience?

Truth be told, most people don’t critique. Check out The Mom Test if you don’t believe me. Rob Fitzpatrick shares that when entrepreneurs ask their friends, colleagues, and strangers about an idea or their product, they likely won’t receive honest answers.

From childhood, we are trained to be nice. Being nice sometimes – or often, for some of us – means keeping our opinions to ourselves.

That’s why these days, I value criticism more than compliments. When I meet someone who gives me their honest, unabashed opinion that disagrees with mine in a valuable way, I latch onto them immediately.

Indifference to rejection is a skill that anyone can learn. It simply takes practice and repetition.

Put yourself out there over and over again.

The only way through is through

Vimal and I put ourselves on the line everyday by being entrepreneurs. Even more so, we put ourselves out there by becoming thought leaders. It’s terrifying for me, and as he confessed, he’s scared to.

However, like the childhood story about going on a bear hunt, the only way through is through.

As long as you practice self-improvement and self-care, you will gain more than you could ever dream of by sharing your creativity with the world.

And maybe someday, we will all be indifferent to rejection.

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Startup Story

Run Fast, Turn Left | Tips on Execution

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On how execution is what really matters in startupland

We have a saying in track and field, “Run fast, turn left.”

I remember one of my middle school friends making fun of the assistant coach after they said it for the first time.

“So stupid,” he said as he jabbed an elbow into the boy’s arm next to him, trying to sound cool. “What idiot turns right?”

Like many of us in middle school, this boy missed the point in his quest for social acceptance.

If only he’d been truly listening, he would have understood that the meaning behind “Run fast, turn left.” is quite powerful. You could be Usain Bolt – the fastest person in the world – but if you don’t follow the process, you will be disqualified.

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You can have the best idea in the world and an all-star team, but if you can’t execute, nothing else matters.

Someone once told me that I was the “queen of execution” but that I didn’t have what it takes to start a business. Let me tell you: execution is EXACTLY the skill you need to start a business.

From the queen herself, here are a few tips on execution.

See the goal.

If what you’re doing doesn’t get you closer to your goal, then you need to reprioritize quickly. My basketball coach used to say “see the goal” while we did courtside pushups as a way to keep our necks engaged.

I now envision that round hole, glass backboard, mesh net and bright red square every time I do a pushup. Let me give you a work example too.

We initially funded CREx with consulting dollars (I’m a no bullshit person and don’t call this R&D or whatever you’re supposed to do when talking to investors). One of our early consulting opportunities was with a guy that had us redo the deck 8 times, pitch to him twice, and yet, he STILL hadn’t introduced our offering to the executive team. Not to mention that he nickled and dimed us on every little piece of the consulting proposal.

Rather than continuing down this godforsaken (and low margin, if any) rabbit hole, we bowed out.

It was scary to do that because that kind of consulting project paid our bills. Ultimately though, that deal would have cost us more than it benefited us; we would have been in the red on time spent.

We opted instead to see the goal – supporting ourselves with projects that would allow us time to build our SaaS product.

Break big ideas into smaller, tactical pieces.

If you’re an entrepreneur, chances are you have lofty visions. However, you need to be realistic about the time it takes to accomplish pieces of that vision. Focus on what matters most, and then…

Cut, cut, and cut some more.

Get your team together and ask each other over and over again, “Is this feature really necessary?” “Will it impact the user experience significantly if we wait to include it in the next iteration?” 

Cut as much as you can so that you can get the product/feature in your users hands and have real user feedback ASAP.

This is something that Darren Allen, or Daz, does exceptionally well for us at CREx. By focusing on the simplest version of the feature possible, we move quickly while still solving our customers’ problems.

Celebrate the wins.

Starting a company is tough.

Building a product is even tougher.

You will probably get it wrong the first few times, and that’s okay. When you do get it right, go all out and celebrate. Let your team know that you appreciate them and respect their hard work.

In summary, you can be the best at what you do and still not succeed simply because you can’t execute. Focus on execution.

And remember: Run fast, turn left.

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How to Land Your First Customer

Maybe some people are inherently gifted with the ability to sell anything. For my cofounder and me, sales was a learned skill. Truth be told, we’re still learning, and I expect that we will be learning and improving for the rest of our careers. We completely lucked into our first customer; my cofounder had been writing blogs about getting data out of Yardi for years, and a prospective customer came to him about providing data integration as a service (heck of a market demand, amiright?!). Landing our second customer was much harder. I’m sharing our experience in the hope that it will help you land your first customer.

There are a few key strategies that worked for us. First, we needed a fully-fledged product to sell. We also needed a good website (the modern-day storefront). Then, we had to sort out a good pricing strategy. Finally, we needed to find people who wanted to buy from us. I’ll walk through each of these steps for you.

