At the beginning of summer, I went to Provence.
It was one of those holidays where everything felt rather lovely – beautiful weather, beautiful places, long lunches and generally feeling significantly more sophisticated than I do on an average Tuesday in North Yorkshire (only just).
While we were there, we visited Fragonard, the famous French perfumer. And obviously, I had to smell everything. I tried perfume after perfume, wandered around sniffing little paper strips, went back to a few favourites and eventually found one that I absolutely loved.
It smelled gorgeous. Very French. Very summery. Very me, but in Provence.
So naturally, I bought it. I brought it home to North Yorkshire, put it on one morning and…
It didn’t smell the same.
Not bad, exactly. Just not quite right.
The perfume hadn’t changed. I presumably hadn’t dramatically changed in the space of a flight home either. But the context had. The sunshine had gone. The warm Provençal air had gone. The beautiful perfume factory and that lovely holiday feeling had gone.
I was back home in North Yorkshire. And somehow, the perfume that had felt absolutely perfect in Provence didn’t feel quite the same here. Which got me thinking about something I see all the time in small business.
Why doesn't business advice always work?
There is an enormous amount of small business advice available to us.
Courses. Podcasts. Coaches. Consultants. Instagram posts. LinkedIn experts. Books. Workshops. Masterclasses. Newsletters. And a lot of it is genuinely useful.
But good business advice isn’t necessarily good business advice for your business.
We can hear about a strategy that has completely transformed somebody else’s business and assume that if we simply replicate it, we’ll get the same result. But businesses don’t operate in identical conditions.
Just like my perfume, context matters. Your location matters. Your customers matter. Your budget matters. Your personality matters. Your stage of business matters. Your goals matter. Even the amount of time and energy you have available matters.
A business strategy can work brilliantly for somebody else and still not be right for you.
What works for one small business might not work for another
This is particularly important for small businesses.
Imagine somebody with a huge online audience telling you that posting three Reels a day transformed their sales. Brilliant.
But if you’re running a rural business where most of your customers come through word of mouth and local relationships, is three Reels a day really where your limited time is best spent? Perhaps…. But perhaps not.
A marketing strategy designed for somebody selling a £5,000 online programme might not translate particularly well to an independent shop.
A launch strategy created by somebody with 100,000 Instagram followers probably won’t produce identical results for somebody with 700.
A business model that suits someone who wants to build a large team may be completely wrong for someone whose version of success is a profitable, flexible business that allows them to finish work at three o’clock.
None of those approaches is necessarily wrong. They’re simply different businesses.
Be particularly careful with business advice that starts with “you should”
I’ve become increasingly wary of the idea that there is one correct way to run a successful business.
You should be posting every day… You should have a mailing list…. You should launch a digital product… You should scale…. You should outsource… You should build a personal brand.
Maybe.
But whenever we hear a confident “you should”, I think it’s worth adding another question:
Does this actually make sense for my business?
Because sometimes what we’re really hearing isn’t: “This is how to build a successful business.”
It’s: “This is something that worked for me, with my customers, resources, personality, circumstances and definition of success.”
Those are two very different things.
Should you ignore other people's business advice?
Absolutely not. This isn’t an argument for putting your fingers in your ears and refusing to learn from anybody else. Quite the opposite.
One of the best things you can do as a small business owner is expose yourself to new ideas – and then decide which ones deserve a place in your business.
Take the course. Go to the workshop. Read the book. Listen to the podcast. Talk to other business owners. Try the new marketing idea. Experiment with your pricing. Ask for advice. Test things.
Somebody else’s idea might completely change your business for the better. But experimentation doesn’t require blind adoption. You can take one useful idea from a workshop without rebuilding your entire business around the person who delivered it. You can learn from an Instagram expert without deciding you need to spend your entire life making content. You can listen to somebody else’s definition of success without adopting it as your own. And you can try something, discover that it doesn’t work, and stop doing it.
That isn’t failure. That’s useful information.
How do you know if business advice is right for you?
Before implementing a new business strategy, I think there are a few simple questions worth asking yourself:
- What problem am I actually trying to solve?
- Was this strategy designed for a business like mine?
- Does it make sense for my customers and where they actually spend their time?
- Do I realistically have the time, money and energy required to do it properly?
- Does it fit the kind of business — and life — I’m trying to build?
- How will I know whether it’s working?
And perhaps most importantly:
Am I doing this because it genuinely makes sense for my business, or because somebody successful told me I should?
That distinction matters.
Rural and independent businesses need context, too
I think this becomes even more important when you’re running a rural or locally focused small business.
The strategies dominating business conversations online are not always created with businesses in places like North Yorkshire in mind. What works in London, Manchester or an entirely online marketplace doesn’t necessarily translate perfectly to a market town or rural community.
Customer behaviour can be different. Networks can be different. Word of mouth can carry more weight. Face-to-face relationships can matter enormously. And sometimes the supposedly old-fashioned thing – talking to people, collaborating locally, becoming part of your community, delivering a genuinely brilliant customer experience – can be far more valuable than chasing whichever marketing strategy happens to be trending online that week.
Again, it isn’t either/or. The opportunity is to understand your particular business environment and choose accordingly.
Your definition of business success matters
There is another layer to all of this. Before deciding which business advice to follow, you need some idea of what you’re actually trying to create. Because “successful business” doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone.
One person might want £1 million turnover and a team of 20. Another might want to earn a comfortable income working four days a week. Someone else might want to build a business that gives them the flexibility to collect their children from school. Another founder might simply want to make enough money doing something they enjoy without having a boss ever again.
If the destination is different, why would we expect the route to be identical?
Knowing what success looks like for you makes it much easier to decide which advice is worth listening to – and which you can happily leave behind.
Sometimes the perfume is just for Provence
I still like my perfume.
Occasionally I put it on and it immediately takes me back to sunshine, beautiful French villages and wandering around Fragonard sniffing far too many fragrances.
Perhaps that’s exactly what it’s supposed to do. Maybe it doesn’t need to become my everyday North Yorkshire perfume. It can simply be my Provence perfume.
And perhaps we can treat business ideas in much the same way.
Be curious.
Learn from people.
Try things.
Experiment.
Take inspiration from businesses completely different from yours.
But don’t assume that because something smells wonderful in somebody else’s world, it automatically belongs in yours.
Bring it home.
Try it on.
See how it feels in the reality of your customers, your circumstances, your goals and your life.
Keep what works.
Leave what doesn’t.
And give yourself permission to build a business that smells like you.
