You’re a successful, experienced entrepreneur. You’ve been around the block, built a thriving business, and you know your stuff. So why do you still occasionally find yourself pulled into buying that “can’t miss” software, hiring that high-priced coach, or following advice that ultimately doesn’t serve your business? It’s a painful lesson, but knowing better doesn’t actually protect you from information presented as a universal truth. In part 3 of the What We Didn’t Know We Didn’t Know series, we unpack the hard truth: the belief in a silver bullet is a powerful trap, and it lands in the spots where you are either the most or least confident. Discover the critical red flags—from excessive hype and “best practices” that are merely common practices to massive support ecosystems—that savvy business owners need to spot, and learn the decision filter that will help you stop falling for the wrong advice once and for all.

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Why Smart Business Owners Still Fall For Bad Advice

The Illusion Of Expertise Protecting You From Bad Advice

There’s a belief that once you know enough, you stop making bad decisions. That experience protects you. We believe that our expertise will filter out bad advice. If that were true, smart, experienced, and, dare I say it, successful business owners would not still get pulled into things that do not actually serve them or their business as well.

That is what brings us to this episode, part three of the What We Didn’t Know We Didn’t Know series, which is this hard lesson. Knowing better does not protect you from information that is presented as a universal truth. Gwen, since this is a lesson you thought was really important to share with our audiences, I want you to set the stage for us.

I do not know anyone who has not gone down a path, followed a piece of advice, bought a piece of software, bought a course, done a thing, hired a coach, hired a counselor, the list goes on and on, all advice things, where they got somewhere through it, it was like, “This is so stupid, why am I doing this? I know better than this.” They got sucked in.

It is not like when they got far enough, it was like, “This isn’t what I thought it was.” That is a whole different thing. It is the “I know this, I do not need this information. I already knew that I knew this. I knew that I knew as much as they did.” Yet we get sucked into paying for it, investing in time, investing energy, any of those things. It has happened to every single solitary one of us, I am sure.

Even though I would love to say at this stage of the game, it does not happen to me anymore. That is not true. It happens way less. I have finally gotten skeptical enough about practically everything that it happens way, way less. But I have been an experienced business owner for decades now. It has been happening in the last twenty years.

It is not that it goes away. The reason is that everyone wants to believe that there’s a silver bullet. Even when we know there is not. We all want to believe that if we just find the right person, do the right thing, and I find it lands in two spots. It tends to land either in the spot that we are least confident in or in the spot that we are most confident in.

Everyone wants to believe there’s a silver bullet—even when we know there isn’t. Share on X

When it is least confidence, it is like, “I know it’s me, I’m sure it’s me, and this other person, this other thing, this other tool, this whatever will be the thing that’ll actually make the difference because I know it’s me.” The other side is “I know I’ve got this, but I bet they know one thing more than I do,” or “This feels like it’s just different enough.” I wouldn’t say it that way. It feels like it is different. I need to know this thing so that my knowledge will be “complete,” which, of course, is never a real thing either.

Not that you will not learn anything. This is the other piece of this. Not saying that it’s bad information, that you did not learn anything, it is none of those things necessarily. Is it just that it was an appropriate exchange? When I say exchange, I am not talking about just money, because sometimes it is money, but sometimes it is not.

It can also be time. It can be energy, the three things that we talk about all the time. Time, money, energy. Was it an equal exchange, the value I got out of it for what I put into it? Time, energy. It is just so seductive. The other thing that I have also learned is that often the one we are finding most seductive is because they are a really good salesperson, not necessarily good at the thing that they are delivering.

That’s true.

That is where I have gotten really skeptical. It’s like, “Does this just feel slick?” It feels too slick. That has become one of my flags over time. At some point, I realize it’s like, “I’m getting sucked in by the slickness, not by what they’re actually trying to deliver.” Of course, the other thing, and this was a piece of advice we talked about just a couple of episodes ago, but I think a really important one, was this a problem I knew I had before I came across the thing? That’s the thing that you share, and I love that. Is this a problem that I knew I had before I came across the thing, or did the thing get very exciting because someone I like, someone I respect, people that I think are cool, whatever, are talking or doing this thing?

When was the last time you got sucked in, Gwen?

It’s been a while now, I think, unless you can think of one that I am not thinking of.

I can think of a conversation, but I wouldn’t say you got sucked in. It has been a couple of years. I wasn’t sure if you had something fresh on your mind.

