We both know I am not you. I never was and never will be. Yet, utterances of the form "If I were you, I would ..." are common. What do they mean? Why are they useful and how so? In this paper, we focus on the normative type of counterfactual conditionals with an identity statement (A.K.A. advice counteridenticals). Mainly, we answer the question as to how advice counteridenticals get to signal advice and therefore a direction for action on the part of the addressee, while at face value they appear to be descriptions of the speaker's actions in the given circumstance.