EP122: Stop Taking Advice Meant for Who You Used to Be

This episode dismantles the gap between generic business advice and the strategic depth established women leaders actually need. Sarah breaks down a recent experience that highlighted the disconnect between free advice, context, and advanced leadership goals. She examines why so many programs marketed as “advanced” are built for beginners, what seasoned women really want at this stage, and how to vet anyone selling strategy, masterminds, or high-ticket support.

Expect:
• Why advice hits wrong when it ignores your lived experience.
• The emotional weight experienced women carry and why it makes mismatched guidance feel destabilizing.
• How the online industry consistently underserves women with real expertise and leadership ambition.
• What advanced women actually want: purpose, impact, depth, and legacy-level influence.
• How to evaluate whether a strategist or mastermind is built to support someone at your level.
• Five targeted vetting questions you can use immediately.

Chapters

• 0:00 Bold Truths For Ambitious Women
• 0:54 When Advice No Longer Fits
• 2:06 The Free Consult Wake-Up Call
• 3:45 Ego, Context, And Confidence Shocks
• 5:06 The Missing Context In Strategy
• 6:24 Newcomer Advice Vs Real Strategy
• 8:03 Searching For Advanced Support
• 10:20 What Established Women Actually Want
• 12:06 Depth Over Scale In Programs
• 13:24 Redefining Strategy Around Your Life
• 15:02 Reshaping The Business For Impact
• 16:30 Vetting Strategists Beyond Branding
• 18:00 Five Questions To Test Real Strategy
• 19:44 Bonus Question And Red Flags
• 20:08 Subscribe, Rate, And Share

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Welcome to this space where bold truths, real strategies, and unfiltered stories fuel ambitious women who want more power, leadership, and legacy on their turns. Because in too many circles, a woman doing what she wants, how she wants, and winning is to blasphemous as fuck. Welcome to Business Blasphemy. Hello, hello, blasphemers. Welcome back to Business Blasphemy. I am Sarah Kahn, your blasphemous host. I build leadership and strategy with women who've outgrown beginner advice and are ready for meaningful impact. And that's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about a conversation thread that has been coming up more and more. I've been experiencing this thread for several years, but lately, I don't know. My peer groups seem to be talking about this a lot more. And it's the moment you realize that the advice that's out there, the advice that you're being given, doesn't match who you've become. All right. Let me regale you with a story. So a little while ago, I took advantage of a free marketing consult. I'm not going to get into the context of it, but I want to caveat that by saying, like, I understand free marketing consult. It's free, it's 30 minutes. You are not going to get answers in 30 minutes. And somebody who's offering a free consult should not be giving you a strategy. They should not be uh, you know, like the the lift has got to be equal to the investment. And if it's a free consult, there's no investment other than your time. So, no, you're not gonna get a full strategy baked out in 30 minutes. It's not fair to the service provider, and it does a disservice to the person who's actually in the consult. So, all of that being said, I get it. Okay. So I had this consult, and when I got on the call, the person maybe took like 30 seconds to look at one social media platform. Okay. I don't know if they had done any research beforehand. It wasn't apparent to me that they did, and then asked me to talk a little bit about my business, which was maybe another 30 seconds to a minute, and then proceeded to go into critiquing my one social media platform and giving me advice. Now, maybe they were having a bad day, I don't know, right? But the way the advice landed was not nice, you know, it was it was a little bit harsh. So I'm gonna chalk it up to they were probably having a bad day. But um there is one point that really kind of pissed me off, and it was it was saying that it was not a big deal that I had done a TED talk. Yeah, it is a big deal, but that's neither here nor there, and that's my ego, fully owning that. Okay, so I got critiques on my social media. Okay, fine, absolutely. The advice that I was given overall was actually pretty solid advice. There was nothing wrong with the context of what or the content of what she said, but it was advice for someone at a different stage of business. It was ultimately advice for someone who was still learning the basics, someone who needed templates or plug-and-play, not necessarily strategy. Now, from my perspective, I walked into that call after a really hard morning. Like I was already carrying a lot more than I wanted to. And when the advice landed, I will be completely honest, it triggered my ego, right? I felt it land in a way that really wasn't about the advice. It was more about the emotional weight that I was carrying and how I kind of took the advice. So holding my hand up and saying that I was also responsible. But yeah, it triggered this part of me that was like, oh shit, do I need to tear everything