One of the worst things you can do with a good idea is ask too many people what they think about it.

I posted some version of that on Instagram last week, and I keep coming back to it.

We’re taught that feedback is a good thing. Get input, pressure-test the idea, ask people you trust, don’t operate in a vacuum.

All good advice. Up to a point.

An idea in its earliest stages is a fragile little thing. You haven’t figured out exactly what it is yet. You don’t have all the answers. You may not even know why you’re so excited about it.

Maybe don’t bring the committee in quite yet.

Because once you do, everyone has questions. Who is this for? How are you going to make money from it? Isn’t someone already doing that? Do you really have time? I’m not sure I’d do it that way.

Before you know it, you’re defending an idea you were excited about twenty minutes ago.

Mom gets the listing. Dad gets the listing. The best friend gets the listing. The brother-in-law who bought an apartment once in 2014 gets the listing. Suddenly a group of people who aren’t buying the house have a surprising amount of influence over whether someone else should.

That’s where a really good advisor earns their keep, and it isn’t by adding another opinion to the pile. Sometimes it’s helping someone get quiet enough to hear their own again.

Not everyone who loves you gets a vote.

I’ve started asking myself who belongs on the committee. I want the people who understand what I’m actually trying to do, the ones with relevant experience, the ones who know me well enough to tell the difference between a genuinely bad fit and something that’s just scary or new. And perhaps most importantly, the people who don’t need me to make the choice they would make.

So protect that space.

Not forever. Good ideas need pressure. Important decisions deserve counsel. We all need people who will challenge us, sharpen our thinking and occasionally save us from ourselves.

Just don’t invite them in too soon.

Know what you think before you ask what everyone else thinks.

Because the goal isn’t to stop listening to other people.

It’s to make sure that when everyone has had their say, you can still hear yourself.