A client once refused my advice partway through our work together. We'd gotten to the point where my recommendation was to start the tedious work of messaging potential buyers directly.
The idea was to surface (and solve) a painful problem that would hopefully lead to a purchase.
After having sent a few DMs and seeing it wasn't working for her, she stopped and said, "I'm not going to do this, Ash."
So I asked her why.
She said, "You've got ten thousand followers and a podcast full of names people recognise."
"When you reach out, people reply. When I reach out, they don't. You're giving me advice that works for you."
Turns out she was right.
When something works for you, you stop seeing the path (and distance) you've already travelled to make it work.
It took me years to build an email list, a podcast, and a brand that gets my messages read and responded to. I'd become blind to all of this.
I now realise I was teaching a method that worked for me where I was on my journey. I didn't realise that this method might not work for someone earlier in their journey without tweaking.
I've been on the other side of this too. I've taken advice from people with several million followers and wondered why it didn't work the same for me.
They weren't lying to me. They just couldn't see my starting line from where they were standing.
There's a thing called the curse of knowledge. Once you know something, you forget what it was like not to know it.
So you talk to people as though they already know it too.
Economists named it in the late eighties, and Chip and Dan Heath made it well known in Made to Stick.
(An excellent book btw. I highly recommend it.)
I think there's a second version. I've started calling it the curse of vantage.
The curse of knowledge is about what you know. This one is about where you're standing.
You climb a certain way up a path. From up there you can't see the ground you started from.
So you give directions without really knowing where the other person is standing.
It made me question the whole thing. If the tactic only worked because of who I'd become, what else was I teaching that just applied to my own current circumstances and needed to be tweaked for others?
I'm still working on an answer for that one.
Here's what I now realise. When something works for me now, I try to ask how far I'd already travelled to make it work, and whether the person in front of me has too.
I now try to take advice with an understanding of the context of the person giving me the advice.
And when someone quotes a result, it's usually their best one.
I don't think the answer is to stop teaching, because that's still important.
But I've started doing it more deliberately, asking about where someone actually is, instead of assuming they're in the same place I am.
That client did me a favour. I've learned to empathise more deeply.
What's a piece of advice you followed that never really fit you?
Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.
Ciao for now,
Ash
