I am a mentor for the Chicago chapter of Techstars, now in my fourth year. In the first month of the program, the member companies are immersed with mentorship from the 150 Techstars mentors that are part of the local program. And, the consistent question I get, year after year, from the member companies is: “I am getting conflicting advice from the multiple mentors, and it is confusing me, as they are all smart people, and I am not sure who to listen to?”. Hopefully, this post will help you cut through the confusion and lead you to the best decision making skills.
LISTEN TO EXPERIENCE
In the above example of 150 Techstars mentors, ask yourself
the key questions: Which of these mentors
has actually built a business in my industry?
Or, has faced similar marketing challenges? Or, has built similar revenue or pricing
models? Or, similar consumer lifestyle
brands? Or, whatever other questions
that may be relevant to prioritizing and filtering your mentor feedback. You need to weight the “volume” of the
mentor’s voice, based on their direct first-hand experience in your space. Once you narrow down the base of mentors to
only the most relevant, it will help you to gain more clarity of where to
focus.
LISTEN TO SUCCESS
Not all mentors are created equal. Sometimes the loudest voices come from
unproven mentors that have never actually achieved any quantifiable success of
their own. As an example, in building
the next big travel site, are you going
to listen to the founders of Expedia, Priceline and Travelocity, or are you
going to listen to the advice of Uncle Bob that runs a struggling local travel agency . .
. or worse yet, the corner dry cleaner?
And, turn up the “volume” of people that have proven their abilities
time and time again, as opposed to “one hit wonders” that may have got lucky
the first time around.
LISTEN TO THE MAJORITY
When you are filtering advice, if you start to hear the same
suggestions over and over again, there is a pretty good chance that advice is
the way to go. There is not one right
way to build a business, so two mentors may in fact both be right, even though
they are suggesting different routes.
But, if you ask ten mentors the same question, and 80% of them are pointing you in one direction, let majority-rule serve
as your tie breaker when you are not sure which direction to head. That all said, sometimes the 20% can actually
be the best advice, if non-conventional thinking is actually what your business
needs to succeed.
LISTEN TO YOUR GUT
If all else fails, and the above techniques do not clearly
point you in one direction over another, then like any good entrepreneur, you
need to follow your gut. Your natural
instincts will pull you in one direction over another. And, in some cases, your internal gut
instincts, may even end up overriding the above qualifiers. It is OK to go against the mainstream way of
thinking, if you are 100% sure it is the right solution for the long run. But, understand, it may come at your own
peril, or with a lot of headwind along the way, if it impedes your ability to
attract business champions or investors.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of how to
filter conflicting advice from multiple mentors. Remember, at the end of the day, it your
business and the buck stops with you.
So, only go in a direction which you feel comfortable.
For future posts, please follow me on Twitter at: @georgedeeb.