Fixing Root Cause Problems By Solving Symptoms

No. As I said, I have gotten much better at it because I am starting to realize that often the pro, and of course, this is what I help other people see, and back to, you cannot read your own label inside your jar. A lot of times, I am trying to fix a root cause problem by solving a symptom that may or may not even be that close to the root cause problem, because the symptom is easier to address. I have gotten much closer, like, “I want to do this because if that quick fix would fix that thing, that would fix everything in my world.” That’s not really fixing the problem because the problem is way over here in left field, dug deep 10 feet under, and I know to fix that is going to be really hard work.

 

 

I do not think, I do not know, that it’s appropriate to say “sucked in,” because there’s a connotation to “sucked in” that I do not think is necessarily appropriate when it comes to circumstances that I am thinking of with you. It’s almost like blinded. I would say it’s more blinded. Since I have been working with you, you have invested a significant amount of time, not always money, but definitely time, in messaging courses, programs, and services, even though you have me as your Chief Marketing Officer. A big portion of that, right, is because you and I have been honest about it on the show.

We know that there is a disconnect between what our clients experience once they are in the container and what they thought you offered when they were outside the container, and the amount of time it takes them to come to an understanding. It makes sense. Looking back at a lot of those things, a lot of those were really the same exact course dressed differently. The worst of it, of course, is that it all involves you answering a whole series of questions that you had answered before you hired me, that I specifically asked you, that you would feel like, “Maybe this person can unlock the key. Maybe this person can unlock the key.” As you are going through it, it’s all the same questions.

It’s the silver bullet, right?

Exactly. It’s like there has to be something or somebody has to see something. What I would say is that every time, like your point, you have gotten more and wiser. Of course, because you have me to reflect on it to you, I can be like, “Even though this is the same course you took three years ago, you went into this one for different reasons, and we are in a different place than we were three years ago.” It makes perfect sense that we would want to try this again. You have gotten wiser over time, which I think we do. The reason I ask, like when was the last time you got sucked in, is because I also think a lot of us think we are going to reach this arrival point where we’re new to everything.

That’s what I was saying about. When it’s actually around things that we know, it’s that completion that knowledge will be complete. When we do not know, we think that it will be the answer.

The thing is, it’s like it’s not. The world is always changing. Though in the grand scheme of things, most business is pretty much the same, it’s just we laugh about what is old is new again. Blogging is back in, long-form content is back in. Five years ago, it was all about short-form content. Everything kind of ebbs and flows and goes back and forth. Recently, I almost got sucked in because I work in the social media space, and social media ads come up a lot.

 

 

There is a particular type of ad model that I have followed, I have used, and I have had great success with over the last three years. It does not change the fact that a lot of people in my circles have other ad gurus they like. I am somebody. I generally recommend two ad gurus, depending on what your business model is. If you want to do this, go to this person.

If you want to do that, go to that person. Everybody has, for the last three or four years, been talking about this other person whom I have no familiarity with. I have done a really good job. You would be so proud of me, of being like, “Nope, do not need to know that.” I already have my two gurus who work in almost all instances, if you’re this model or that model. After a while, you’re like, “What am I missing?”

Yes, after a while, all that noise in your head.

“Maybe this person has the thing, or maybe maybe I could blend this person’s thing with this person’s thing, this person’s thing.” Boom, 10x results. I got their lead magnet, and I was like, “I’ll do their free challenge.” It was about email, too, before the free challenge started, and I was like, “They just teach lead ads.” I know about lead ads, and lead ads do not work because, back to our last episode, I do not need a traffic-based model.

I need a different kind of model. That’s why the ad systems I like work for me. I was like, “I do not actually need any of this.” I could not subscribe because I know enough about ads at this point in my career that once I figured out what their ad methodology was, I instantly knew it did not apply to me. I am not going to like. If I had like $5,000 sitting in my bank account with nothing else to do, I would have been very tempted to buy their thing just to see what the hullabaloo was about. How sick is that?

Evaluating The Value Exchange Of Seductive New Tools Like Notion

We all do it. We all do it for all sorts of things of that sort of piece where it’s like, “I’m still curious, I still want to know.” There’s probably something in there that I’m missing. It comes back to the end of like, but really, would it have been worth the $5,000, the time, the energy? Would you have gotten out of that thing? A different example, but one that people can probably relate to, was when Notion was really hitting.

Talk to me about the tech, because you know I love a good SaaS darling of the moment.

Notion was really hitting the world. This was a number of years ago now. No one needs to put in the comment, “They fixed that.” I know they fixed that.

We know Notion is awesome. We can still choose not to use it.

