Welton's Law of Trite Business Advice
“For each and every bit of trite business advice, there is an equal and opposite bit of trite business advice”
"Fail fast" vs "be persistent"
"The first person to mention a number in a negotiation loses" vs "by saying a number, you frame the negotiations"
"Ideas don't matter" vs "the Number One startup killer ... making a product for which there is no interesting market"
"Do something you're passionate about" vs "where there's muck, there's brass"
"Business plans are a waste of time" vs "failure to plan is planning to fail"
There's some valuable lesson behind all of these; I'm not saying these are bad advice. What I'm saying is that if it were so easy, more people would be doing it successfully. In reality, it's very difficult.
What are some of your favorite equal and opposite bits of business advice?
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about 1 hour later:
General rule: anything worth knowing cannot be summed up in a few words: to succeed you need a careful balance of knowledge, experience, planning, flexibility, passion and luck.
There are always a few people who "did it my way" and did well, there are many more who failed miserably. Mavericks can strike it lucky but in general there's normally a good reason that "everyone does X": often X works.
about {{count}} hours later:
My Boss: Keeping cash in the accounts makes you lazy and want to spend foolishly.
Me: Keeping two month's expenses in the bank keeps down stress and takes less work to manage.