196. Cut Through the Noise... According to What?
Episode Summary
One piece of business advice tells you to simplify. Another tells you to expand. One expert says hire now. Another says stay lean. So how do you know which advice actually belongs in your business?
If you've ever felt like you're constantly rethinking your business thanks to all the conflicting advice you hear, this episode offers a simple way to make business advice dramatically easier to evaluate before investing your time, money and attention.
In this episode, you'll discover:
Why advice that seems completely contradictory can both be right, and what most people miss when trying to decide which path to follow.
The simple question that instantly changes how you evaluate business strategies before investing your time, money, or attention.
How to develop a filter that helps you make clear moves without getting pulled in every direction by every new expert, trend, or tactic.
Listen now to discover why some of the best business advice can be painfully wrong for your business, and what smart entrepreneurs do differently before acting on expert advice.
Who This Episode Is For
Women entrepreneurs overwhelmed by conflicting business advice, marketing strategies, and industry best practices.
CEOs who want to make more confident business moves without chasing every trend or expert opinion.
Business owners defining success on their own terms instead of following conventional scaling advice.
Founders seeking greater clarity, discernment, and strategic focus as they grow their business.
High-achieving leaders building sustainable businesses who want to filter business advice through their own long-term vision, values, and priorities.
Business owners ready to strengthen executive judgment instead of continually searching for the "right" answer.
Key Takeaways
Why advice that seems completely contradictory can both be right, and what most people miss when trying to decide which path to follow.
The simple question that instantly changes how you evaluate business strategies before investing your time, money, or attention.
How to develop a filter that helps you make clearer decisions without getting pulled in every direction by every new expert, trend, or tactic.
Full Episode Transcript:
Welcome to The Uncommon Way, where high-achieving women entrepreneurs and leaders pitch the rulebook and design success on their own terms. I'm your host, Jenna Harrison, a top-ranked business coach sharing business growth strategies, mindset mastery, and power moves to help you attract ideal clients, leverage your unique genius, and scale with freedom. Let's dive in.
Welcome, welcome back to The Uncommon Way.
I'm hopping on today with a quick episode for your summer listening pleasure, offering some food for thought and a practical tip about what advice actually belongs in your business. One of the phrases that I hear all the time in business, and which I have said myself, is you've got to cut through the noise. But I've been reflecting on what comes after that, which is this, according to what. Because what's left after you cut through the noise depends entirely on what exactly you're going after.
Someone who's trying to build an eight-figure company as quickly as possible will probably have different areas of focus than someone who's trying to build you know a company that she'll still love running 20 years from now. Neither is wrong. They're just optimizing for different things along the way. So the next time someone tells you,
You should build a membership, or you should never build a membership, ask yourself, I should do that when I'm optimizing for what?
If someone says hire as quickly as possible, when I'm optimizing for what?
If someone says stay lean for as long as you can, when I'm optimizing for what?
If someone says you should be on TikTok, when I'm optimizing for what?
It's such a simple question, but it changes everything. The funny thing is, I don't think most of us realize that we're skipping that question.
We hear someone we respect say, this is working really well, and our brain immediately starts saying, oh, maybe I should do that too. We don't stop and ask, it's working well for what exactly? We just assume that it's transferable to us. But if your definition of success or your priorities or your values, et cetera, et cetera, if those are different, then the path to get there might be different too. I think one of the reasons entrepreneurs feel so overwhelmed isn't just that there's so much information. It's because they're trying to reconcile all this advice that wasn't ever even designed to fit together.
Even something as simple as raising your prices. One expert is thinking about positioning. Another is thinking about accessibility. Another is thinking about cash flow. Another is thinking about lifetime customer value.
They can all be giving good advice, but they can be optimizing for completely different outcomes. So, of course, the advice sounds different. Think about two founders. One wants to build value as quickly as possible over the next five years because she plans to sell. Another wants to build a business that gives complete flexibility during a really busy time in her life. They might both be wildly successful. They might even have the same revenue, but they'll make very different decisions along the way.
So if the second woman blindly follows the first woman's advice, she could end up building a business that she never actually wanted. And because the advice was bad, it was just optimized around something else. I remember, years ago, feeling like there had to be somebody who had the answers. If I could just find the right coach, or the right book, or the right strategy, then everything would finally click. But over time I realized something. The more experienced someone becomes, the less likely they are to tell you, here's the answer.
Instead, they'll usually start by asking, what are you actually trying to create? What season are you in? What are your priorities at the moment?
