Do you know what a dad discount is? Last week, my business partner's son asked me for advice. I gave him my honest thoughts. He lit up. "That's exactly what I'm going to do." His dad was sitting right there. He shook his head. "That's exactly what I told him." The son, without missing a beat: "No, you didn't say it like that." He was right about the words. I said it differently. The advice underneath was his dad's, and a change of phrasing was enough to make it land. That's the dad discount. Your advice gets marked down for the crime of being yours. Now quit laughing, because you run one at work. The founder who hires a consultant to say what her VP has been saying for two years. The maintenance director whose safety fix gets ignored until corporate sends a deck with the same fix on slide nine. Same idea both times. Different letterhead. There's a number on this. A Harvard Business School study ran identical advice past two groups. One paid for it, one got it free. The paid group put 72% weight on it. The free group, 43%. Free gets discounted. Familiar gets discounted harder. The markdown comes down to what it costs you to admit the source was right. Taking your dad's advice costs you a little independence. Taking your VP's costs you the story where you're the smartest one in the room. The consultant only costs money. That bill doesn't come out of your ego. So quit proving you're right. Make it cost them something, even if it's just a wait. Ask questions until they arrive there on their own. And say less. If you have an opinion on his car, his job, his girlfriend, and his gym routine, each one is worth less than the last. The people whose advice gets taken are usually the ones who rarely give it. You're running a printing press and wondering why the currency is weak. They'll tell you they thought of it. Let them. It was free advice anyway.