Why I Surround Myself With People Who Disagree
Most of us think we picked our beliefs. We didn't. We inherited most of them.
A few years ago someone asked me a question I still think about. How do you come to your conclusions? How do you decide what you actually believe?
My answer was simple. I surround myself with people who think differently than me.
I meant it then. I mean it more now. And the longer I run this business, the more I see how much it shapes the decisions I make.
Agreement Feels Good. It Also Teaches You Nothing.
Here's the thing. If everyone in the room agrees with you, you're not getting smarter. You're getting comfortable.
Agreement feels good. Someone repeats your idea back to you and you feel sharp, validated, sure of yourself. But nobody grows inside an echo. You walk out of that room with the exact same thinking you walked in with.
The room that actually moves you is the one where someone says, "I'd do that completely differently." That's friction. And friction is the part that teaches you something.
"If everyone in the room agrees with you, you're not getting smarter. You're getting comfortable."
— Dr. Destini CoppMost of Your Beliefs Aren't Yours
Think about how beliefs actually form. Not through careful study. Through proximity. You tend to believe what the people around you believe. Your family. Your friends. The handful of accounts you read every morning.
Grow up around business owners and starting something of your own looks normal. Grow up around employees and a steady job looks like the only safe path. Same world. Different starting assumptions.
I see it in AI right now. One creator looks at it and sees a threat to everything they've built. Another looks at the exact same tool and sees a way to do the work of three people. Same technology. Different inherited story about what it means.
Most of us don't reason our way to those positions. We absorb them from the people nearby. Then we treat them like facts for years and never check them again.
To be fair, I've done this too. There are things I was once certain about that I'd argue the opposite of today. Not because someone talked me out of it. Because I got curious enough to look, instead of just defending the belief I already had.
This Is Why I Build My Events the Way I Do
When I pick speakers and contributors for Creator's MBA events, I'm not looking for people who sound like me. I'm looking for people who will push back.
Different models. Different opinions. Some of them run their business in ways I never would, and that's the point. I want you sitting in a room where not everyone on the lineup agrees. Where one speaker says do this and the next one says don't.
That's not a flaw in the programming. That's the programming. You don't need five people telling you the thing you already believe. You need the one person who makes you go, "Huh. I never looked at it that way."
The lineups are built on purpose with different voices, not matching ones. See what's coming up at Creator's MBA events →
It Matters Even More in a Room Like the Council
A peer group full of people who think exactly like you is a waste of money. You already know what you think. You don't need to pay to hear it again.
What you need is the person who looks at your business and sees the thing you can't. The pricing you keep flinching away from. The offer you're holding onto out of habit. The platform you won't leave because leaving feels scary.
In a room like the Creator's MBA Council, the disagreement is the product. The friction is the thing you're paying for. A peer advisor who runs a different kind of business, who thinks in a way you don't, is worth more than ten people who nod along with you.
That's the whole design. Put established creators in a room together, make sure they don't all think alike, and let them poke holes in each other's blind spots for a year. You can't do that in a room built on agreement.
The Three Questions I Run
So when I catch myself certain about something, especially in business, I run three questions before I move.
What would someone who disagrees with me say?
If I can't fairly argue the other side, there's a good chance I haven't looked at my own side closely enough. This one question has changed how I think about pricing, platforms, offers, and AI.
What am I treating as a fact that's really just a habit?
A lot of what runs a business isn't strategy. It's leftover habit. "We've always done it this way" is not a reason. It's a place to start asking questions.
If I started from scratch today, would I still believe this?
Some beliefs made sense five years ago and quietly expired. The market changed. The tools changed. The belief stayed. This question catches the ones that are past their date.
Most of the time, this exercise doesn't flip what I believe. It sharpens it. And at least then it's mine, instead of something I picked up from someone else and never checked.
Where Your Next Move Is Hiding
Here's the part that matters for your business.
Some of your biggest moves are sitting right behind a belief you've never questioned. A price you won't raise. A platform you won't leave. An offer you keep running because you always have. A story about what AI can or can't do that you absorbed from someone else and never tested.
You will not find those moves on your own. That's the catch. Your blind spots are blind to you by definition. You need someone who sees the world a little differently to point at the thing and say, "Why are you doing it that way?"
So find those people. Put yourself in rooms where not everyone agrees with you. Pick the event with the lineup that argues with itself. Join the group full of people who run their businesses differently than you run yours.
Then do the hard part. Actually listen.
That's how I roll. It's how I make decisions, and it's how I built every room I run.
Get In the Room That Doesn't Just Agree With You
The Creator's MBA Council is a premium 12-month peer-advisor room for established creators. Different models, different opinions, real friction. The kind that moves your business.
Explore the Council →Frequently Asked Questions
Because most of your beliefs come from the people around you, not from your own analysis. When everyone agrees with you, your blind spots stay hidden. People who think differently can see the things you can't, which is where most useful business decisions come from.
Run three questions. What would someone who disagrees with me say? What am I treating as a fact that's really just a habit? If I started from scratch today, would I still believe this? If you can't fairly argue the other side, you probably haven't examined your own side closely enough.
A peer group full of people who think exactly like you is a waste of money. You already know what you think. The value comes from the person who looks at your business and spots the thing you've missed. In a room like the Creator's MBA Council, the disagreement is the product.
The Council is a premium 12-month peer-advisor room for established creators. It's built on the idea that you grow faster with people who think differently than you, not people who echo what you already believe.
I look for different models and different opinions, not people who sound like me. The point of the lineup is to put creators in a room where not everyone nods, because that's where the real thinking happens.