Here’s the thing. Because I come from a programming background, I really do understand tech. My husband has always said, like, “You’re just like a natural super user.” He says, “Even when you do not know the program, you can actually figure it out really fast, like what the key things are and whatnot.” Everyone was talking about Notion, and I could see it being a great all-in-one tool because I do not have a complicated business. It was like, “That could be really useful.”

I was really excited, excited about it. I sat down one evening. Literally one evening. It’s like, “I’m going to play with it a little bit and see.” It was the free version or whatever, but just check it out and see. See what was there. The thing was, it was like, ” I can totally see why people are loving this” because the folks that are, are hyping it up are creating their own versions of their systems and processes and things and saying, “You can pay me and get a copy of this and I will,” or “You’re going to pay me to implement this and that.” I could see where the business model was.

I could see all of the things in it. That would not ever be me because I do not generally hire people to implement tech in my business, because I have enough of a tech background. What I saw was a big, giant black hole, which is what I saw. You can customize so much. What I realized was, if I headed down this path, and this is back to where my experience, enough experience over time, paid off, was, “I would be thinking about every way I could use it so that I would create Notion to only work with my brain,” which is not actually helpful if you have got anyone else on your team. Feels like it is.

At the time, back to what the comment was about, and I know they fixed it, recurring tasks were a big thing for me. At the time, you had to program a workaround for recurring tasks. I actually did the research to figure out what that was, because it’s like, “I’m okay with that if we can fix it.” It was like, “Even that doesn’t really do what I want it to do in the way that I want it to do it.” I was like, “I do not need this.” It was because I understood it was tempting me down a path I did not need to go.

I am curious from your perspective. What I want to ask you, but I do not know if this is an answerable question, is what information that is presented as a universal truth looks like in the day-to-day, so that you can identify it? I do not know if it’s that easy to synthesize.

There are flags.

Give us the flags.

Identifying Universal Truth Flags: Hype, Best Practices, And Aspirational Investing

I do not think we can put rules around it, but I think there are flags, things that you can say, “Let’s check on that.” One is when “everybody” is talking about it. Usually, that means that either good marketing has started taking place for the thing, and/or people who have large circles of influence have gotten excited about it because it’s a great fit for them. One of the things that, way back in the day, when I used to teach knitting, there would be people who would say, “You have to use a fill-in tool, technique,” all of this. My very good friend Kelly Ness pointed out that what they’re really saying is that when I discovered this, it changed my life.

What’s generally happening when all of a sudden there’s this big hype about something, particularly if there are a few people, is that when they discovered it, it changed their lives. It does not mean it is going to change your life. It might go back to when it’s only a flag. It’s not saying do not do it. It’s just like when there’s lots of hype, people have gotten very excited about it because it really did solve a problem for them. Back to, is that a problem that you actually have?

Is that a problem you have? I would also add. Are you currently running the type of business they have? Oftentimes, what happens is we invest aspirationally. I see that person who has that gigantic audience, and I want that, like, because our audiences know that I work in online communities. Let us just say it’s Rachel Miller, “I want Rachel Miller’s like bazillion-dollar business with her hundred-thousand-member Facebook groups. I want that.

She says this tool is helping her, so I am going to go buy that tool because it will help me get to where she is.” The only reason that tool is helping her is probably that she has eight Facebook groups of a hundred thousand members or more. That tool would not be useful to somebody in the same way until they were at that level. If I have one Facebook group of five people, investing in that tool is not going to get me to where she is. If anything, it’s going to have to sit on the shelf until I get there. What I really need to be looking at is the ten-year-old tool or whatever.

That’s one of the flags is if it’s got a lot of hype, is really trying to understand back to, is that really what I need to be looking at? If you are, do not say that you shouldn’t look at it. Back to, I still explored Notion because it could be, but being more skeptical than just assuming, “No, we just need to move. We’ve got to ditch it. We use Asana.” It’s like, “We’ve got to ditch Asana and go to Notion right now.” No, be skeptical. That would be the first flag. The second flag, and we talk about it all the time, is that things that are being touted as best practices usually are just common practices.

When it says it’s a best practice, it’s like, that’s another one of those making me go, “hmm, is it or is it just what a lot of people are doing?” Most of the time, success does not come from doing what everybody else is doing. It’s about being unique and being able to think about what is unique. The third flag is, has this person, or wherever I’m getting the advice, wherever I’m seeing it, have I followed their advice before, and has it worked for me, like you said, at where I am, at my stage of business, all of those things? Has it panned out consistently over time?

