How to Deal with Feedback when Starting a Business
There are approximately 28 million entrepreneurs in the US. While this is an exciting statistic for our economy, anyone who has been in those shoes knows that entrepreneurship comes with unique challenges and unforeseen obstacles.
For most, the path to business ownership is paved with stories of labor and effort harder than one has ever known. It’s exciting and rewarding, but the spoils are hard earned. One of the biggest realities of entrepreneurship is that when it’s just you (or a small team), you have to feel more deeply. There isn’t a buffer of corporate brand or policy to stand behind. There usually isn’t a lot of room (budget wise) for mistakes. The stakes are high and the rites of passage, are important… and hard to internalize.
Being an entrepreneur is a raw, real, and a very personal experience. Which means receiving feedback is, well, hard. Dang hard. It could be a real estate broker who thinks your concept isn’t worth their time to help secure your space or an early news post generates some blazen comments from faceless Internet trolls. Feedback is hardest when it’s your business that you worked so hard to create.
Whether you’re getting disappointing feedback in your oral pitch or hearing that your biggest contract fell through due to something trivial, here are some proven strategies that entrepreneurs often employ to get by.
- Find ways to put distance between you and the feedback. Typical ways is the 3x3 or 5x5 philosophy (will this matter in 5 years, then don’t spend more than 5 mins on it); if you’re reading Yelp reviews, decide where the feedback is coming from and if it actually enhances your business plan (not you hard work); beyond that ask yourself how it aligns with your fundamental goals you set out for yourself. Be it both good and bad feedback, try on these:
- Ground yourself before receiving any feedback; envision the outcome either way and how you’ll cope in all scenarios.
- Accept you have no control over another’s thoughts or actions.
- Recognize this is a good opportunity for growth
2. Change your perspective: feedback can’t hurt you. If it’s not impeding your goals, it’s not worth your energy, and know that there’s more feedback coming so this shouldn’t be the thing that breaks you.
3. Embrace it — love it for the lesson, feel the stress (but don’t be the stress); see it as an opportunity to connect with the trigger, what makes it matter to you. And remind yourself of your goodness — you wouldn’t be exposing yourself to these depths if it weren’t for all the strides you made to get to this point. Be grateful. Remember that there were times of ease before this difficulty, and know this won’t be the last time you have to pause and reflect. Enjoy the highs and the lows for all the learning…and ways you get to reflect on your values they bring.
4. Plan to take action or make peace; do not read the feedback if it’s not the time to implement change (if the feedback is helpful). If it’s not relevant, commit to letting it go as not a match for your business.
Even with these hacks, entrepreneurs who can’t relate or bring some sort of appreciation to what the feedback may offer their evolution (because the belief in their concept or model is so deeply rooted), there still can enter the slightest bit of doubt in their subconsciousness. So, in all scenarios the key advice is to take measures to practice dealing with strong waves of emotion from feedback well before you need to. If you haven’t adopted a breathing practice by now to help when anxiety hits, please do: the urge to react rather than respond can derail precious productivity time. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction encourages you to rely on the breath in the normal course and when you need it, you’re already programmed to breathe so the urge to react passes. This practice alone can help you have the space to decide if you want to call deep on your strength or the ideas outlined here.
If you have other ideas on ways to handle feedback when your creation is being judged, please share in the comments.
ABOUT LYNDSEY DEPALMA
Lyndsey is a Business Sanity Specialist and writes on the human experience of doing business. She is a former independent retail business owner and consults on starting up and business operations. She recently published her first book Ready: What to Expect When Starting a Business. Lyndsey loves making the most of life experiences — this is often in the form of dancing, smelling (yes, really inhaling — she was likely a dog in a former life) and enjoying her family, including her two young sons.
