I’ll be honest, some weeks I’m tired of making decisions.

Decisions about pricing, what tools to invest in, what content to post, what feedback to give the team. By Thursday afternoon, even choosing what to have for lunch can feel like one decision too many.

On top of that, it can feel like everyone has an opinion on how you should be making those decisions.

It reminds me of my time in new business working on huge, sometimes multi-billion-dollar pitches, at a well-respected media agency, going after accounts like Pfizer, Volkswagen and PlayStation. In a big corporate business, plenty of people expect to have a say: on the story, the presentation, the process, the client relationship and everything in between.

I’d say there were too many cooks in the kitchen, but at least cooks make something. A lot of those voices just added noise to a room that was already crowded. As a new business team, we learnt to:

• Keep meetings small
• Keep the core of the pitch to a handful of people
• Bring in the right senior voices at the right moment, rather than all of them, all of the time

I didn’t expect those lessons would be needed as much as they have been from running Real View Marketing.

Without a co-founder, there’s often no one to share the load with, and the key decisions sit with you. That can feel lonely, and I know I’m not the only one who feels it.

The thing is, you actually don’t need less people around you…you need the right ones, at the right time, which leads me to my three learnings:

1. Getting an advisor

One of the first things I did when I set up nearly two years ago was get an advisor. Some people react to that the way they react to therapy: why would you need someone else to tell you what to do? Isn’t that why you became your own boss?

For me, it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve made. My advisor would often guide me towards the answer rather than hand it to me, but sometimes it’s just good to hear a direct opinion. Whether I follow it is still up to me.

2. Taking advice with a pinch of salt

Most people sharing their opinions aren’t trying to tell you what to do. They genuinely think they’re helping, even when it feels like they’ve overstepped. I can’t control what they say, but I can control how I respond. These days I try to say thank you, take what’s useful and carry on with what I’d already decided.

3. Learning when to ask, and when to push back

Asking experienced people for advice has been one of the best ways I’ve found to build relationships, because people love telling their story, and there are often great tips buried in there. The difference is that I’m choosing the question and the moment.

I ask when I’m genuinely unsure, or when I need someone who has been there before and I try to surround myself with people who understand what I’m building and will be honest with me, especially in the areas where I’m less strong.

Logic + emotion

The best decisions I’ve made have usually come from informed gut reactions. We like to think most of our decisions are logical, when in fact a lot of them are emotional.

I see it with our own clients. When someone chooses to work with us, it’s rarely because they couldn’t find similar marketing services elsewhere. It’s because they feel we’d work well together, the cultural fit is right, and we take the time to understand their vision, not just their challenges.

Being a founder isn’t for everyone, and that’s ok. But if you’ve chosen it, I think it asks you to throw yourself in fully.

I’ll keep getting advice from people I trust, however long I do this, and I’ll keep getting some decisions wrong. But learning to give my own judgement a bit more room is making the world of difference.

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