I just wasn't coachable

The truth is, I had almost no real mentors. And the little advice I did get, I nodded at and quietly ignored.

I listened the way you listen when you have already decided: politely, waiting for my turn to explain why my case was different. I wasn't open to feedback. I was open to feedback that agreed with me. Every piece of hard advice landed like a quiet accusation that I wasn't good enough, so I defended instead of absorbed.

No advice is the most expensive kind

We like to say good advice is expensive. It is. But no advice is usually far more expensive – you just pay for that one later, alone, in mistakes you could have skipped.

Coachability is not willpower

Here is what I got wrong for years: I thought being coachable was a matter of willpower, of forcing myself to listen to everyone. It isn't. I was never going to absorb hard feedback from someone I didn't trust. Nobody is.

And trust runs both ways. Good mentors lean in when a founder actually uses what they give. I never gave anyone a reason to.

Now I see it from the other side

Today I also sit on the mentoring side, and I see myself in every founder who nods, thanks me and then does the exact opposite. I know what that nod is: it is the sound of someone not ready to be wrong yet. And I still catch it in myself.

I am building again now, with more scars than before. Yet I appreciate having people with an outside view in my corner even more, because they can see what I can't from the inside. Experience doesn't give you perspective on your own blind spots. Distance does.

What I tell founders today

Being coachable isn't weakness. It is the cheapest lesson you will probably ever pay for.

Who do you trust enough to let them change your mind?