860: 5 Pieces of Bad Business Advice I’m Glad I Didn’t Take

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2:01I want for you to constantly be filtering through your own filter as to what advice is meant for you and what makes sense for you and what resonates with you and what is exciting to you. give yourself permission to leave anything else behind without guilt, without shame, without questioning your judgment. I'm Jenna Kutcher, your host of the Gold Digger podcast. I escaped the corporate world at the age of 23 with nothing more than a$300 camera from Craigslist and a dream. Now I'm running a seven-figure online business that feels even better than it looks, all from my house in small town, Minnesota with my family.

2:41Here, we value time as our currency. We mix the woo and the work, and we are in the pursuit of building businesses that give us the freedom to live lives that we love. I've always loved turning big goals into reality, and I'm here to help you do the same. This isn't just a peek behind the curtain. Come along with me and my guests as we tear the whole curtain down. Every week, we tackle practical, no-fluff marketing strategies and host honest discussions on what works and what doesn't. Join me and my expert guests for actionable insights to help you grow your dream business with confidence. Pull up a seat and get ready to be challenged, inspired, and empowered.

3:20This is the Gold Digger Podcast. Not all business advice is created equal. In fact, some of the most commonly shared expert tips, the ones that sound super strategic or even proven, can actually do more harm than good. Over the years, I've been handed plenty of well-meaning advice that if I had followed it, would have led me straight to burnout, bad investments, or a business that didn't even feel like me. And let's be real, how many times have you heard a business tip and thought, wait, does this even make sense for me? So in today's episode, I'm breaking down five pieces of bad business advice I'm so glad I ignored.

3:59Some of them might surprise you, some might challenge what you've been told, but I promise hearing these will have you thinking differently about what actually might work for you. And here's the best part. Some of the biggest wins in my business came from doing the opposite of what the experts say. So if you've ever side-eyed the traditional business playbook, trust me, this episode is for you. Let's dive on in. I want to preface this entire episode with something that I've learned, sometimes the hard way, as an entrepreneur. we have to put everything through our own unique filter. And here's what I mean by this.

4:37When I was first starting out, any piece of advice I would take as truth. And while it likely is truth for someone else, it didn't necessarily resonate as truth for myself, but I was blinded by what other people would present to me. And I think that this brings up this really powerful argument for discernment and intuition, or like I like to call it, the gut game of entrepreneurship. And a lot of times when we're starting out, we are so hungry for leadership, for somebody to take us by the hand and lead us step-by-step through the building of our businesses, because let's be honest, it's a scary thing to take on, that we can often miss putting things through our own filters.

5:25I'll never forget when I was a part of my first mastermind, I would leave with a notebook filled with notes and nowhere along the way would I stop and pause and ask myself, is this what I really want or will this really work for me? I took everything at face value and it was beautiful, but I had to learn the lesson the hard way that while other people can share their own experience and what's worked for them, one, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work for me. And two, it doesn't necessarily mean that I need to try it. I think that one of my strongest gifts as an entrepreneur, one that has been honed over the years, is now my ability to take what works for me and leave the rest behind.

6:09And I just want to start this episode with that reminder because even as you listen to me today, I want for you to constantly be filtering through your own filter as to what advice is meant for you and what makes sense for you and what resonates with you and what is exciting to you and give yourself permission to leave anything else behind without guilt, without shame, without questioning your judgment. So let's talk about some of the bad business advice I've been given and the way that I have been a rebel. The first piece is this, stick to one thing and master it. Now, let me just say that I kind of agree with this one at first.

6:54And here's what I mean by this. When I was starting my business, I was really smart about niching down. If you don't know what a niche is, it's serving a specific audience and being very clear about that. And when I became a photographer, I wasn't an everything photographer. I decided I wanted to focus entirely on weddings. I was able to figure that out really fast after shooting a boudoir session, shooting senior portraits and a portrait session of a cat. I recognized very early on weddings are my thing and I wanted to be known as a premier wedding photographer. And so this idea of this advice of sticking to one thing and mastering it, I don't think it's wrong, but I also don't think it's permanent.