Because until you can answer that question, or those questions, no one can tell you what your next move should be. That's why I think cutting through the noise has become a bit of a misleading goal. The goal isn't to hear fewer opinions, or see, you know, cut out all the information. It's to become so clear about what you're up to, that you naturally know which information and opinions deserve your attention, and which ones don't.
So the information doesn't change. Your filter did. I wonder if this is why so many smart entrepreneurs feel like they're constantly starting over, or they're constantly starting from scratch. One week they're convinced that they should simplify everything. The next week they hear someone talking about adding more pieces, because that's what scaling requires. Then someone else tells them to focus on organic marketing, and someone else says paid ads are the only way. Every piece of a device makes so much sense, until another expert says the exact opposite. No wonder people end up feeling like they're always behind. But maybe they aren't behind at all. Maybe they're just trying to solve ten different people's problems instead of their own.
I think the entrepreneurs who seem the calmest aren't necessarily consuming less information than everyone else. They've just become incredibly clear about what it is that they're optimizing for. Because of that, they don't feel pulled in all those different directions. They don't need every new trend to apply to them. They don't start to sweat a bit when someone else wears by a strategy that they're not using. They can just think, that might be exactly right for the business they're building. And then they can get back to building their own.
It's been so nice hanging out with you, as always, and let's talk again soon.
Core Concepts in This Episode
Power Consolidation in Scaling
Scaling becomes more effective when leaders consolidate their attention around the outcomes they actually want to create instead of dispersing their energy across every promising strategy. Clear priorities naturally eliminate unnecessary noise.
Leadership Capacity in Business
As leadership matures, the focus shifts from collecting answers to developing the judgment needed to evaluate advice within the context of one's own business, season, and strategic objectives.
Strategic Discernment
Not all good advice is universally applicable. Effective leaders evaluate every recommendation through the lens of what outcome it is designed to optimize before deciding whether it belongs in their business.
Success Criteria Alignment
Business decisions become significantly clearer when founders explicitly define what success means for them. Different goals, such as rapid scale, long-term sustainability, flexibility, or business exit require different strategies, making alignment more valuable than imitation.
Founder-Led Business Strategy
The strongest businesses are built around the founder's vision, priorities, and desired way of operating rather than external expectations. Strategic decisions become more consistent when they originate from internal clarity instead of outside pressure.
Executive Decision Filters
Experienced leaders reduce overwhelm by developing reliable decision filters. Rather than consuming less information, they become highly selective about which ideas deserve attention based on the business they are intentionally building.
Work with Jenna
Decisions on Demand — A practical mini-course designed to help you make cleaner, higher-quality choices — the kind that unlock momentum, authority, and follow-through. The framework mirrors decision-making principles used in high-stakes environments, adapted for real life and business.
The Clarity Accelerator Mastermind — If you want to be surrounded by other visionary entrepreneurs while rapidly aligning your business to the conditions and strategies that let you thrive and excel naturally, this intimate mastermind will stretch you into your next level. Schedule your call today here or visit this page to find out more.
Private Coaching — If you’re craving the highest level of support, strategy, and partnership to create all the freedom, impact, and success you’re designed for, this is the space for it. Schedule your call today here.
Find Jenna on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theuncommonway/
The Uncommon Way is a leadership and business podcast for ambitious women entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders who are scaling companies and expanding their influence.
Hosted by business and leadership coach Jenna Harrison, the show explores how power, authority, and leadership capacity shape business growth. Episodes focus on decision-making, founder leadership evolution, team stability, and the structural shifts that allow companies to scale without overwhelming the person leading them.
This podcast is especially relevant for women navigating:
• Business growth and scaling challenges
• Increasing leadership responsibility
• Team expansion and higher-stakes decisions
• Founder authority and executive presence
• Identity and leadership evolution during scaling
The Uncommon Way approaches growth differently.
Not through hustle, constant self-optimization, or endless inner work — but by upgrading leadership, strengthening decision structures, and expanding the capacity required to run the company you’re building.
Topics include:
• Founder leadership capacity expansion
• Decision-making at higher levels of responsibility
• Authority and power dynamics inside scaling businesses
• Structural business leadership
• Founder psychology and identity shifts during growth
• Sustainable scaling and operational clarity
Whether you’re an experienced founder, a rising leader, or building something that’s starting to matter at a bigger level, this podcast helps you access more power and lead accordingly.
