Stop Listening to Millionaires: Why Their Advice Is Keeping You Stuck

Every morning, some guy worth $300 million tells you to wake up at 4am, take a cold shower, and journal about gratitude.

And you're sitting there running a plumbing company in Omaha thinking... what does any of this have to do with me?

I've spent years filming business owners right here in this city. And today I need to tell you something that might save you years of frustration.

Stop listening to millionaires.

Here's why.

The Disconnect Nobody Talks About

Let me paint you a picture. You're scrolling LinkedIn at 6am because you couldn't sleep, worried about payroll. And there's a post from some tech founder talking about his "morning ritual."

Wake up at 4am. Cold plunge. Meditate for 30 minutes. Journal. Read for an hour. Then start the day.

And you think, man, I must be doing something wrong. I'm lucky if I get to brush my teeth before my first job.

But here's what that post didn't mention: That guy has a personal chef who made breakfast while he was meditating. A driver who's pulling the car around. A nanny handling the kids. An assistant who's already dealt with everything that would make your morning chaotic.

He's not giving you advice. He's describing his life. And his life has nothing to do with yours.

The "Hire Fast, Fire Fast" Lie

This is one of the most dangerous pieces of advice floating around. Some VC-backed startup founder gets on a podcast and says "hire fast, fire fast" like it's gospel.

Cool. He has an HR department. He has lawyers on retainer. He has 200 employees so if one doesn't work out, he barely notices.

You? You have six people. YOU are the HR department. YOU are the legal team. And when you fire someone, you're the one who has to look them in the eye, take their keys, and then go back to work like nothing happened.

Then you're the one who has to explain to your other five employees what happened. You're the one who has to pick up that person's work until you find a replacement. You're the one who has to worry about whether they're going to leave a bad review or file a complaint.

"Hire fast, fire fast" assumes you have infinite resources to absorb mistakes. Most of us don't. Most of us need to hire slow and careful, because a bad hire can set us back months.

The "Just Run Facebook Ads" Fantasy

I love this one. Some marketing guru posts a screenshot of a campaign that did $500K in revenue and says "Facebook ads are the answer."

What he doesn't mention:

• He spent $50,000 on ads that month

• He has an agency managing it full time

• He has designers creating fresh creatives every week

• He has a data team analyzing the results

• He tested 47 different audiences before he found the one that worked

Meanwhile, you're over here with $500, trying to figure out if the campaign you ran last month actually did anything. Facebook's telling you that you got "10,000 impressions" and you're like... cool, did anyone call me? I don't think anyone called me.

The advice isn't wrong. Ads can work. But the way it's presented makes you think you just need to turn on the money machine. Nobody tells you about the learning curve. The testing budget you'll burn through. The months it takes to figure out what actually works for YOUR business.

Context Collapse: The Real Problem

There's a term for what's happening here. It's called context collapse. And once you understand it, you'll never consume business content the same way again.

Context collapse is when advice gets stripped of all the specific circumstances that made it work, and then gets broadcast to everyone like it's universal truth.

When a billionaire shares their morning routine, they're not lying. It really is their routine. But they're leaving out the entire infrastructure that makes it possible. The context collapses, and what's left is just... words. Words that make you feel like you're failing when you can't replicate results that were never replicable in your situation.

This happens constantly in business advice:

• Scale fast!

• Move fast and break things!

• 10X your thinking!

These phrases sound great. They're very shareable. But without the context of who said them, when, why, and with what resources... they're just noise.

And noise doesn't help you make payroll. Noise doesn't help you hire your next employee. Noise doesn't help you figure out if that marketing investment was worth it.

The Alternative: One or Two Steps Ahead

So who should you listen to?

Here's my rule: Find people who are one or two steps ahead of you, not 100.

The person 100 steps ahead doesn't remember your problems. They've got different problems n