THE BUSINESS WE MEANT TO BUILD

How good businesses lose their way

Chapter 2 – Advice That Makes You Stronger

I have attended more conferences than I care to remember, and I have spoken at a few of them as well. Some were genuinely useful, some were entertaining, and some seemed to exist largely to prove how much money could be made by selling tickets to people who wanted to learn how to make money. The property seminars were often the most fascinating because the room would begin the day filled with hope, possibility and the firm belief that somebody on the stage was about to reveal the missing piece of the puzzle. By the end, many attendees were clutching workbooks, finance applications and a head full of statistics, convinced that their lives would change as soon as they followed the formula they had just been given.

The figures discussed around those events often suggested that fewer than one person in ten would take any meaningful action after leaving the room. That statistic was usually presented as evidence that most people lacked commitment, discipline or courage, which conveniently placed responsibility for the outcome entirely upon the audience. I was never certain that this told the whole story. Perhaps some people did fail to act because they were frightened or unwilling to do the work, but perhaps many of them had simply been given an answer to a question they were never really asking. They had attended because they wanted something better, yet the seminar had assumed that “something better” meant buying property, building a portfolio and following the particular road being sold from the stage.

That is one of the great weaknesses of what I have come to think of as the advice game. We are surrounded by answers, but we spend far less time examining whether they belong to the questions sitting underneath our decisions. The person giving the advice may be intelligent, experienced and completely sincere, yet still be guiding us towards a destination that has little to do with our own journey. Advice can be technically correct and personally useless at the same time. It can even lead us efficiently in the wrong direction, which is perhaps more dangerous than receiving no advice at all.

The modern business owner is rarely short of opinions. There are accountants, lawyers, mentors, coaches, consultants, economists, bankers, governments, social-media experts and people who became authorities approximately three days after opening an online account. Each has a view on what should be done next, and many deliver that view with impressive certainty. We are told to scale, automate, diversify, specialise, outsource, invest, borrow, sell, restructure, build a personal brand and embrace whatever shiny new object has been polished for that week’s presentation. Some of this advice will be valuable, but the volume of it can create the illusion that progress comes from finding the right person to tell us what to do.

I do not believe the real purpose of advice is to replace the owner’s judgement. Good advice should strengthen that judgement by explaining the reasoning, identifying the risks, testing the assumptions and showing the consequences that may follow. It should leave the owner more capable of thinking about the next decision, not increasingly dependent upon the adviser for permission to move. There is a considerable difference between guidance and instruction, even though the two are often bundled together under the same fee. Guidance helps us see the road more clearly, while instruction can encourage us to stop looking at the road altogether.

The fourth pillar of Banks Consultancy was that we would act like a “silent” partner in the client’s business. The word “silent” was always placed in quotation marks because I was never particularly good at remaining silent when the numbers suggested something needed to be said. The promise was not that I would take over the business, substitute my dream for the client’s or make every decision on their behalf. It was that I would care enough to understand what they were trying to build, question the things that did not appear to fit and stand beside them while they considered the choices available. A genuine “silent” partner should improve the owner’s ability to decide without attempting to become the owner.

That relationship begins with a question that is far more important than it first appears: what problem are we actually trying to solve? A business owner may ask whether they should buy a property, employ another person, purchase new equipment, change structures or spend money before the end of the financial year. Those may be legitimate questions, but they are often only the visible layer of something deeper. The real concern may be poor cash flow, exhaustion, fear of tax, frustration with slow growth or uncertainty about whether the business is still heading towards the life the owner imagined. An adviser who answers only the question presented may provide a technically accurate response while completely missing the reason the question was asked.

I have often seen people seek advice when what they really wanted was validation. They had already chosen the answer and were searching for someone with suitable qualifications, confidence or stage lighting to agree with them. That is not necessarily dishonest, because most of us are capable of arranging the evidence around the decision we would prefer to make. The danger arises when confirmation is mistaken for independent advice and the owner begins travelling further down a road because somebody else has endorsed the first step. A second opinion is of limited value when we continue asking people until someone finally gives us the first opinion we wanted.

This is where the influence of Dumbing It Down sits beneath the discussion. People are often prepared to accept a simple answer because examining the complicated question may make the room uncomfortable. The slogan sounds cleaner than the uncertainty, and the formula is easier to repeat than the reasoning behind it. We may even reduce our own thinking to fit the advice being offered, particularly when the person delivering it appears successful, confident and certain. The problem is not that simple answers are always wrong, but that simplicity should be the result of understanding rather than a substitute for it.

