Advice is Only an Option

Faris Alami
2 min readAug 13, 2024
Image from Unsplash by Andrew Neel

Entrepreneurs frequently ask for advice as they are in the process of discovery for their business.

What we know for certain is that advice is not a blanket you can throw over your situation and expect everything to fall into place.

While we can sometimes give a quick answer to a question, more often we find that those asking for advice are not able to describe their scenario in such a way as to allow us to reflect on or provide adequate advice. More information is required, more questions need to be asked.

We’re not talking days or months here — we mean a few more questions, maybe ten or fifteen minutes. And those ten or fifteen minutes are worth the time invested, so we can better understand the situation being described, and all the consequences and conditions surrounding it.

This is why we advise entrepreneurs to invest some time in understanding what is really going on.

Getting good advice depends on the timing on the scenario. It involves the outside players, and what exactly you are hoping to accomplish based on these facts?

What can be realistically accomplished based on these facts?

Is there a third party expecting a different outcome than the one you are projecting?

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Faris Alami

Global Entrepreneurship ecosystem, SME and leadership development in local communities