Success rarely comes from doing what everyone else is doing. It comes from thinking differently and embracing what makes you unique. Share on X

What I am going to pick on that I do like is Mike Michalowicz. He has got his books, and I find that his books always have good information and work for me, regardless of where I am in my business stage. I am more likely to try something, follow Mike, or do some of those things because he has delivered for me in the past. It’s not just someone who’s like, “I’ve got this thing. It’s amazing.” The other, which I think goes to your point, which is another flag to watch for, is this the same thing in different wrapping paper?

This has been less of an issue recently, but as you said, we have been around the block many times, and these things come around and around. There was a time for a period, and it’s probably still happening, but I do not feel like it’s as prevalent, where someone with some notoriety would take someone else’s idea and wrap it in their own wrapping paper, but it was exactly the same thing. It’s like, “I have this fabulous thing.” Without giving any credit or the rest of it.

All of a sudden, if you happen to be the person who knew the original creator of it, it’s like, “This feels exactly like the thing that used to be in blue paper, but now it’s in purple paper.” If it feels like it’s the same thing, that is to me the next flag. It probably is. Honestly, there are not that many truly new ideas. Very few people are coming up with really new ideas. They may have a different spin on it. They may approach it from a slightly different angle. Very few people have truly new ideas. That would be my other flag.

I have just got one more. I would say this is most common in tech, but it does sometimes go into other things, which is if you see that there are businesses that exist entirely to support the thing. For example, around 2020, HighLevel. There were a lot of people who loved Funnel Gorgeous. Funnel Gorgeous is HighLevel. It’s just been white-labeled, and there are some add-ons to it. What I should say to be more accurate is that Funnel Gorgeous is built on a HighLevel platform. It was like, “HighLevel can do this and this and this.”

Just like back in the day, ClickFunnels because they do a lot of similar things. The thing is, HighLevel is such a beast, and the same is true for Notion and some other apps out there, that there are people who are running $40,000, $50,000 per month businesses just supporting the implementation of HighLevel. While HighLevel is a great tool, it is too much for a lot of people. If there is an entire business ecosystem in implementing a specific software service or a specific practice, I am thinking like EOS on the operating side.

EOS is a great example of that. Right?

I have got some red flags. It cannot be the end-all be-all if I have to hire a whole team in order to make it work for me. Maybe it’s just not meant for me yet.

That becomes part of it. To me, that’s another great flag of, did I get sucked into something because it seemed cool? If people are having to, and this would be one of those, is it a red flag or not? If you have a business that is the size that actually would have to be paying for internal support for this kind of thing anyway, then maybe this is not a flag.

There are a lot of businesses out there that have entire departments of IT doing support, and their job is implementing and maintaining systems. If your business is getting to the size where paying for that kind of thing is not like a big deal, then maybe it’s not a red flag. If you’re a solopreneur or a really small business and the thought of having an entire department supporting a thing is a little big-eyed response, then probably that’s bigger than it needs to be. Black.

Essential Questions To Filter Universal Advice: Need Versus Risk

What would you, what do you think I should say, is a question that a business owner, especially one who has been around the block a few times. We are not talking about the newbie business owners here. What is one question they should ask when they hear advice that sounds like “This works for everyone”?

I wish I could remember which movie it’s from. I know it’s a Bill Murray movie, because I am almost.

You’re a big fan.

I am almost positive. It’s actually Hugh Grant who says it. “Have you actually talked to everyone? Do you actually know everyone?” In his very British accent.

Who is everyone?

Right, who is everyone? “Do you know? Have you actually talked to everyone?” The first thing is when people are like, “Everyone, this is perfect for everyone.” It’s like, that cannot ever be true. Just cannot. The question, I would say that in my head because I would hear Hugh Grant say that in my head. That would be the first question I would ask, like, “Do you actually know everyone?” The next question that I would be asking is your question, which is, was this a problem I knew I had before someone told me I had it? That would be my next question. My third question would be, what’s at risk if I do not do it versus what’s at risk if I do do it?

When people say, ‘Everyone, this is perfect for everyone,’ it’s like— that can’t ever be true. Share on X

I always ask people to look six months ahead. What’s different six months from now if you do it? What does that look like?

What’s different if you do not do it? That can be a really telling question, but you have to be honest about it when you ask that question. A lot of times it’s like, “All my problems will be solved.” It’s like, “Really? Are you sure that’s true? Like, “How confident are you that all your problems will be solved? How much time and energy is that going to take?” If you’re 98% sure that all your problems are going to be solved, then it’s probably worth it. If it’s like, “It feels like it should be.”