down again and start over? I ended up having to take that away. And I spoke to a good friend of mine, and we we unpacked all of it over about three or four days worth of back and forth um voice notes. And honestly, Michelle, if you're listening, you are the only person I will take voice notes that long from because you're amazing. So thank you for all your help. But once I kind of unpacked it and I sat with it, that's when I kind of understood what was really happening here. But that feeling of like, oh shit, do I need to like burn it all down and start over? That's a feeling that's really familiar to every established woman I've ever worked with. You carry all of this responsibility, you carry a history of success, you carry this insane pressure to keep going. And when guidance doesn't match your reality, it can absolutely shake your confidence if you're not careful. So I took a breath, I got honest with myself, and I realized that the issue wasn't me and the issue wasn't her. The issue is actually a lack of context. And here's the thing any advice without context is dangerous. It doesn't take into consideration or even see your history, right? It doesn't see the complexity of your goals or your lived experience. It doesn't even see the scale of what you're trying to build, like what your vision is. And this is what I want to talk about today, right? This gap, this gap in the online business space for women who aren't starting out, women who are already established business owners, they have proven expertise, they have big ambitions that go far beyond just the next launch or the next offer or fucking Black Friday, which is coming up. They are not women who need motivation. They do not need a mindset reset. They don't need someone telling them to post more on social media. They need strategy, but not the surface level definition of strategy that says, you know, pick a niche, stay consistent, or this worked for me, so this exact strategy is going to work for you. I am talking about real strategy that accounts for your identity and your capacity and your values and your goals and your life and your resources and your support system and your energy. Right? This is the problem. There, there's so much business advice out there, but it's primarily built for newcomers. And that's why it feels so generic. It is supposed to. It works when you're learning the basics, but once you've built something real, you need something very, very different. And that kind of brings me to the next experience I had. And this is not um a conversation or a commentary on one particular program. This is actually a commentary on wow, let me see, almost two years now of looking for a program, a mastermind, a community, even, or even one-on-one coaching that actually meets me where I am personally, right? I have been in business since 2010 in some capacity or other. I have worked for a very long time in my business, on my business. I've worked with over a hundred women in their businesses. Like there's a lot going on here. And I come with business experience, right, from the entrepreneurial space, but also from the corporate space, from the educational space. I worked in a variety of different um sectors. So I have a lot of context, I guess, with respect to my own um experience. And so I've been looking recently for some kind of support mechanism that is going to help me elevate to the next level. Like I'm at the point now where I want to create something for my for my community at large. I want to create something that is going to leave an impact, a legacy that is going to outlive me. Like that's where I am. I am not interested in what I can do now to make more money. I want to know what I can do to actually make a difference. So I have been referred to a variety of coaches, a variety of programs. And, you know, a lot of these programs are marketed as advanced or elevated, right? And they have this really slick branding, they have all the right language, they feel very luxury, very high touch, and of course they have a price tag to match all of that. But when you look under the hood, most of them, if not all of them, they teach visibility, they teach how to create content, they teach mindset, they have a couple of calls a month, and you might get into a hot seat, you might not, but it's coaching, it's not really a mastermind. They teach all of these things, but they don't teach depth, they don't teach foresight, they don't teach how to build a body of work that actually creates opportunity to scale. And this is endemic in the system right now. So if you have ever felt like nothing out there speaks to where you are, you're not imagining it. Women at your level, at my level, at our level, are horribly underserved. We're expected to keep investing in entry-level strategies while carrying leadership level ambition and responsibility. So when I've had these conversations with my clients and my colleagues and my friends, what I have come to realize is that women at this stage, we don't want, like I said, more income for income's sake. We already know how to earn. We already know how to make money. We already know how to market for the most part. What we want is purpose. We want