You can’t talk to summer insects about winter
Why copying someone else’s business shortcut rarely works
There’s a line often attributed to the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi:
You can’t talk to summer insects about winter.
A creature that lives only through the warm months has no reference point for cold. Winter isn’t something it misunderstands — it’s something it has never experienced.
I think about this often when I see people looking for business shortcuts, cheat sheets, or “the exact process” that worked for someone else.
Not because that instinct is wrong.
But because what’s usually being offered is missing a season.
Why other people’s business shortcuts don’t translate
When someone shares their business success story, they usually share the end of a long process.
The framework.
The steps.
The lessons learned.
What’s harder to see is what came before that success:
- failed attempts
- slow skill-building
- decisions made without certainty
- confidence built through experience, not instruction
That part — the part that makes the process work — rarely fits into a checklist.
Context matters more than the process
A business process that worked for one person worked in a specific context:
- a particular market
- a specific moment in time
- their prior experience and network
- constraints they had already learned to work with
When you try to copy the steps without sharing the context, you’re often trying to recreate an outcome without the conditions that made it possible.
It’s like planting something grown in summer into frozen ground and expecting it to thrive.
The hidden risk of relying on shortcuts
Business shortcuts often promise to save time. What they can do instead is encourage people to skip the very experiences that help them become confident decision-makers.
The uncertainty.
The trial and error.
The process of understanding how your business actually works.
Without this foundation, it’s harder to adapt when something changes — because you’ve learned the steps, not the thinking behind them.
Business readiness isn’t about speed
This is why one-size-fits-all business advice can be unhelpful, particularly for women who are still thinking about starting a business.
Readiness doesn’t come from following the right process.
It comes from understanding enough to make your own decisions.
Sometimes that leads to starting a business.
Sometimes it leads to deciding not to — or not yet.
Both can be sensible, time-saving outcomes.
Learn from others, but build your own season
The point of the summer insect metaphor isn’t to dismiss learning from other entrepreneurs. It’s to recognise the limits of borrowed experience.
Other people’s stories can be useful reference points.
They just can’t replace your own thinking.
Rather than searching for the perfect shortcut, focus on building clarity, confidence, and practical readiness for the season you’re actually in.
That’s slower than copying someone else’s process — but it’s how you end up ready to run a business, not just follow instructions.
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