Getting the Startup Help You Need vs. the Help You Want

Let’s talk about how to take back all the time we waste chasing the wrong kind of help.

It’s easy for an entrepreneur, new or experienced, to fall into a loop where we freeze on decisions, second-guess ourselves, and get overwhelmed trying to map out the next steps of our company’s progress. At these points, we need help, experienced help, and we’re not sure where to turn.

I’ve been advising startups for about 15 years now, and I also get tons of inbound requests for help from entrepreneurs via my website. In almost every scenario, I’ve found that a startup gets stuck because they’re chasing the help they want instead of focusing on the help they really need.

So how do we stop that?

First: Steer Clear of Word Salad

There’s a lot of startup advice out there, and to be totally honest with you, a lot of it is crap. I won’t argue percentages.

The worst of it is Word Salad, a bunch of familiar words jumbled together that, when you read it a second time, you realize it doesn’t really mean anything significant. I’m not here to judge, I just want to warn you that if the advice you’re getting sounds like something better suited for a Successory wall poster, a fortune cookie, or something Yoda might say to an…