Advice So Common You Think You Can Skip It

I found out last week that I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars this year. Nobody stole it, and I’m not talking about a bad investment.

I lost it by ignoring advice so basic that I’m a bit embarrassed to write it in this newsletter.

Here’s what happened: I was planning my content strategy for the rest of the year, and I realized I couldn’t answer a simple question: Which of my videos has led to the most sales?

I signed up for an attribution service to answer it going forward, but in the meantime I asked my team to run a one-off report against the back catalog.

When the report came back, I thought we’d made a reporting error.

A video I had written off as a failure, one that pulled only twenty-something thousand views, had driven about $75,000 in sales. Meanwhile, videos I was proud of, videos with hundreds of thousands of views, had driven almost nothing.

I remember vividly the day I published that “failed” video. I remember the sinking feeling in my stomach when the view count never took off.

I concluded the video was a failure. For the next eight months, I steered my content away from that style entirely. According to the report, that one decision easily cost me six figures.

The part that really hurts was that I was focused on doing advanced things instead of nailing the basics.

I was trying to build systems, hire out my team, optimize thumbnails and titles, and go deep on retention graphs. While I was doing all of that, I skipped the 101 of running a business: know where the money comes from.

It was as if I was keeping myself busy with calculus but neglecting the basic arithmetic that needed to be done.

If you can’t measure something, you don’t know anything about it. Everyone knows that.

And that’s exactly the problem.

There is a whole class of advice that gets repeated so often it stops registering with us. Somewhere along the way, we decide that anything this common must be for beginners, so we’re allowed to skip it. We nod, we say “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” and then we go looking for the real advice.

You can spot this sort of advice by noticing (a) how fast you agree with it and (b) how rarely you do it.

Here are some examples, phrased as questions, so you’re forced to think about whether you follow the advice:

• When did you last ask your manager, in plain words, what stands between you and the next level? Most people would rather guess for two years than have one uncomfortable ten-minute conversation. My clients dread this conversation, every single one of them, but they’re all glad they had it.

• Do you keep a running record of your wins and achievements, or do you reconstruct your entire year from memory the night before your review?

• Do you know which of your activities produce most of your results? I would have sworn I knew mine. Then I ran the report.

• When did you last ask a customer, user, or stakeholder what problem they wish someone would solve for them?

• Have you followed up with the people you’ve told, “Let’s stay in touch”? It takes five minutes, but almost nobody does it.

• Do you know where your money went last month, or do you just know the balance looked fine?

• Are you getting enough sleep, or is that the thing you’ll fix once this busy stretch is over? The busy stretch is never over.

It’s a good thing if at least one of those questions made you wince. That means you already know what to do, but you haven’t been doing it.

A quick aside: this is most of what my coaching program, Top Tier, really is all about. There’s no secret advice. Top Tier clients pay to have someone make sure they follow through on basic things, exactly like the ones above, and to get honest feedback along the way. If you want that kind of accountability, you can learn more here {link}.

The report that changed my content strategy took my team about 30 minutes to produce. But the lesson it taught me took eight months, and a six-figure tuition bill.

I write a lot in this newsletter about the idea that you are, in the end, what you do. Nodding along to good advice doesn’t count; knowing about it is just a consolation prize. You only get credit for the things you act on.

This week’s exercise is to pick one question that made you uncomfortable and address it this week. What simple advice that’s easy to execute against are you ignoring?

Let’s go back to the basics.

Mine took my team half an hour, and it changed my plans for the rest of the year.

I just wish I hadn’t spent eight months doing calculus while skipping the arithmetic.

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