Create a Product that People Want to Buy

This should go without saying: you need a product to sell that is 1) serving a real need and 2) at a price point that make customers willing to part with their hard-earned money. I am NOT in the camp of selling a product that you don’t have. In my opinion, this results in stress and confusion for your engineering teams that ultimately leads to poor performance, bad engagement, and ultimately high performers leaving your company.

We will often sell folks on new features or services that we’re currently building. However, unlike many salespeople (because again, we aren’t salespeople by trade), we’re incredibly transparent about our product stage. Plus, if you’re a startup, you need to be up front that you are early stage and looking for a partner to grow with you. Having a good reputation early is critical to your success, and transparency is key to trust. I guarantee that we lost prospects because of our transparency. However, we would have had a lot of churn if we were dishonest. And we don’t roll that way anyway.

Short story is that you need both supply and demand for your company’s product.

Design a Good Website

I absolutely love the book, “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. If you’re designing your company website, buy this book. Now. And no, I don’t know the author and am not getting any kickbacks (currently…).

Websites are the modern-day storefronts. Instead of walking down the street to find a product, prospective customers google their questions or needs. If your website ranks high in their results and has an interesting sitemap, then they might just “walk in” and click your company’s link.

Copy outranks site design all day, any day. If your website doesn’t explain what you do well in the first three seconds, then you lost that prospective customer. They’ll go back to their jaunty walk down the proverbial street looking at all the fun, shiny objects.

At CREx, we were fortunate in that we had the skillsets to build websites with good copy in-house. If you don’t have that, then by all means, spend what you can to get good copy and a not-bad looking site.

Define Your Pricing

We screwed up on pricing several times before we got it right. To all of our prospective customers who were our guinea pigs, thank you for your patience. We now know what we are talking about and would love to hit the reset button.

In the real estate tech market, software companies price using all sorts of creative methods. Some of the most common include pricing per square foot, assets under management, per user, per property, and many, many more. We tried each of those methods, and each time, we had difficulty communicating to our customers “why”. Why didn’t we price by some other method? Would it be more expensive for them over time? (Or, often, pricing that way was too expensive today). Ultimately, we chose to price in a way that felt authentic to us. 

We figured that if the pricing model was easy for us to understand, then it would be easy for our customers. And you know what? I think we were right. At least, we grew 894% year over year! That ought to count for something.

Moral of the story is to not be shy about trying different pricing models early on. Troubleshoot until you figure out what makes the most sense to you and to your customers.

Find Customers

CREx has never paid for advertising. While we did get our early consulting customers through relationships, our initial SaaS customers came to us. I attribute 1,000% of our success to my cofounder’s content marketing strategy.

Vimal Vachhani wrote quality blog posts on topics that our prospective customers would google. Our website then ranks highly in search results (based on good SEO practices). Once a prospect goes to our website and reads the post, they will be prompted to download a free whitepaper for more information. Any new prospect’s email is automatically added to the CREx subscription list.

This resulted in CREx achieved nearly 1,000 email subscribers over the last year and a half. We now have several free whitepapers available on our CRExchange and CREx Software blogs. We also amped up our LinkedIn presence and created a community for real estate tech users on Slack called CREx Connect. Reach out if you’d like to join.

Sure, it’s more effort to create content regularly that’s good and interesting. It’s also more authentic, and that authenticity will win you more loyal customers. It’s loads better than throwing money like spaghetti at the paid ads wall and hoping something sticks.

Conclusion

It’s not easy to ask strangers and friends to give you money. Yet it’s much easier if you have a good product solving a real problem, a legitimate website, and a solid pricing strategy. Use content marketing to your advantage. If you follow these four recommendations, I guarantee that it will help you land your first customer.

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Startup Story

When You’re the Best, You Have a Target on Your Back

Right now, CREx Software is the underdog. We’re competing against an incumbent company-that-shall-not-be-named. Our competitor is better funded, has been around five years longer than us, and has name-brand recognition. While we actively pursue name-brand recognition, our goal is to fly under the radar for as long as we possibly can. Why, you ask? Because once we start becoming known as the best, our backs become etched with the painful, semi-permanent tattoo of a bright red target. When we become the best, we will have a target on our backs and have to work even harder to win.

Let me give you an example from my past.

Texas Academic State Championships

It was freshman year of high school. Like any proper nerd, I competed in academics. And not just any old academic competition: UIL, the big leagues for Texas public schools. Every class of school across the state vied for district, regional, and state championships. My high school was a legend in the Literary Criticism competition.