7:43And it is certainly not meant for people like me who are multi-passionate, multi-faceted, and do not want to be put in a box. As a wedding photographer, I thrived on weddings. Like to this day, there is just something that makes me weaken the knees over a wedding. And it's so amazing because when I became a wedding photographer, I was a bride myself. And so I could very easily put myself into my client's shoes. What were they wondering about? What were they working on? What were they worried over? And so it made me an exceptional wedding photographer. I can say that with pride. I was a dang good wedding photographer and I loved it.

8:23But once I hit three years in, I had scaled my business to a six figure photography business. I was incredibly proud and I was also incredibly burnt out. And I've shared this story before about the day that I hit six figures. And when I finally paused to check in with myself, the one feeling I felt was exhaustion. And in that state of exhaustion, I made a very bold move. And that bold move was that I wanted to cut my workload in half. So the trajectory of my career was going up, up, up, and I was getting more burnt out, burnt out, and more burnt out. I was basically a crisp at this point. The first year I shot 25 weddings, the second year 27, the third year 30.

9:11And as someone who has always been an achiever and wanting to outdo herself, I made a very bold and distinct move that totally changed the trajectory of my business. The day that I hit six figures and recognized, wow, this doesn't feel like I thought it would, I sat down with drew at our little farm table in our tiny little village in wisconsin and I said to him I said I was so much happier when I made fifty thousand dollars. I had time I had space I was able to make memories with the people I loved like this was not the freedom I had in mind Yes, our bank account had an extra zero in it, but my life was no better for it And so I had made this decision with him to cut my workload in half and to only book half the amount of weddings for the next year.

10:00I was like, I don't care if I'm making less money. I just want my life back. And what was interesting is in this season of burnout, a lot of different things happened for me. One of them is a story that I wrote about in my book and I'll share it with you today. I wanted to feel creative again. I got into photography to feel creative. I loved the artistic side of it. And while weddings were this beautiful opportunity to feel creative, I was only shooting about six months out of the year. And then I had about six months of off season. And so in my off season, I went to my in-law's house. I went down into my mother-in-law's amazing dungeon of a basement.

10:39And she was a former art teacher. She is someone who had every art supply under the sun. And I asked her, can I steal some watercolor supplies. I grabbed paintbrushes and paint. And I said, I want to challenge myself just for the fun of it to be creative again, to sit down every single day at my little farm table for 20 minutes a day and just to paint. I want to pull myself away from screens and marketing and strategies. And I just want to be free to be creative. And slowly but surely I sat down and I started painting and painting and painting and I loved it. And then I started to let the internet in on this off-season project that I was taking on.

11:21And slowly people started to ask, can I buy that? I want that print. How can I get that? And so when I started it as a creative passion project, it quickly turned into a business idea of like, wait, is this really a thing? I signed up with a drop shipper and I started scanning my prints in and I started this little watercolor print shop. And to my surprise, it took off. Shortly after I launched it, it started to pay my mortgage, which was a really big deal at the time. And I started to see like, wait a minute, like I don't have to just do one thing. I have done that and mastered it, but I want to do more.

12:00Just because you start with one thing doesn't mean you're stuck there forever. And I think for a lot of us, we have a really hard time with this piece of advice because we can't imagine ourselves doing this same thing five years from now, 10 years from now, and never changing. I welcome the evolution of who I am and what I do into my life and business every single day. It's part of what makes me love being alive and on this journey. This podcast is brought to you by Mercury, banking that helps entrepreneurs do more with their money. Okay. I remember in the early days of my entrepreneurship journey, clients would literally mail me checks and then I would have to drive all the way to the bank to deposit them.

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13:17Visit mercury.com to apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. For important details, check the show notes. When we were young, we dreamed of castles and fairy tales. And as we grow up, those dreams might shift into building something real, like starting a business. You need a website, payment systems, a logo, and a way to reach customers. It can all be overwhelming and confusing, but thankfully that's where today's sponsor Shopify comes in. Shopify powers millions of businesses around the world and 10 % of all U.S. e-commerce from big brands to folks just getting started.

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14:39I think there is some well-intentionedness inside of it. I do think it is right to a point, but what I think we should think about is mastering one thing first gives you the foundation and the learning and the experience to expand later. You do not have to box yourself into one identity forever. When you're solid in one space, you then earn the ability and time to explore. So start with one thing, get really good at it, create systems around it, make it work well. And then as you start to free up your time, feel free to explore something different, whether it becomes a business or just a passion or hobby.

