The hidden risk of too much advice
Why the smartest solopreneurs know when to take advice... and when to ignore it.
“Isn’t it good to get advice and help? Surely you don’t want to ALWAYS trust yourself?”
This is a question that lurks in the back of my mind in the muddy waters that is my ongoing rebrand efforts. The question that hits when you think you’ve settled on The Trust Yourself Coach and then my inner protective voice goes to town pointing out that no-one ever wakes up wishing they just ‘trusted themselves’ a bit more, and they probably don’t think they need it anyway…
Because, we can’t always trust ourselves, right?
“Isn’t it good to get advice?” is a fair, common concern from my clients and myself too.
We have been taught in so many walks of life to look outside of ourselves for answers (something I talked about in this post ⬇️)
Yet my philosophy and coaching is about building self-trust.
Stop relying on external programmes, advice, frameworks and feedback, and start tuning in to what you think.
But… as a coach once told me: sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. And you need some input on strategy and your next steps.
And it’s at this point the problem isn’t the advice and help we seek. It’s how we use it.
Because, what happens when we get advice without using our self-trust?
I 100% support getting external help as a solopreneur. I am literally a service provider that is that external help, so I’m not trying to talk you out of getting the external input you need.
I’ve benefitted hugely from well run, well-constructed services – courses, coaching, mentorship, masterminds – that opened my eyes to new ways of thinking, selling and marketing myself (and also experienced my fair share of terrible offers that didn’t help at all, but that’s another story).
But.
When you rely only on external advice, and completely negate your own experience, your own instincts, ideas and sense of where you want your business to go and how to create income streams and marketing that connects, you risk:
Constantly second-guessing yourself.
Following “proven formulas” that don’t fit your values, personality, or audience.
Never building confidence because you outsource every decision.
Without a baseline of self-trust, even the best advice doesn’t stick - it becomes another shiny object. You jump from one recommendation to the next, never truly believing you can do it yourself or that what you do will work.
I’ve definitely fallen into this pattern before.
When I was in the early years of my business I was sucked into the “you should always have a coach” rhetoric, which of course is not true all the time. After finishing my first major investment programme for a year, I automatically assumed I needed to be in another group straight away.
And that second group was nice, don’t get me wrong.
The coach was kind, she gave me a few pointers and shared her own frameworks. But I’d signed up blindly, without really listening to myself or tuning in to what I really needed in that next stage of my business.
I was there just because I thought I should sign up to something. And when the group didn’t really have my kind of people in it, didn’t really have the resources I needed or anything to challenge or uplevel me, it gradually became a drain on my finances and time.
In hindsight I should have taken a pause. I’d just come through COVID and had a newborn baby. I didn’t need to jump straight into the ‘next thing.’
But after 12 months of indoctrination on the first programme I was part of, I think I actually came away relatively unscathed on this occasion…
What happens without any advice
On the flip side, in advocating for you to trust yourself, I am not saying to never (sorry, double negative there!) seek external opinions. That’s not a healthy state 100% of the time either.
If we all operated our businesses without a single recommendation or helping hand from experienced mentors and coaches, or even a quick chat with your clueless partner just to sense check something (hi hubby!), we risk:
Reinventing the wheel.
Staying stuck in the same patterns because you can’t see your blind spots.
Missing out on mentorship, inspiration, and expertise that could save time and energy – or be a revolutionary new idea that we would never have seen on our own.
Losing momentum and spark trying to operate and make decisions alone
Self-trust doesn’t mean isolation. It means discernment.
I’ve equally been in this place in my business too.
In the leaner months and years of 2023 and 2024, when the market has been shrinking, buyers being more discerning than they were in the COVID boom days and my time and resources stretched as I’ve got older and added more children and a fixer-upper-house to my list of things to do in my life, it’s been easy to say “I don’t have time / money right now for a coach.”
But with that isolationism, begins long stretches of feeling incredibly alone, watching income and ideas wither and reduce, and the ability to earn the money to invest in future support slips further and further out of reach.
Yes, it’s given me a chance to tune into myself a little more and feel into what’s next and how I want it to look.
So… where is the balance?
The Balance: Self-Trust as the filter
When clients ask me for my advice – what product should I sell? How should I market this offer? What do you think I should focus on next? How do I get more people booking discovery calls with me? – I’m happy to answer and offer my thoughts.
But first I always try to dig deeper.
Why do you need my advice?
What do you think you should do?
What stops you trusting that your plan isn’t the right one to go with?
The key question then, if you’re thinking about investing in some business support, isn’t “Should I get help?” but “Am I choosing this advice from a place of fear or from self-trust?”
Because often we’re seeking advice because what’s really going on in our head is:
- I’m afraid this might get tumbleweed and I’ll be rejected
- I’m afraid this might fall flat and I’ll feel like a failure
- I’m afraid this might succeed and I’ll be totally overwhelmed
Seeking out help and advice with self-trust however, means it acts as the filter:
You trust yourself enough to know when to experiment with someone else’s method (and when to just go with it, your way).
You trust yourself enough to leave behind what doesn’t align (and don’t make it mean that you’re failing or broken or ‘wrong’).
You trust yourself to adapt advice instead of outsourcing your authority (and you’re at peace with what that means about you as a business owner).
If you pause for a moment, are you able to journal or reflect on where your decision might be coming from to get help?
I definitely reached that point with a couple of larger investments I made in 2024 and 2025.
I had created the space to see how I wanted to pivot my work and spent chunks of the cash I had left to specifically learn three skills with trainers I felt could hold space for my wobbles, adaptations and still give me the end result I was looking for. They were:
a) how to run an online summit
b) how to create a more impactful course and
c) how to sort through my muddle of income streams and turn them into a clearer and more cohesive offer suite.
I talk about the courses and coaches I recommend in this list here.
Outsourcing wisely: who to trust
If you do want some advice or help with business decisions, frameworks or strategies, here are some things to consider when you’re bombarded with the plethora of coaches, mentors, courses and programmes on offer:
Look for support that doesn’t promise “the one right way.”
As tempting as it is to be drawn in by that magical blueprint, trust yourself and your experience in this business to know that, there is no such thing.Identify a coach that encourages experimentation, not blind obedience.
Sadly there is too much gaslighting and horror stories in business coaching that would destroy even the strongest person’s sense of self-trust.
If you hear even a whiff of “I was told I was the problem and I just wasn’t trying hard enough / believing enough / following the process when I said it wasn’t working for me” in some groups (been there, witnessed it…), do run a mile.Hook yourself on to someone who helps you strengthen your voice, rather than replacing it with theirs.
This is sometimes hard to spot happening when we’re in the balmy glow of someone who is on the surface of things smashing it, making tonnes of money and having mega influence in the spheres you hang out in.
Naturally you end up repeating some of their favourite mantras and phrases and methods, because they work for them.
But do lean in when you find someone who gently but firmly pushes you to tune in to what you think is important to say and how things work.
Some questions to leave you with if you’re seeking external guidance in your business right now:
Am I looking for advice because I’m afraid of something, or because I want to grow?
Does this advice resonate with my values and vision?
If I tried this and it didn’t work, would I still feel okay about how I showed up?
You’re a smart solopreneur. You’ve been through so many programmes and coaches before. So you know that yes, it’s good to get help—but only when your self-trust leads the process.
Advice is fuel, not the engine. Your self-trust is the driver.
And remember, you don’t need to know it all.
You just need to know yourself well enough to choose what advice to take on board, and what to leave behind. Because you have what it takes to achieve your goals, it’s all there inside you.
You can find out more about working with me here.
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