It all started when my high school English teacher, a former National Merit Scholar, returned to Martin’s Mill ISD to teach. She was the first Martin’s Mill student to win the state Literary Criticism (fondly called “Lit Crit”) competition. When she returned to teach English, she used her own methodical approach to theory and memorization to coach our Lit Crit team.

Making the team was a huge deal. Freshman didn’t often make the cut, and when I was selected to join the team as an alternate during my freshman year, I was ecstatic. We had an incredibly intelligent group. So intelligent, that we won the state competition not only for our small school sized group but across all schools in the entire state of Texas. This is from a tiny, East Texas public school with an average class size of 35 students! We beat the Westlakes and Pearlands and Highland Parks (all top public schools in the state). Insane.

The next year, we returned to the state competition with 3 out of the 4 same team members. Everyone already knew we were the team to beat, and yet, we made sure they were all reminded of it. We actually debated having T-shirts made with our motto, “It’s not hubris. We’re just that good.” And you know what happened? We got second. For the first time in years and years, the Martin’s Mill Lit Crit team didn’t win.

I had amazing coaches (both academic and in sports), good talent, and a hard-working spirit. Learn how I tuned out the second commenter, a Negative Nancy, here.

It's Easy to Revel in Success. It’s Harder to Maintain It.

What I learned from that experience is this: no matter how good you may think you are, there are so many other smart, innovative people out there trying to find a way to be better than you. Yes, we should all be intrinsically motivated and aim to beat our best. But that doesn’t work for everyone. For those people, you need to know that YOUR best will not always be THE best. Someone, someday, somewhere will come along and unseat you. It may happen after your career is long over, but it will happen. With that knowledge of the target on our backs, we must work harder every day, every minute.

It is hubris. No one is that good.

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Startup Story

On Getting to Choose Who You Work With

I chose to cofound CREx Software in part because I got to choose my cofounder and teammates. In many roles, you don’t get to choose who you work with. In startupland, that choice is always yours.

Each Job Is a Chance to Level Up the People Around You

I interviewed for a LOT of jobs over the years. One particularly memorable interview was with a fast-growing real estate tech firm. The interviewer said he’d been involved in so many interviews that he didn’t remember the role that I was interviewing for. And when I told him the job title, he asked me why they needed someone for that. 🤷🏻‍♀️ In retrospect, he probably knew what he was doing and used ignorance as an interview tactic. Smart…

At one point in the interview, I asked him why he chose to work there. He said, “I use every new job as an opportunity to level up the people around me. I liked the team at my last position, but I liked the team here even more.”

That idea – using each new job as an opportunity to level up people – stuck with me.

It’s important to identify new and interesting opportunities. However, the #1 reason that people leave jobs isn’t because of the lack of opportunities; it’s because they did not like their boss.*

*Based on a factual old wives tale.

Leveling Up the People at CREx

Our first CREx Software team photo

I cofounded CREx because I wanted to level up the people around me. Yes, we solve a huge problem for a large market. Yes, I couldn’t go another day without solving that problem. Even more yes, I had worked in environments where I didn’t enjoy the people and couldn’t wait to work in a more welcoming, inclusive space. I wanted to choose the people that I worked with.

What did leveling up the team at CREx mean for me?

  • Remembering that we are people first and then employees and treating each other as such.
  • Supporting each other in non-work endeavors.
  • Being inclusive and intentional about having a diverse team.
  • Having reliable team members who get our work done based on goals, not on the outdated 9-5, M-F schedule.
  • Good vibes only. We all go through tough times and will support each other; most days, we aim for positivity. Startups are hard enough without any Negative Nancys.

You could say this is having a good culture. I say this is common sense.

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Startup Story

On Knowing What Advice to Take and What to Tune Out

As a startup founder, you will be inundated with advice and opinions. Here’s how I learned what advice to take and what to tune out. 

Examples of Advice to Tune Out

To start, let’s review a few examples of advice that I chose not to take.

As a female founder, you’re never going to raise money. I saw a woman who had more experience than you pitch to dozens of investors and not get a call back. I walked in, pitched, and got $15 million. You should get help.

This quote was from a guy who wanted to sell me on his services to fundraise for our business. His angle was clear. He would benefit from being labeled a “cofounder” and getting that level of equity without doing any work for the business other than fundraising. Don’t get me wrong; most business should highly value fundraising. However, it’s rarely worth giving up a substantial portion of your company.

I don’t like the colors of your branding. It’s too bright and will turn off potential customers. Your firm name is too close to another tech firm too. You should consider changing both of those.

I actually received this advice from a few different investors. Each gave this comment with the angle of if we chose to work with them, they would use their resources to help us with our branding. 