15:25There's some interesting research that Seth Godin did in Purple Cow, and it emphasizes that being remarkable often means doing things differently, not just specializing in one thing. And I think that we can all learn so much from experimenting and trying different things. And so for me, I've adopted that idea in my business. And, you know, I've done a lot of different things over the years from online courses to running this podcast, to writing a book, to speaking on stages, I don't just want to do one thing that feels way too boring for me. But I do believe that starting with the foundation of one thing and mastering it helped me to be able to expand in a way that made sense and that gave me the foundation to do so.

16:09So that's the first piece of advice. Okay. The second piece of bad advice is you have to be everywhere all the time, especially on social media. I feel like I see this idea of you have to be omnipresent, meaning you have to be everywhere to catch your audience's attention. And I am so sorry, I do not subscribe to that at all. I have never believed this one. This idea of being omnipresent and that that's the only way that you can get people's attention, no stinking way. To me, that is just screaming into the void. And frankly, it's being annoying. And I want to whisper to the right people. I want to speak calmly to the people who get it and not try to convince people.

16:57I feel like there's a very different energy in this idea. And so similar to the first piece of advice, I've kind of taken this idea of focusing on one platform at a time. So when I was first starting out over a decade ago, Instagram was literally just a place where you'd put like that weird Sienna filter on pictures of your dog. It wasn't even really a thing yet. I spent a lot of time on Facebook and I love getting my Facebook memories. Like every single day I would have something where it'd be like, oh my gosh, I just booked John and Christine's wedding in Lake Geneva. I am so excited. I would post like, here's a new blog post.

17:35Oh, I got a new lens for my camera. Like I was my own publicist and I did a dang good job of that in those early days. And my Facebook memories love to remind me of that. But I created kind of a system where I was able to show up consistently, build an audience there. And then once I had a rhythm, I started figuring out, okay, how can I repurpose content elsewhere? How can I do this in a smarter way where I'm not constantly on the hamster wheel of creation, but I'm thinking through this strategically? And so now to this day, I'm still not everywhere. It was funny. Yesterday, I was on a call and someone on my team was like, what about YouTube?

18:14And I was like, eh, we tried that. It just wasn't for me. And I'm just not willing. That's not really a place that I want to be. And it might be a place that you love being, but I have had to realize like I need to let go of that lie, that belief, that bad business advice of like you have to be everywhere all the time because not only is that exhausting and you feel like you're literally feeding the beast, but I don't think it's sustainable and I just also don't think that it is the best way to do it. There's a good chance that your people, the people that you are trying to reach are in a few places at most.

18:48And so really figuring out, okay, how can I just commit to showing up consistently and getting results? And then if, and when you do that, creating a system that allows that piece to be sustainable and then potentially expanding into another place. And so I don't think that we should feel this pressure. I think we should look at like, what is the lowest hanging fruit in that? Like, where can I actually show up consistently? And how do I just show myself that I am capable of showing up consistently somewhere? And then kind of evaluating, is this working? Is it worth it? And then how do I expand?

19:25And so I did a whole episode about the Pareto principle, which is like that 80-20 rule. And essentially what it is, is, and I think this is a principle, if you do not know this or understand this or utilize this in your business, ooh, you are leaving so much money on the table and you are about to get back so much time. And so I'm going to link that episode in the show notes for you. But basically that principle suggests that 80 % of results come from just 20 % of efforts. And so what I think that we should be doing in the advice that I personally would give is to double down on what works versus spreading yourself thin.

20:04I know so many people who are like, I'm going to be everywhere all at once. I'm going to do it all. And they last like a week and they're exhausted. And then they don't come back online for like a few months. And that is not the way that I want to do business. I want to show up. I want to whisper to the right people. I don't want to scream to the masses and I don't want to have to convince people to pay attention to me. So that is a piece of business advice. If you are feeling guilt, because I think that that piece of like you have to be everywhere all at once, all the time, that piece leaves us going to bed at night feeling like we didn't do enough and that we're not doing things the right way.

