Warning: The hidden cost of being cheap on expert advice
As a business leader, your job is to make the best strategic decisions. You can only do that if you see reality as clearly as possible. Your ability to navigate complexity doesn’t just depend on your own instincts. It depends on the quality of the advice you seek and the breadth of perspectives you’re willing to embrace.
Most businesses are just one to two strategic decisions away from complete failure or breakthrough success. The difference between extraordinary success and catastrophic failure often boils down to one word: getting the right expert advice to avoid blind spots. Experts can easily see the opportunities lying within easy reach or the walls you cannot see through because they are not biased; they can see the forest and are not distracted by the trees and not stuck inside the frame.
The price of clarity is always less than the cost of chaos
Expert advice means: Not just any advice. Not free advice. Not cousin-Jim-who-read-a-business-book-once advice. Not “my people will somehow figure it out” even though they have never done anything like that before.
I’m talking about seasoned, external experts—people who have walked the path, seen the traps and known where the land mines lie. Ideally, the ones with global perspective.
This is especially critical for owner-operators and family business heads, who are often surrounded by people too afraid to tell them the truth.
Longtime executives may sugarcoat issues. Family members may distort reality to protect their egos. The result? You, the leader, fly blind.
And yet, some CEOs and business owners still hesitate to spend on world-class guidance. They’ll spend millions on tech, offices or marketing—but balk at paying for the very insight that could prevent disaster or unlock exponential growth.
Let’s get this straight: you don’t pay an expert for their time—you pay for the decades they invested to be able to give you the right answer in minutes. You pay for clarity, and clarity is priceless.
Why global insight matters now more than ever
Artificial intelligence (AI) has just accelerated the world —and your competition. Silicon Valley predicts that in a few years, there will be three-person companies that are worth over a billion dollars. How? Because AI will make up for everyone else.
What does this mean for you? Size no longer matters. Your competitors can now come from anywhere in the world, and your unforeseen enemies just multiplied and got faster. You need to be more on your toes than ever before.
You need global perspectives, not just local ones, because the competition is no longer just in your backyard. The top business leaders consistently gather diverse opinions before they make up their minds. They know that hearing everyone else first, listening deeply and then deciding is the hallmark of great leadership.
The most successful business leaders understand that they naturally see only a limited slice of reality. By virtue of our human nature, our strengths, weaknesses and personal blind spots shape our view.
If you think you know everything, you’re simply making the fastest route to the wrong decision. It’s like trying to explore a new city with only half a map. You need the full picture, and that means bringing in the best expert advice you can possibly afford.
To the man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
Some of the most common mindset failures we see across industries are “we’ll try to do it ourselves” or “we’ll go cheap on expert advice.”
In reality, that’s the worst possible mindset. Challenges only grow bigger over time if left unsolved, and opportunities wait for no one. If you don’t seize the right opportunities because you lack clear insight, your competitors will.
In the end, staying in an ivory tower or trying to cut corners on advice is a costly mistake. The world is moving too fast, and the stakes are too high. As a business leader, the best investment you can make is in the clarity of your own vision—and that means never going cheap on expert advice.
I’ve seen businesses spend five figures on the wrong hire because they didn’t ask the right person for input. I’ve watched companies waste years chasing the wrong strategy because no one challenged the sacred cow in the boardroom.
One of my clients—a multigenerational family conglomerate—once delayed hiring an external advisor for six months to “save money.” That decision cost them over $3 million in missed profit and a failed expansion. When they finally brought us in, we untangled the mess in weeks. But the damage had been done. Trying to save money by avoiding expert advice is like trying to save on fuel by flying blind.
Global expertise sees patterns you can’t
The real value of a world-class expert isn’t that they know your business better than you. It’s that they’ve seen dozens—or hundreds—like it across countries, cultures, industries and generations.
Patterns repeat. Mistakes echo. Human behavior, in its brilliance and blindness, follows predictable tracks. An experienced advisor isn’t smarter than you—they’re simply not inside your emotional whirlwind. They can spot the early signs of trouble and redirect the train before it derails.
A common mistake? Evaluating advisors by how long they’ll work with you, instead of how much impact they can deliver. Let’s say someone charges 100,000 British pounds for a one-day intervention that saves you a 500,000-pound mistake. That’s not expensive. That’s a bargain!
The most expensive decisions in business are rarely the ones you make. They’re the right decisions you don’t make—because you lacked the right insight. Clarity is speed. Clarity is power.
Remember: A smart person learns from their mistakes. A wise person learns from someone else’s. Choose wisdom. Pay for perspective. And never, ever go cheap on expert advice.
Five to thrive
Here are five practical steps to implement this mindset in your business now:
- Create a Reality Board: Once a quarter, bring in at least one external expert or advisor to challenge your assumptions. Let them tear apart your strategy without political filters. You’ll thank them later.
- Budget for perspective: Allocate a yearly “clarity budget” for strategic advice. Treat it like an insurance policy—not an optional extra.
- Pay for truth, not comfort: Avoid yes-men. Choose advisors who tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. If you’re never uncomfortable, you’re not growing.
- Get a mentor: In addition to getting world-class expert advice for your business, get a personal mentor or coach. Even Bill Gates has one. Someone you can trust. Someone with a long track record.
- Learn to zoom out: When overwhelmed, step back. Take a walk. Change your environment. Write down your biggest problem and ask, “What would my mentor say about this?” That gap—that’s where clarity lives.
