“Never ask advice of someone with whom you wouldn’t want to trade places.”

That’s a Darren Hardy quote.

Obviously there are exceptions. You may not want to trade places with your mechanic, but you’d want their advice about that new clunking sound in your engine. But if you trim “advice” down to just “advice about your life” then it’s clearer.

Of course, step zero is to decide what you want. I just rambled about that for myself yesterday. Without knowing what you want, how could you decide if you’d trade places with someone?

Would I want to trade places with my boss? With my CTO? With the smart person from the podcast last week who maintains that popular open source project? With my retired uncle who spends his days sailing? With my dirt poor friend in Arkansas who is the happiest person I know? Or maybe even with myself from 5 or 10 or 20 years ago, back when things were simpler?

Who would you trade places with? Do you know?