broader impact. We want to build opportunities for other women that are not necessarily confined to the boxes of, well, create a course or hey, create a coaching program, or hey, let's do a retreat. Like, no, right? I want to expand influence in ways that shifts conversations, in ways that opens doors and actually creates that systemic change that we desperately, desperately need. And that requires a different level of support. It requires somebody who knows how to build strategy that fits your life, your personality, your goals, your lived experience, your values, your capacity, all of that. It requires someone who isn't trying to turn you into a clone of themselves. Real strategy demands clarity about who you are and what matters most right now in this particular season of life. And because our seasons evolve and we evolve, your strategy is going to evolve too. Real strategy demands awareness of the realities of that life, right? What are your responsibilities? What is your energy level on any given day or any week? What's your money situation? I may have a lot of money, but I don't necessarily want to invest all of my business, right? What are my priorities? You can't build a legacy on the scaffold of somebody else's model. And every woman that I have ever worked with brings a very different set of assets and ambitions and constraints. That is the primary reason why no one I've ever worked with has left with the same plan. And I have often been criticized for that. I've often been told that not having a one-size-fits-all type of program is the reason I will never be able to scale. But maybe I don't want to scale. Maybe that's not the goal for me. Strategy is something you earn. It is built in partnership, it is grounded in identity, and it has to reflect the scale of what you're trying to create. And this is why so many programs fall short. They're built for scale, sure. But they're not built for depth. And women at this stage, this season, we need depth, baby. Without it, what happens is you end up with what more content, more busy work, more visibility, but there's no real movement beyond that. Like, where is all of this effort taking you? What's the end result? And this is the reason why I've reshaped my own business this past year. Right? I'm not here to help women churn out more marketing or push harder or hustle more. I'm here to help women at the top of their game build something that fits their life and expands that impact. I want to support women who want to use that success to create opportunities for other people. That want to lift communities up, that want to make their work matter beyond their own business. And if you are a woman like that, you don't need more hype. You need a very clear strategy grounded in who you are now. You need somebody who can see the big picture with you. Someone who's not going to be intimidated by your ambition or your intelligence, and who isn't going to look at your goals through their own perspective, through their own limited belief in what's possible. Because that's one of the big challenges I've had is when I share what I want to do, a lot of the time people say, That's that's not nobody wants that. That's not possible. Really? Then why is it something that's been on my heart for as long as I can remember? That's a conversation for another day, but there you go, right? So here's your action for today. The next time you take in advice from anybody, I want you to pause and take a breath before you internalize it. And I want to I want you to ask the question does this advice fit who I am today or who I was five years ago? If it matches who you were five years ago, if it doesn't match at all, put it aside. It doesn't necessarily mean the advice is wrong. It's just not right for you. And if you are looking for somebody who is selling strategy, if you're looking for that support, I want you to start looking beyond the slick branding, the fancy language, the high ticket price tag. Because look, I have been in this business a long time. And I will fully admit that I will often have all the feelings too. When I see somebody's brand, and I'm like, oh man, that looks amazing. You do feel that pulp. That's what marketing is supposed to do. Nobody's immune to it. That is literally the point of marketing, all right? It's supposed to make you have all of the feelings. So that's why I want to share with you today some questions that you can ask that will hopefully help you vet whether or not somebody's program has actual strategy that is actually going to help you. I'm gonna share five really quick ones right now. But if you're interested in questions that are more in-depth, that you can ask either through an email or a DM or even on a call, send me a text. Head to the show notes and send me a text. I will happily send you a list of questions. How many have I got here? I've got three. I have nearly 20 questions that you can ask any strategist, any mastermind host, anybody selling a high, high-ticket program to actually assess whether they have the ability to build a business strategy for you. So if you want that list, just send me a text. Head to the show notes, send me a text, hit me up on social media. There is