And for the record:

  1. Our website ranks in the top 5 in Google for the keywords important to our business.
  2. I have yet to hear a prospective customer say that they wouldn’t go with us because our colors were too bright and our firm name wasn’t good enough.

Lastly, here are a few pieces of advice that I received prior to cofounding CREx Software.

You have more talent in your pinky finger than I ever had. But you don’t have what it takes to start a business. You should stay in your current role.

You can execute better than anyone I’ve ever known. But you don’t have good ideas. You should focus on execution and let someone else create a business.

I always saw you in this [other] role. You should do that. I can’t support your decision to do anything else.

These are real words that were said to me by my mentors and former colleagues.

I could have believed them. Could have let them stop me. I didn’t.

Instead, I used their words to fuel my desire to start a business. To lead the life that I, Jen Tindle, wanted to live. Not the path that they had mapped out without consulting me.

It’s tempting to take advice from people you respect, even if it means giving up your dreams. Trust me, you are the only person in this world who will always prioritize yourself. Take advice with a grain of salt and understanding of how someone’s advice to you could positively impact them.

As Taylor Swift wisely said, “People throw rocks at things that shine.”

Photo taken after my first pitch competition with HearstLab Ventures

Examples of Advice to Take

Now, here are a few examples of advice that I chose to take. 

Once you have a C-level role, no one can take that from you.

The CFO at one of my first PwC clients gave me this advice. I share it with others to this day. Some people enjoy the predictability in climbing the corporate ladder at large companies. However, you have a small probability of making it to the top. If you want to increase your chances of becoming a C-level executive, you can take an executive role at a smaller firm. Then, you can grow your career by taking C-level positions at larger and larger firms.

I opted to cofound a startup because my former boss told that advancing to the next level in my career would take “many years”. Now, I was already bored at that job. I certainly wasn’t going to wait for the next challenge.

People buy from other people, not businesses.

I can’t remember who gave me this advice. If it was you, please let me know! This is some of the best advice that I ever received for our business. While we sell enterprise B2B software, we operate in commercial real estate, an industry that’s notoriously driven by relationships. Now, I have always been good at cultivating in-person relationships. However, I did not have a strong online presence. 

Many well-meaning colleagues suggested that I become more active on Twitter or LinkedIn but without a reason as to why. Here’s the why – people will buy from the business because of YOU. I chose to craft a profile that speaks about my journey. That seemed to resonate the most with my connections. Regardless of industry, a strong, high-quality online presence will always benefit your career.

Explain what you do in caveman speak. Most people’s attention span is too short to listen or read much.

I paraphrased this quote from “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. While the author intended it to be general advice for designing a website, it’s amazing advice about most anything that you need to explain. If you tell people what you do in a common sense tone and language, they will more quickly understand. And if they’re interested, then they’ll ask follow-up questions. And if they’re not interested, then you can wrap up the convo and save both of you time.

Have confidence in yourself and take it one day at a time. It is not the endpoint that’s important, but enjoying what you are doing every day of life on Earth.

I absolutely love this advice from my Dad. He wrote this in a letter to me that I read often. As a startup founder, you have good days and bad days. On the good days, you’re filled with hope and excitement about your company’s prospects. On the bad days, you’re wondering why you quit your stable job. “Are you really smart enough? Driven enough? Is this really a problem that needs to be solved?” The devilish voices in your head are nonstop on the bad days, and it’s hard to stay confident. I try my best to focus on enjoying each day even if it’s a tough one because I know that we’re doing our best. 

Note the critical last piece of his advice, which more succinctly is: Love what you do. If you are a founder and not die-hard passionate about the problem you solve, trust me, one of the bad days will eventually get to you. Then you’ll decide to pack up your proverbial bags, sell or acqui-hire if you can, and go back to your stable job. You must love what you do, or you won’t make it through.

Lessons Learned Between the Two Types of Advice

The key differences between these two types of advice are simply this. Good advice is typically:

  1. from insightful, well-thought-out observations and
  2. not self-serving in any way.

Beware of any advice that starts with flattery. It’s probably self-serving the advice-giver. 

When someone suggests that you do or change something, think first about how much thought they put into those suggestions. If it seems thoughtful and insightful, then think about whether you taking their advice will benefit them in any way. 

In some cases, good advice does benefit the advice-giver. In those scenarios, by all means, go for it! Don’t let mutual self-interest stop you. In fact, that can be a wonderful way to work with friends. 

However, if the advice is NOT well-thought-out AND the individual is self-serving, run. Run as fast as you possibly can and don’t look back.

Take my advice for what it’s worth. 😉 Hopefully a lot someday!

Am I taking this advice or not? I mean, it is from a pay phone...

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