20:40And I think we've got to just leave that one where it's at and follow our own guts on what that should and can look like for us. Okay. The third piece of business advice is this. I actually was listening to a podcast last night and I heard somebody talk about this and I was like, oh my gosh, cringe. don't give away too much for free. Oh, I hear it literally all the time. It is so interesting to me because I think that this piece of advice desperately comes from a scarcity mindset. Like I can smell the desperation in it. And what's so interesting to me is my entire business is based around the idea of getting you results for free.

21:28Like I love to get you results for free. That is like where my heart and soul lies. Like I, that is the impact I want to make. Whether you ever spend a penny on any of my offers or not, I want to get you real results. And so if I'm not giving away solid content that helps make an impact that allows you to get a quick win, Nope, that's not for me. People tell me I teach too much, whether it's in my podcast or my webinars that I should hold back, that I'm giving away the farm, so to speak. But if I can get you results for free, imagine what I could do for you if you paid me. Just imagine what would that look like?

22:10And so my entire business is built around delivering real value before someone ever buys from me. Again, I don't want to be coming at sales from this desperate place. I want my sales to be earned and I want people to be excited to be purchasing from me. I don't want people to only get results if they purchase from me. I want them to experience success regardless. And honestly, I think that's why my business has grown the way it has. And I think that's why I've been successful is like, I am not coveting every best strategy. I am not holding everything close to the chest. I am not just giving fluff and then saying, okay, pay me for the real stuff because that is not doing anything good for either of us.

22:52Quick story, but I was out to coffee with my mom the other day and we were sitting in one of our favorite local coffee shops, 190. And this beautiful blonde girl and her daughter stopped by and she just really gently stopped in and she just said, I just need to tell you how much your work makes a difference. And I was so grateful that she stopped. And I sat and chatted with her daughter. And afterwards, she DMed me and she just said, I just want you to know, me and my friends are constantly listening to your podcast. We're sharing episodes around each other. It has helped us so much as entrepreneurs.

23:30And Amanda, if you're listening to this episode, it just means a lot to me. This is why I do what I do. I might not be the right educator for everyone and that's okay, but I want to put out real actionable content that doesn't just give you information, but leads you to implementation so that you can get real results. Because at the end of the day, your success is my success. And so what I've learned by not listening to this advice is that generosity, in my opinion, builds trust. When you can actually help people before they buy, you are proving that your paid offers will take them even further.

24:10I believe this in the core of my being. And I just feel like when there is generosity in the way that you show up, generosity in your life, generosity in your marketing, people will follow you and they will buy from you because they trust you. And so everything I create is like, how can I get somebody a quick win for free without having to put down a single penny. And that's how I want to create. And that's how I want to show up and serve the world. So if you are someone who is afraid of giving away too much for free, I would argue that that's not really a thing. And at the end of the day, as long as you're not giving away your entire step-by-step system or whatever that is, you are giving people pieces of it where they could get a result from that.

24:51But when you have them purchase the entire system, oh my gosh, the results are astounding. And so you can still give people amazing value for free. And that is something I will stand by until the day I die. Okay. Number four piece of bad business advice is you need to work 24 seven to be successful. Oh my Lord. I saw this Instagram post the other day. I was actually so pleasantly surprised by the comment section on it. You know, when you like click to the comments and you're like, do people actually agree with this? And it was put up by a male entrepreneur who's incredibly successful in terms of finances, at least.

25:30And it was something about committing your life for the next five years, no vacations, no time off, no going to weddings. I mean, it was all the way down to no intimacy, basically. That is how you will be successful. And I was reading it and I was like, oh my gosh, we are missing the point. And thankfully, the comment section both surprised and delighted me of people saying, that is not success to me. That is not worth it. Good for you that that worked for you. But this hustle culture is terrifying. And I am someone, and here's what I'll say about this. There is a time and place for hustling. I totally believe that.

26:15And I feel like there's been this really interesting shift over recent years of people who have hustled in the past where they're like, no, no, no, peace and ease. That's all I want. And I love that. But I believe that hustle is often required to get the dream off the ground. But my argument here is, is if hustle is the only way you can sustain the dream, then I would argue that that is not the dream. And so I am not anti hustle culture. I'm anti hustling being the only way to make it work. Okay. Because there are times where I sprint in my business, right? Like that is a sprint. It is short lived.