Mentors, consultants, and AI can give you better information, but they cannot make the decisions that depend on your goals and context. Ray argues that repeatedly outsourcing the thinking itself can weaken your intuition—and that the better use of outside expertise is to form your own hypothesis first, then invite someone else to challenge it.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why knowing what to do is often not the real problem.
• What outside expertise can tell you—and what it cannot know about your business.
• Why your goals and context make some decisions impossible for an advisor to make for you.
• How to use advisors without becoming dependent on their answers.
• Why forming your own hypothesis before asking for advice protects your judgment.
• How AI makes information cheaper while making independent judgment more important.

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Welcome to The Ray J. Green Show, your destination for tips on sales, strategy, and self-mastery from an operator, not a guru.

About Ray:

→ Former Managing Director of National Small & Midsize Business at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he doubled revenue per sale in fundraising, led the first increase in SMB membership, co-built a national Mid-Market sales channel, and more.

→ Former CEO operator for several investor groups where he led turnarounds of recently acquired small businesses.

→ Current founder of MSP Sales Partners, where we currently help IT companies scale sales: www.MSPSalesPartners.com

→ Current Sales & Sales Management Expert in Residence at the world’s largest IT business mastermind.

→ Current Managing Partner of Repeatable Revenue Ventures, where we scale B2B companies we have equity in: www.RayJGreen.com

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Every time that you outsource your

thinking to someone else, whether that's

a mentor, to a consultant, to AI, your

own intuition is getting a little bit

weaker. And I say that as a guy who

sells expertise for a living. Alex

Herozi was on Chris Williamson's podcast

recently, and he said something that has

really stuck with me, and it is we need

to be reminded more than we need to be

taught. And if you if you think about

why so many life lessons sound like

cliches or something that you would read

at a meme on your on your on your feed,

it's because they you already know them.

Like knowing wasn't really the problem.

Executing is the problem. Which means

most of the answers and most of the

knowledge that you need to solve the

problems that you're facing today, you

probably already have it. But instead of

digging for it, you're looking for

outside help, outside inspiration,

somebody else's playbook, somebody else

who's been there and can shortcut it for

you. And your intuition, it works like a

muscle. You know, the the more that you

use it, the stronger it gets, the more

accurate that it gets. And the the less

that you use it, the more you rely on

other people's guidance, the weaker it

gets. That compounds over time because

the next time that you don't have an

answer, instead of digging a little bit

deeper to rediscover what you already

know or even figure out what you

believe, you reach for the phone again.

And if you do that enough times, you end

up in this place where you may not even

know what to do, but you don't even know

what you think. Right? And and here's

the part that I I need to be careful

with. I'm not telling you to not ask for

help. Like my business exists because we

provide customers with expertise that

they don't have. And sometimes asking

for help is is strength. It's wisdom.

It's what I tell my kids. It's not

weakness. But there is this line between

outside experts and what they can give

you and what they can't. And I can tell

you how to hire a salesperson. I can

tell you how to increase the probability

of success of that hire, how to increase

the speed to result. 20 years of sales

management, that is what you're buying.

What I can't tell you is whether hiring

a salesperson is the absolute right

business for your move right now based

on your goals because I don't know what

your goals are. If your goal is to own a

tiny soloreneur business that pays you a

solid income and you don't want

employees might be the wrong move

entirely. The how you can buy whether or

not based on your goals you can't like

nobody can carry that for you. So,

here's here's the practice. Like, next

time that you're working a complex

problem and you reach for the phone or

you reach to open up Claude, pause for a

second, sit with it. Like, ask yourself,

what do I think I should do? What do I

think the answer is? Like think about

it, sit on it, come up with an idea,

then make the call, then bring the

problem and the solution and have

whoever you're talking to poke holes in

it because you still get the outside

perspective, but you're not letting your

your intuition atrophy and and it

matters more than it ever has right now

because AI is putting more knowledge and

information at people's fingertips and

it's less valuable. Judgment is more

valuable. knowing which piece to

implement, how to apply it, when to

apply it. That doesn't come from a

prompt. And and it comes from you. Like

you have all the context that you need.

There's more in there that you than you

give yourself credit for. And and the

next time that you scroll past some meme

that reads like a cliche, remember if we

all did the things that we all know that

sound like cliches and memes, we

wouldn't keep cycling through the same

[ __ ] and the same problems over and over

and over. So trust yourself. sit with

the problem the next time that you have

it. Make yourself force yourself to come

up with a hypothesis or a solution on

what you would do. Then bring that to

your adviser and ask him to um to dig

through it and tell you why you're

wrong. You get the outside benefit, but

you don't atrophy your own intuition.

Adios.