Early in my career, someone I respected looked at my business growth strategy and told me I was wrong about almost everything.
My strategy was ambitious. Expand to multiple cities. Hire a team of consultants. Build a recognizable brand. Target enterprise companies. Triple revenue in two years.
The feedback was direct. Not gentle. Not diplomatic. Not wrapped in the carefully worded framing of a professional coach. Blunt, in a way that made my face flush and my stomach tighten.
And it was right about almost everything.
What He Was Right About
“You don’t need multiple cities. You need a few great clients in one city.” I was confusing geographic spread with business growth. Presence in multiple cities would increase overhead, travel, and management complexity without proportionally increasing revenue. Deep client relationships in one city would produce more revenue and more repeat business than shallow relationships spread across several.
“You don’t need a team of consultants. You need systems that let you serve more clients without adding heads.” Hiring was my default solution to capacity constraints because it’s the most visible solution. The less visible solution — documenting and systematizing my processes so that each engagement required fewer of my personal hours — would increase capacity without increasing fixed costs.
“Enterprise targeting is a waste of your time. You can’t sell to them yet. You don’t have the case studies, the brand, or the patience for their buying cycle.” This was right. Enterprise procurement processes can take six to twelve months. My cash flow couldn’t survive a twelve-month sales cycle.
“Tripling revenue is the wrong goal. Doubling profit while maintaining revenue is the right goal.” I was chasing top-line growth when I should have been optimizing bottom-line efficiency. The profit first mindset starts with this distinction — revenue is vanity, profit is sanity.
Why I Almost Didn’t Listen
His feedback triggered every defensive mechanism I had.
My first reaction was dismissal. “They don’t understand my market.” They understood business fundamentals that transcend markets, but I needed them to be wrong because the alternative — that my carefully designed strategy was flawed — was too uncomfortable.
My second reaction was deflection. “Their experience is from a different era.” Surely the internet had changed everything? It had changed the channels. It hadn’t changed the principles.
My third reaction was anger. Not at them — at the implication that I’d wasted months on a plan that was fundamentally wrong. The anger was ego protection, pure and simple.
It took three days for the defensive reactions to subside. On the fourth day, I opened the strategy document and started cross-referencing the feedback with my financial data. The data confirmed what I’d been told. The multi-city expansion would have cost more than it generated in the first two years. The hires would have compressed margins to near zero. The enterprise sales cycle was incompatible with my cash reserves.
The feedback was right. I was wrong. And if I’d listened to my ego instead of the evidence, I would have executed a strategy that could have bankrupted my practice.
What Makes Great Feedback
The best feedback I’ve received wasn’t from a coach or a cheerleader. It came from people who were interested in my business surviving, not in my feelings about their words.
This is what separates great mentorship from pleasant advice:
A great mentor tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. I wanted to hear that my expansion strategy was bold and exciting. I needed to hear that it was financially reckless and operationally premature. The first feels good. The second is useful.
A great mentor has been where you’re going. The best feedback comes from people who’ve made the exact mistakes you’re about to make. Their input isn’t theoretical — it’s biographical.
A great mentor earns the right to be blunt through demonstrated care. The bluntness works because it comes from genuine investment in your success, not from cruelty or superiority.
A great mentor has nothing to sell you. The most trustworthy feedback comes from people who don’t coach for a living, don’t charge you, and don’t have a program or course to promote. Their only motivation is the satisfaction of seeing someone avoid the mistakes they made.
Finding Your Mentor
Most founders don’t have a mentor like this. Not because such people don’t exist — they do, in large numbers — but because finding them requires vulnerability.
You have to admit you don’t have all the answers. You have to present your strategy knowing it might be dismantled. You have to sit with criticism without defending yourself. These are hard things for people who are used to projecting confidence.
Where to look:
Retired founders and executives. People who’ve built businesses and are no longer in the daily fight often have time, perspective, and willingness to share both. Industry associations, chamber of commerce events, and local business groups are full of them.
Your accountability partner’s network. Your accountability partner may know someone who’s been where you’re going. The introduction is natural because the accountability partner can vouch for your seriousness.
Industry conferences. Not the flashy ones — the small, domain-specific ones where experienced practitioners attend out of genuine interest rather than marketing obligation. The conference that changed my career happened because I was open to an unexpected conversation.
Direct outreach. Identify three people you respect who’ve built what you’re trying to build. Email them. Not a long email — three sentences. Who you are. What you’re building. One specific question. The response rate from busy, successful people is surprisingly high when the question is specific and the email is short.
The Gratitude Part
The feedback that sounds like criticism — that makes you flush, that tightens your stomach, that triggers every defensive mechanism — is often the most valuable feedback you’ll receive. Not always. Some criticism is uninformed, agenda-driven, or simply wrong. But when it comes from someone with experience, demonstrated care, and nothing to sell, the discomfort is the signal that the feedback matters.
Find people who will tell you the truth. Listen when they say you’re wrong. Be grateful later.
The strategy I abandoned because of that blunt feedback was replaced by a focused, profitable, sustainable consulting practice that funded the transition to product building, which led to Vulpine, which led to the exit, which led to the books, which led to the work I’m doing now.
One conversation. One blunt sentence: “You’re wrong about almost everything.”
I’m grateful.
