5 pieces of advice I'm glad I didn't follow when I was building my $100 million company

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Want to know the number-one way to attract unsolicited advice? Tell people you're launching a business.

It's not that all the advice is bad, but often times because of the sheer volume of the advice you get as an entrepreneur, much of it is useless. Worse, some advice is bad and can hurt as you're trying to launch and grow a business.

Don't get me wrong. Without a lot of sage advice along the way, I could not have built Infusionsoft into the company it is today. But a huge amount of advice that any entrepreneur receives should be taken with a grain of salt.

Below are the five worst pieces of advice I ever received as an entrepreneur: 

1. Don't get emotionally attached to employees.

I'm not talking about romantic relationships here. In essence, the advice I was given was to not develop strong friendships with people I work with, and to keep a safe distance. There is some wisdom in this, but it didn't sit well with me.

In my view, one of the most rewarding things about starting and growing a business is that you develop relationships with amazing people. Work is much more enjoyable and meaningful when you spend your days with people you like to be around. Don't rob yourself of the rich personal relationships you could develop by thinking you have to be "all business" with the people around you.

2. Move away from your target market.

Infusionsoft is solely focused on serving the small business market, but there was a time a few years ago when pressure was mounting to expand the scope of our offerings to larger businesses.

The advice I was given was to move away from the target market and serve bigger customers. My reaction to that was that we couldn't change who we are at our core. We have people here with a passion for serving small business, and I didn't want to dilute that.

I put my foot down on this issue, and eventually won others over. I had to go with my gut, and I'm glad I did.

3. Automate customer service.

In the tech industry, the prevailing advice is to take as much human touch as you can out of the customer experience, so you can grow quickly without the complexity of a large customer service department. While this may work for companies serving larger businesses, our small business customers need our help and are willing to pay for it.

Be careful. You can easily overdo it when it comes to automating customer service — and the result will be unhappy customers.

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