If you’re a small business owner, you will often make decisions based on your gut: that somewhat nebulous notion enveloping your instinct, experience, and anything you believe to be true. It is typically fast thinking – answers to immediate issues that don’t allow for the luxury of deep, considered thought. As a result, these answers are going to be unique to each individual making these decisions, and are a key reason that small businesses are all so different.

You are rarely in a position to compare notes with other business owners on these decisions. To a large extent, business owners don’t spend a lot of time agonising over the decisions they have made. A decision is needed, a decision is made, and you move on. You don’t generally spend time chatting with others – inside or outside your firm – about such things. You make most of your business decisions in isolation. It’s lonely at the top.

This reflects a common frustration for small business owners. Working in isolation can be debilitating to an extreme. There’s even a name for it: Entrepreneurial Loneliness. You don’t know if you are facing the same sort of issues as others, and you don’t know if your framing of an issue is the same as others, and therefore whether the solution has anything in common with the approaches taken by others in similar situations.

More broadly, have you ever stopped to wonder whether your perspectives are actually shared by others or if they’re unique to you? The reality is, we often don’t know if our views and opinions are unusual or not – and this can have significant implications for how we run our businesses.

Consider this: you might believe that offering free shipping is the key to driving sales for your business because that’s what seems to have worked for you in the past. Your experience gives you the confidence that this is a universal truth. But what if your competitors are seeing better results by charging for shipping and focusing on offering premium services instead? Your view, though valid in your experience, might not be the norm – and you don’t know how atypical your experience is.

I see this phenomenon so often with small businesses. When I ask “What makes you (the firm) different?” owners almost always talk about those things they think are different and important to their success.

This doesn’t mean everyone in an industry should be thinking alike. There will be – and should be – a range of approaches taken. The problem I see is that small business owners don’t know if their thinking and approaches are mainstream, or if they are an unusual outlier.

This concept of not knowing if our views and approaches are unusual can play out across the various aspects of your business: everything from marketing strategies to customer service approaches. For example, you might think that your customers appreciate a laid-back, informal communication style because that’s what you prefer. However, what if your customers actually expect a more professional tone? Without testing the waters or gathering feedback, you might never know that your preference is an outlier.

One way this manifests is through something known as “false consensus bias.” This is the tendency for you to overestimate the degree to which others agree with your views and behaviours. It is normal to want to believe that we think is (for lack of a better term) normal, even when we think we are a rebel. For instance, if you’re an environmentally conscious business owner, you’ll typically assume that your customers share the same level of concern for sustainability. This might lead you to invest heavily in eco-friendly packaging and marketing, believing it to be a priority for your customer base. But unless you’ve actually surveyed your customers or analyzed the market, it’s possible that this isn’t a top concern for them at all. Your strong belief in sustainability might be more unique than you think.

The idea that we don’t always know if our views are unusual extends beyond customer expectations to how we approach leadership and management. Suppose you believe in a highly collaborative work environment because that’s what you thrive in. You might assume your team members feel the same way, but what if some of them prefer a more independent approach? Without understanding their perspectives, you might unknowingly create a work culture that doesn’t align with everyone’s preferences, potentially impacting productivity and job satisfaction.

So, what can you do to ensure that your views align with your customers, employees, and market? The key lies in being open to advice, feedback, and data. And you can’t be passive in these regards. You need to actively take advice, and regularly seek input from your customers, employees, and stakeholders. Take a look at feedback data (and if you don’t have any, look at how to get it). Feedback might come from surveys or focus groups, but can also come via conversations and responses to your firm’s social media posts. Use this input to understand different perspectives, to carefully validate your assumptions, while also allowing you to keep abreast with the views and opinions of those around you.

Small business owners are not good at asking for or receiving advice. Outside ideas are seen as “foreign,” generally because we take pride in the independence and personal touch that define our businesses. We believe that no one knows our business as well as we do, so why seek input from others? This mindset hampers our business, and constrains our opportunities. By isolating ourselves from external perspectives, we also reinforce our own sense of isolation as owners.

We risk becoming too set in our ways, potentially overlooking strategies or solutions that could significantly benefit our business. Considering outside ideas doesn’t mean you are relinquishing control of your business, and in no way diminishes your role as owner. It can provide ways of broadening your perspective and enhancing your decision-making.

Some of the approaches I have seen small business owners employ to get that outside input are:

• Develop an advisory board – two or three trusted colleagues to bounce ideas off on a regular basis, often over lunch or dinner.
• Find a mentor – someone with deep experience in business (not necessarily in your industry) to guide your development and ‘hold your feet to the fire’ as you make your way.
• Being a member of a business network.
• Having a trusted business coach.

I wouldn’t neglect reading and attending courses and seminars as idea sources either. One of the biggest benefits of doing an MBA is the network you build, and the exposure to a wide range of frameworks and ideas.

To thrive, you must resist your natural inclination to act in isolation, or to believe your way of thinking is how everyone thinks. Embrace the discomfort of outside ideas. Ask for advice. Stay curious.