The weird set-top box at my new home in Cyprus has barely a handful of movies, one of which is Team America: World Police. If you’re a business owner, you may be able to guess which song I’m about to reference.
OK, OK, “business owners are lonely”, you get it – but did you know the nature of the isolation is changing significantly?
Fifteen years ago, loneliness was about feeling stuck, unable to share your deepest fears with managers and your spouse, unsure how to unravel the knot of uncertainty in your gut.
Today, especially with AI, there are more solutions than you can process. The isolation exists because you’re drowning in options and some of them are terrible … and you don’t have anyone reliable to help discard, tweak, commit.
Who’s Helping You With That?
Play out this thought experiment with me:
- If your team beat their previous best month by 50%, who would you call to celebrate with?
- If one of your employees seriously crashed their work car at 3am on a Sunday morning, who would you call for support?
(Both true stories, including me answering the 3am message.)
This person is your Trusted Advisor – and they don’t have to be paid.
Maybe they’re your CEO or senior manager. Perhaps you’re fortunate enough to have great business partners, or a spouse able to separate the family emotion from the business emotion. Or you have a coach, mentor, advisory group, accountant, who fills this role on your speed dial?
If you do have this person in your life, keep reading to learn how to best benefit from their presence.
If you don’t have this person in your life, keep reading to uncover the 6 Criteria of a good trusted advisor and how to find them.
Nobody wants to make – or receive – the 3am phone call. Even worse is processing the news on your own, as if you weren’t already busy enough.
Next Steps
Want to learn more about how this can apply to your business? It costs nothing to chat:
- Email me jacob@jacobaldridge.com (I read them all)
- Call, Text, or WhatsApp me +61 427 151 181
- Or just Subscribe to stay in touch
