Whose Advice Are You Going to Take?

You have to be pretty stubborn to get a business off the ground. But there may come a point when you have to start listening to others with more experience and expertise.

Good Morning!

Here are today’s highlights:            

• Michael Girdley offers a simple exercise to help decide what to delegate.

• How do you know the influencer you hired isn’t going to start talking politics?

• The owner of a business that barely survived extreme weather shares what she wishes she’d known before the floods came.

• If great companies really are born out of hard times, there should be more than a few on the way.

THE 21 HATS PODCAST

This week, Paul Downs, Mel Gravely, and Sarah Segal talk about the tricky calculation all entrepreneurs must make between sticking to their vision and accepting advice. Sarah explains why she is reluctant to take advice from people who don’t really know the inner workings of her business, which is pretty much everyone. Paul, on the other hand, says taking advice from outsiders helped save his business during the Great Recession. And Mel talks about why he thinks every business should have a board of advisors—and why he thinks having a board would have saved him from a big mistake he made recently. But then, Paul asks, if you do have a board, can you not take its advice?

• Plus: Reacting to a recent post on Reddit, the owners discuss the right way to wind down a failing business, a process with which Mel and Paul have some familiarity.

• You can subscribe to the 21 Hats Podcast wherever you get podcasts.