It’s like, “That sounds like a 10% answer, not a 90% answer. How much energy is going to go into it versus the energy you could put into doing whatever you’re currently doing?” Back to, any time that we do anything, when we say yes to anything, it does not matter what it is, we are saying no to something else. It may not be obvious what we are saying no to, but we are saying no to something else because it takes time, it takes energy. That means that it’s time and energy, and or money, all could be all three, that we are not doing something else.

What I would like to do is kind of wrap us up, because I love the decision filter you just gave us. I also feel like that decision filter works across the board. At the risk of sounding like I am contradicting the whole episode by offering advice that is universally true.

It’s a filter that you can really apply. You can apply it in almost every situation.

I wanted to just do a summary of those situations because we’ve talked a lot about things like software and courses or whatever. One thing, like back in the day, what you were referring to is like Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula, which we all now know is a webinar funnel. That all came from Jeff back in the day. That was when he came out with that, which blew our minds.

I was part of that crew.

Is it Ryan Levesque? I think it was the Ask Method, right? Which is really just segmenting your audience the moment that they come in, which many of us now do, and picking software that allows us to do that. This would be the same thing as, “Does everybody need a webinar funnel? No. I do not have a webinar funnel. You do not have a webinar funnel when we’re doing okay. It does not work with our business model, but I still have people trying to pitch me on it.

You have to have a webinar funnel because everybody has to have a webinar funnel if they want to do X, Y, Z. It’s not true. Back to, “Have you really talked to everybody? Like everybody, everybody?” I do not know about that, but this is also, I would say this is true in those sorts of circumstances. It’s true in platforms, yes, but it’s also true in how you want to market, how you want to grow your business. Some people will tell you the only way you can grow on social media is through paid ads. That’s actually not true. There are a lot of organic strategies that still work, algorithm or not.

It’s also true for advice.

I was going to say, and advice, lay it on us, Gwen. You fill in the blanks on that one.

One of the current ones is that you need to scale. Maybe you do not need to scale. Maybe you actually have a business that’s totally working exactly the way it needs to, and scaling is actually going to put some things at risk.

The only way to scale is working one-to-many.

That’s also my favorite. You don’t even need to do anything. You have to grow your business. You need to scale. The only way to scale any of this advice back to, how important is it that I actually do that?

Back to advice, and we’ve addressed this on the show before, but these are good examples just to keep in mind. “Everybody’s first hire should be a VA,” or “Everybody needs a VA. You should never touch your inbox. You should never schedule your own appointments. Nobody should ever have direct access to you because, as the CEO, even if you’re the CEO of one, you are too important.” All of that advice is true for some people, but not necessarily for everybody.

This is one, Gwen, I am going to say again, typically we say, “If this resonated with you, you kind of like the fact of how Gwen and I ask questions, and you probably want to spend a little bit more time with reflection.” If you do, you should subscribe to our One Really Good Question newsletter, which you can find on our website at www.tonyakubo.com/. I am going to argue that if this is something you struggle with, this is another one where you really need some outside perspective.

I am going to encourage you to book a one-on-one call with Gwen. You are going to do that by going to www.tonyakubo.com/Clarity. It’s a short call, it’s not a sales call, but you can just come to the table with “Everybody says I should do this.” Let Gwen ask you a few follow-up questions. By the end of that call, you’re going to be further along in knowing whether that decision is right for you or not than you would have been any other way.

Join us next time for the fourth installment of what we wish or what we did not know we did not know, what we wish we knew that we did not know, which is my hard lesson. That is, you cannot outsource being the boss. I will tell you why that was such a painful lesson for me to learn if you join us next time.

 

Mentioned in This Episode

• Funnel Gorgeous
• ClickFunnels
• Gwen Bortner on LinkedIn
• Tonya Kubo
• Everyday Effectiveness
• www.tonyakubo.com/Clarity

 

About Your Hosts

Gwen Bortner has spent four decades advising executives and entrepreneurs in 45+ industries. She helps women succeed in business without sacrificing happiness by identifying their true desires and aligning their business functions. She spots overlooked bottlenecks and crafts efficient plans toward sustainable success that center your values and priorities. Known for her unique approach to problem-solving and accountability through the G.E.A.R.S. framework, Gwen empowers clients to achieve their definition of success without sacrificing what matters most.

Tonya Kubo is a marketing strategist and community builder who helps entrepreneurs build thriving online communities. As co-host of The Business You Really Want and Chief Marketing and Operations Officer (CMOO) at Everyday Effectiveness, she keeps conversations on track and ensures complex business concepts are accessible to everyone. A master facilitator with 18+ years of experience in online community building, Tonya takes a people-first approach to marketing and centers the human experience in all she does.