Years ago, I gave my wife business advice that made perfect sense.

It was logical.It was strategic.It worked.

And it led her to build a business she didn’t actually want.

In this episode, Ray unpacks what really went wrong — not the strategy, but the lens it came through. The advice was filtered through his definition of success, his bias toward scale, and his belief about how businesses “should” grow.

But her definition of success was different.

If you’re an entrepreneur, operator, or spouse giving business advice inside a relationship, this episode will help you think more clearly about how bias shapes advice — and how defaulting to scale can quietly pull you away from what you actually want.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

1. Why good business advice can still be wrong when it’s filtered through someone else’s bias
2. How “you should scale this” often reflects the advisor’s definition of success — not yours
3. The danger of defaulting to growth, hiring, and systematization as the automatic next step
4. Why different people can look at the same opportunity and want completely different outcome
5. How to filter advice from your spouse, mentors, or peers before building something you don’t actually want
6. The discipline required to define success for yourself — especially when external indicators say “go bigger”

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This podcast is where Ray thinks through hard decisions — especially when the usual playbooks stop working.

If that approach resonates, that’s what you’ll find more of here.

New to the show? The “Start Here” playlist outlines what the podcast is about and how to approach it: https://player.captivate.fm/collection/a7577a6f-15da-4521-b214-35e4e47f320b

Years ago, I gave my wife terrible business advice.

And not because it didn't work, but because it did.

And it led to her building a business that she, she didn't love.

And so the, the backstory here real quick is she had a successful Etsy business.

She was doing about 20, 25,000amonth selling custom baby bedding for, for little girls primarily.

And it was really cool.

Like, I mean, every time I've posted pictures of it, you know, I always get somebody that's like, hey, what she would she do?

Like one more, you know, like people, people fall in love with it.

It's very unique.

She's very creative, very crafty and very good at bringing kind of like a vision to, to life like a, like an artist.

And this was just an extension of that.

So she was, she was crushing it.

Had a ton of five star reviews, had a waiting list that was six months long.

And we were dating at the time, but I had, we'd been friends for a while, so I had contacts for the business and she had periodically asked me for advice on business.

Like one of the, one of the first things I said was like, you know, what do you got to do?

Increase prices.

She ended up quadrupling prices and keeping the six month waiting list.

Like if that tells you anything.

Like it was, it was very in demand, like beyond product market fit.

Like she had product, she had product market pull, right?

Like people were demanding her.

And you know, when she asked me about like what to, where to go with it next and what to do next, you know, I gave her my advice which was, well, it's time to scale it, right?

Like you've, you've got every indicator that you would normally look for to determine can this thing be scaled.

And by almost all accounts, she looked at it, said, yep, like you've got pricing power, you've got social proof, you've got, you know, all of these like check, check, check through the list.

She initially had some like resistance to that advice.

It was like, yeah, but I love sewing.

And you know, we talked about it and she ultimately said, okay, like you're, you have a good track record in business.

I guess this is the next thing that I should be doing, air quote should be doing.

And, and she did it and I helped her with that.

And she hired some people and started systematizing things and she went from spending her time doing the stuff that she really loved, like truly loved doing all day, right.

Like, she loved talking to people, figuring out their, their tastes and kind of creating a vision for it.

And then, you know, building the patterns and getting all the fabrics and making that thing.

And she was doing that virtually all day.

And she went from that to managing people, you know, looking after, like, quality control and, you know, trying to build systems, and it was.

It was shit she didn't want to do.

The advice that I gave her was bias based on my beliefs.

It was based on what I believed was the way to build a business.

And, you know, frankly, looking back at the time, I think that's the only way I knew how to build a business.

I now know that there's a lot of different ways to build a business.

And.

And that was the way that I knew, right?

Like, I. I scaled things, I built teams, I built systems.

And so in my mind, that was just the next thing that you did.

And my advice for her was wrong.

My advice for somebody else may have been perfect, right?

That may have been exactly what they wanted to.

To do.

It may have been the exact business that they wanted.

But for her, it was the wrong advice.

And she was no longer the architect with a vision of this, you know, say, metaphorical house that she's building, like, this business and doing the things that she loved to do and, you know, kind of like using her creative expression and everything else in it.

And she was now kind of like this subcontractor, like, building the business according to what I thought the business was.

And it wasn't intentional.

Like, it wasn't.

It was inadvertently making it my vision.

But she was kind of executing this vision, somebody else's vision of a business, and it wasn't very fun for her.

In her gut, the initial resistance that she had was fucking spot on for her.

She needed a different next step.

And that is the challenge with relying on other people's advice to build your business.

First of all, it could just be bad advice.

Like, there are so many charlatans, so many fake gurus, so much bullshit advice from people who have never really built a business, have track record, and you just end up.

You end up getting bad advice.

So, you know, the.

The metaphors were building this.

This house.

