I’m continuing my series of YouTube videos about business issues and my advice for this week is to be … wary of advice. Naturally, my advice is an exception to the rule. You should trust me 100%!<\/p>\n
As I explain in the video, I didn’t take all the bad advice I was offered over the years, but I did take some. I got into silver when it was held up as a solution for all jewelry-designer cost problems in 2008\/2009.\u00a0 Silver jewelry turned out to be a consistent money-loser — not just for me but for many designers I know — because of high U.S. labor costs and no economies of scale. (If you want to understand what the previous sentence means, you can check out a post from last September where I explained how expensive labor and low production quantities result in a wafer-thin<\/a> margin.)\u00a0 So, now I’m getting out of silver.<\/p>\n CLICK HERE TO READ THE EARLIER POST ABOUT SILVER.<\/a><\/p>\n Since realizing the degree of that particular mistake, I bear in mind that the people who make their living from giving advice do have a financial motive to tell an entrepreneur that she should do everything differently. I’m not angry at them for that because everyone needs to make a living, but caveat emptor<\/em> — especially because you’re the one who has to deal with the consequences, not them. They’re on to the next gig. I’m most leery of consulting firms that charge millions of dollars to tell corporate executives what they already know (or should know); random Wall Street guys; and people who ran a big company successfully many decades ago.\u00a0Obviously, there are also good people out there, including Peggy Jo Donahue<\/a> and Brandee Dallow<\/a> in the jewelry industry. Too bad for me that I didn’t know the good ones when all this shit was going down 10 years ago!<\/p>\n Anyway, here’s the video. Let me know if it makes you yearn for “pagoda shoulders.”<\/p>\n