The influence of How Did We Get Here raises a related concern. Somehow, we have reached a position where the sheer quantity of advice is treated as proof of its value. We collect podcasts, webinars, newsletters, reports, forecasts and seminar notes as though the next piece of information might finally remove the uncertainty that belongs to owning a business. The rabbit hole begins innocently enough with one idea, one expert or one opportunity that appears to provide the missing answer. Before long, the business owner is chasing strategies that bear little resemblance to the original destination, yet continues moving because stopping would require admitting that the path may have been wrong.

Perhaps the better question is not whether the advice is good, but whether it is relevant. Does it fit the business as it exists today, the resources available, the owner’s appetite for risk and the dream supposedly being pursued? Does it address the actual weakness, or does it merely add another project to a business already struggling to complete the work it has? Does it improve cash flow, margins, capacity or judgement, or does it simply create the appearance of movement? Advice should be translated into the language of the owner’s business before it is allowed to influence the owner’s future.

This is also where advice before compliance and relationships before transactions become important. Advice sought early may leave several choices open, while advice sought after the contract has been signed, the asset purchased or the structure created often becomes an explanation of what can no longer be changed. That was one of the recurring lessons behind 20 Days Too Late. Timing does not make advice more intelligent, but it can make it far more useful. A relationship with an adviser should allow the real question to surface before the transaction turns it into a compliance exercise.

What the Accountant Saw came from a similar place. The figures often tell a different story from the one the owner has been repeating, not because the owner is deliberately misleading anyone, but because hope is not always an accurate reporting system. A business may appear to need more customers when the real issue is inadequate pricing. It may appear to need more sales when the existing sales are consuming cash, time and energy without producing sufficient margin. It may appear to need a new strategy when the old one was never properly implemented. The right advice begins by understanding what sits behind the numbers rather than offering a solution based upon the loudest symptom.

There is a corner being cut when we seek a complete answer to a question that has not been properly framed. It is the shortcut of hoping somebody else can remove the uncertainty, carry the responsibility and provide a guaranteed path towards the dream. I understand the attraction because business ownership can be lonely, and a confident answer can feel like relief. Yet borrowed certainty has a limited life, particularly when the consequences remain with the person who owns the business. The adviser may leave the room, the conference may finish and the online expert may move on to the next promotion, but the owner still has to live with the decision.

CANEI, Constant and Never-Ending Improvement, provides a better way of thinking about advice. It does not require us to chase every new idea or reinvent the business each time someone discovers a new acronym. It encourages us to keep asking whether there is a better way to understand the business, serve the customer, manage the numbers and pursue the destination. Advice becomes part of that improvement when it sharpens our thinking rather than replacing it. The aim is not to find the final answer, because business rarely remains still long enough for any answer to remain final.

The Discipline of Boring belongs here as well, although good advice need not be boring. Sometimes the most valuable adviser is the person who directs our attention back towards the work we were hoping to avoid. They may ask about debtors when we want to discuss expansion, margins when we want to discuss turnover or record-keeping when we want to discuss artificial intelligence. These questions can feel less exciting than a new opportunity, but they may be far more relevant to the road ahead. Boring becomes powerful when it prevents the shiny object from distracting us from the foundation upon which everything else depends.

A genuine “silent” partner might therefore ask three questions before offering an opinion. What question are you really asking, what problem are you genuinely attempting to solve, and where does this decision fit within the journey towards your dream? Those questions may not produce an immediate answer, but they have a reasonable chance of producing a useful one. They may also reveal that the advice being sought is not required at all, or that an entirely different adviser is needed. The purpose is not to delay the decision for the sake of appearing thoughtful, but to make certain the decision belongs to the business rather than the noise surrounding it.

The practical reflection is relatively simple, even if the thinking behind it may not be. Before seeking advice, it may be worth writing down what you believe the problem is, what outcome you hope to achieve and what would make the answer relevant to your circumstances. After receiving the advice, consider whether you understand the reasoning well enough to explain it in your own words and whether you are more capable of dealing with the next decision. If the advice leaves you impressed but confused, dependent but reassured or committed to a path you cannot properly explain, the issue may not be your intelligence. The question may simply remain unanswered.

Advice has always had an important place in business, and I would be the last person to suggest that owners should attempt every decision alone. Experience borrowed at the right time can prevent expensive mistakes, reveal opportunities and expose assumptions that have become too comfortable. The strength, however, should remain with the owner. The best advice does not take the journey away from us; it helps us understand the journey well enough to keep walking after the adviser has gone.

I seek advice, and I expect I will continue seeking it for as long as I remain interested in learning. The question I need to keep asking is whether what I seek is relevant to me and my business today, rather than merely interesting, fashionable or confidently delivered. The dream deserves advice that strengthens the person pursuing it, not advice that sends them blindly down somebody else’s rabbit hole. The final decision remains ours, as does the responsibility to make certain the road still leads somewhere we genuinely intended to go.