National Post (National Edition)
Ignore the armchair critics: Dealing with negativity
To start a small business you need a great idea, lots of passion and thick skin.
The latter is because as an entrepreneur you’ ll inevitably encounter negativity from people who say your business will fail, or others who criticize you as you build your brand and still others who resent your success as you grow.
I was the second employee at Sprouter, a social networking startup that was eventually acquired by Postmedia. We were no strangers to negativity. When an article about our launch was published in Mashable commenters said we would never make it. When we launched a Q&A section on the site people said we would never get successful entrepreneurs to answer questions for free (they answered thousands).
It seemed the more our network grew and the more we appeared in the press, the more people popped out of the woodwork to lend their two cents and criticize the company.
While I wanted to lash out at them and defend our work, Sprouter founder Sarah Prevette taught me a valuable lesson: Never feed the trolls.
The armchair critics are often people who judge from afar, don’t know the full story
It’s actually productive to get legitimate negative feedback
and are unlikely to change their opinion even if you address them.
So I started to ignore the negativity and focus on the positive things to be done; worrying more about how to expand the company than how I felt about a negative online comment.
This past week I encountered negativity aimed at me and my latest startup company from a prominent real estate industry pundit. As is my usual protocol for negativity, I wrote a succinct comment explaining my position, and then tuned it out.
Shortly after that I received a message from Kerri-Lynn McAllister, the chief marketing officer at mortgage rate comparison site RateHub, who told me she was the subject of a negative article written by the same person in the spring of 2013.
While large companies and public figures have vitriol directed at them online all the time, I was interested in finding out how small businesses, such as hers, deal with this negativity.
“If we’re dealing with negative press, either personally
or professionally, I try to ask myself three questions: Is the information being circulated incorrect? Is the source of the negativity a reputable one? And is this negative press going to affect your personal or company value?” McAllister said in an interview.
“If the answer to all three questions is ‘yes,’ then you have to take action and respond at the source of the conflict.
“In cases where only one or two are a ‘yes,’ the situation becomes more complex. It often makes sense not to respond, even if someone is making false claims, simply because the source is not credible or you may add fuel to the fire.” In the case of the article written about her and RateHub last year, McAllister said she chose not to engage in the conflict because she believed the author thrives on controversy.
There are a few rules of thumb for dealing with negativity online: If it’s a legitimate complaint/comment, address the person and then take the matter offline to find a solution.
As investor Dave McClure once said, “you can’t iterate around indifference, but you can around hate.” It’s actually productive to get legitimate negative feedback, because it will help you understand what your customers want, and will help you address bugs and other issues.
As McAllister says, if it’s baseless or unproductive negativity, often a response isn’ t necessar y, and commenting on it or calling it out will just draw attention to the person who posted it.
And when it comes to negativity, remember that it’s easier to be an armchair critic than an entrepreneur who’s building a business from the ground up.