no paywall, there is no box you got to sign up for. I will just copy and paste those questions and send them to you in a message, okay? Absolutely free, no strings attached, because I really feel like we need to ask better questions of people. We need to hold them accountable to actually representing clearly, we need to hold people accountable to being able to tell us whether or not they can actually serve us in the way that we want. And these questions are questions that I am starting to use with people when I'm asking about whether or not I'm gonna get what I'm actually signing up for. Because again, you know how I feel about marketers, right? And and marketing techniques. But right now, here are five that you can use at any time when you're trying to vet any kind of potential strategy relationship. Okay. So here's the first one. How would you identify and prioritize my target customer segments? How would you identify and prioritize my target customer segments? So this is really looking at who your potential audience is and which segments of those audiences you need to be focused on and how they would go about making a list of who to focus on first. Question two, what channels would you explore for my business? And how would you decide where I should invest my marketing budget? So look for knowledge of digital marketing channels. So, like SEO, uh paid ads, content for sure, email, partnerships, that sort of thing. What they do to test their methodology and what sort of data they're going to be providing for you in order to make those decisions rather than relying on personal preference. Because you'll have people who are like, well, I prefer LinkedIn or I prefer Instagram. No, no, no. You want data to drive those decisions. Here's question number three. Can you walk me through a strategy that you've built for an online service business? What worked, what didn't. You are not looking for them to rehash the entire strategy, obviously. But what you want to look for is relevant experience. Have they worked with businesses that are similar to yours? And you're looking for honest reflection on failures. You don't want just spectacular metrics and conversions, right? Ask for specific metrics, specific outcomes, and lessons learned that you could apply to your situation. All right, here's question four. How do you approach messaging and positioning for a service business versus a product business? This one is looking for an understanding that they actually do know that each of those services requires a different approach, right? Trust building, social proof, demonstrating experience, managing intangibles, and obviously the very much longer sales cycle that's involved versus based against a product business. Question number five: What metrics would you track to measure if the marketing strategy is working? So you're not looking just for likes, follows, and shares. You're looking for a focus on your business outcomes. So they're going to understand what your out your desired outcomes are, right? Um, conversion rates, pipeline, uh, all of that stuff, not just vanity metrics. And they should really understand unit economics and how marketing impacts them. So people who actually have marketing chops, all right. Here's a bonus question that you can ask. What would you need to learn about my business, my customers, and the market before developing the strategy? So, what you want to look for here is thoughtful questions around current customers, your particular sales process, the competition, past marketing efforts, right? Someone who just jumps in without asking questions and starts offering solutions, huge red flag, walk the fuck away. All right. So those are very quick questions that you can ask. Um, check the transcript if you didn't catch them in time, or just listen to the episode again. But if you want that longer list of questions that you can ask that you can use to vet business strategists or mastermind hosts, or really anyone who's going to be developing any kind of strategy for you, whether it's marketing or growth or otherwise, drop me a note. The text link is in the show notes. Um, also, you're more than welcome to contact me on social media. That is what I'm here for. And again, there are no strings attached. I will just send you the list. Okay. So if you have been feeling like you are lonely because nobody understands where you're trying to go or what you're trying to build, and all the advice just seems to be super basic and super easy, and you just don't understand how to find somebody who can bring you to the next level. You are not alone. We really need to build more of those communities. And that's something I'm I'm hoping to do in the coming year. So stick around, stay tuned for that, and hit me up on social media. Let me know if this resonated with you because I'm looking to find my people. And I know that if you are one of those people, you're looking for us too. So, all of that to say, have a wonderful week. You can have success without the BS, and I will talk to you soon. Thanks for listening. Hey, do us a favor. Subscribe to the show, rate your favorite episode, or share it with your friends. And remember, your blasphemy is necessary.