Like, you end up with a shack that falls apart, and it's shitty quality, and, like, it's just.

Everybody looks at it goes, well, that sucks, right?

Like, that's.

That's one risk.

The.

The other challenge with.

With other people's advice, though, is it could be good advice, but not for you.

You're the one that's going to have to wake up in it every day and go, man, do I really like it.

Here.

I think this is why so many people end up building businesses that they become a prisoner of, because they're relying on other people's template, other people's vision, other people's bias and their experience and what they believe is the way to, to build a business.

And as long as the person that you're getting advice from is really aligned with the outcomes that you want, can be great.

If it's not, though, it can be disastrous.

A few questions that, you know, looking back on this experience of ours that could have helped, you know, make sure that the advice that's good for one person but not good for her.

How could we have filtered that like one.

One question I would recommend asking, like, when you're getting advice from somebody, is, is there something in your business that you truly love doing that you find creative flow in, that gives you energy, that gives you joy doing?

No matter what somebody tells you, don't give it up.

You're gonna do it better than anybody.

It's going to help you sustain everything that you need to, to continue building and, and build the thing that you really want to build.

And if you have found that, latch onto it.

Don't let go.

I mean, frankly, most people are looking for that thing, right?

In business or elsewhere.

If you found it, don't let a consultant or an advisor or somebody who appears to be more successful than in a field than, than you, like, tell you that you're wrong.

Like, trust yourself.

Like, that's.

That is a huge sign.

You can systematize everything else around it, but don't give up the thing that, that gives you joy.

Another question that I would ask is, does this person that I'm getting advice from have what I actually want?

I scaled things like, that was my track record.

That was my history.

That's what I knew.

That's how I thought.

And asking my advice, if we said, do I really have what you want?

The answer would have been no.

Like, I think, you know, we, we kind of know that's not necessarily what, what she wanted.

And if we had sat down with a little bit more wisdom and a little bit more experience, we would have said, hey, the way you do things leads to an outcome that a lot of people would love to, but it's not what I want.

And we would have known not to use that advice, maybe sought out somebody who built something that was more aligned with, with the type of business that, that she was wanting to, to build.

And then the third one, the third question I would ask is like, is my intuition, like, sounding off alarm bells, right?

Like is something about this advice and what I'm being told to do or advised to do, just telling me, like deep down this isn't right.

And I would listen to that, right?

Like it's like now a little bit older, I can say there's something there.

Like we have more answers within us than we often give ourselves credit for.

We know more than we often think that we do.

And when your intuition is screaming something or has some alarm bells going off, give it the space that it needs and listen to it.

I've grown to rely more and more on intuition as I've gotten older.

And it gets better the more that you use it.

So if there's something there, pause, take a second, like listen to it and you know as you're thinking about, you know, what you want the business to be and what you want out of your business.

If there are some non negotiables, like things that you don't know you don't want in your business, write them down.

Like they can serve as a filter for you.

If there are things that you know you do want in your business, it doesn't have to be a crystal clear vision.

But if there are certain things that you know you do and don't want in your business, write them down and use them to help you make the decisions as you're going forward.

Because again, you're going to have to live with this house when you build it.

And the last thing you want is a beautiful beach house that everybody else loves when you really wanted a fucking sweet condo in New York.

And so you're miserable inside this phenomenal thing that you've built.

It's, it's not a fun place to be.

And I've seen a lot of people end up in that space.

And so the, that list of things that you want and things that you don't becomes the framing for the, the house that you're, that you're building.

If we're going to stick with that metaphor.

Now that's my advice to, to you take it with a grain of salt to advice about advice.

And I know some of you, like every time I tell the story, somebody's like, well, you know what she could have done, what she could have done?

Like what you guys could have done.

Listen, I get it.

Like I've, I've.

But the thing is, she didn't want to manage people.

She didn't want a business.

She wanted to do the thing that she loved and she wanted to get paid well for it.

She didn't want to hire other people.

She didn't want to turn it into something that was systematized or scaled.

She didn't have a big grand vision of seeing her stuff in any particular store.

It was, you know, fundamentally something that she loved to do and simply wanted to be paid to do it.

And the for those of us that on the outside looking in go, well, you could have.

I get it.

It's in Believia.

It's sometimes it's like, it's almost painful.

Like, man, so many entrepreneurs are looking for that thing, like that very, very thing to.

To monetize and to grow their business around.

And when you hear about somebody else having it and not wanting to do the thing that you would do to it, you go, well, that's, you know, that's the, that's not the right thing to do.

And I think that's also like, just another lesson in life.

There are different ways to leverage that.

And your view of it, my view of it is not necessarily somebody else's view of it, and that's why the world works the way that it does.

But keep all of this in mind when you're asking people for advice.

So I hope those are a few good questions to help you filter advice to make sure you build the right thing or the right thing for you.

And I hope our experience has been in some way informative to help you avoid some potential similar type of mistake in the future.

Adios.