How To Manage Haters When Building a Business – Episode 9

The Boss Life Podcast takes on haters in this weeks Monday episode! If you are building a business, you will deal with haters at some point, and Miguel and Erin Carrasco are full of strategies to help you not only get through but learn to appreciate the haters in your life.

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Resources From Today’s The Boss Life Podcast

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Three Key Boss Points From Today’s Podcast

• Haters are actually talking about their insecurities and trying to make them yours.
• Having Haters simply means you are doing something right.
• Block haters and just move on. You don’t need that in your life.

How To Manage Haters When Building a Business Transcription

In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how to manage haters when building a business.

Okay. First of all, I got to say this, Erin. Congratulations! You are building a business because you have a hater. That is absolutely incredible. I love this topic. I’m so fired up talking about it because you know what? When you have a hater, you got to realize something. That means you are putting content out there. You are doing things that is bringing people towards you that you want, but it’s also bringing people towards you maybe that you don’t want in your circle or they’re feeling your vibe and it is scaring their very existence.

So, Erin, let’s dive into this topic. I’m really excited about it. Why don’t you kick us off and get us out with some strategies on how to deal with haters.

I think that when anybody starts a business, whether the hater is a Facebook troll, Instagram troll, or somebody that you don’t know and they’re critiquing something that you’ve maybe put your heart and soul into, or-

Your heart and soul.

Your heart and soul, or your appearance, or anything else like that. The biggest tip and the hardest thing to do is don’t engage with the hater.

What do you mean? I put my little heart out there. It’s my little heart. I took it out of my body and I put it on social media. And like-

There’s this GIF-

No one should starve it.

… of Kermit the frog madly typing. I don’t know if you guys have ever seen that GIF. It’s my favorite one for when you’re responding to someone who’s commented negatively on your stuff and you’re typing with purpose trying to think of the best response.

Typing with purpose.

I think when you look at this, we all want to defend our craft, right? We all want to defend our content or our pouring out of our heart and soul. And so what we do, we’re like, “Yeah, I’m going to put them in their place and I’m going to do this.” But here’s what I know for sure. They are never going to change their mind or their opinion based on what you say back to them.

It’s so true. I mean, you’re going to just fire them up, really.

Yeah. They’re not interested in changing it.

Understand a hater is typically someone… And if you’re a hater, you’re going to agree with me because I bet you we have haters this minute.

I’m sure.

So welcome haters. We’re excited.

Hey baby.

No, I’m kidding. Hopefully you [inaudible 00:02:42]. But here’s the thing. Typically a hater, what they’re doing is they’re typically not doing anything of value, they’re not creating anything on their own. And so they sit there and social media and Facebook and all these things have made it so easy for people to just sit there, people that are like this, and just poo-poo on anyone’s parade. Anyone that’s happy, anyone that’s excited, anyone that’s changing the world in any way, all they want to do is poo-poo on your parade and that makes them feel good.

And if you don’t engage with them, then you take away their power, right? But if you engage in them, then they get more riled up and then they start writing a response back to you. And really at the end of the day, what are you getting out of it? All you’re getting out of it is you’re going to lose two, three, four hours of your life, think about it that way, that you could have spent with your kids.

I mean if you’re building a business, a big struggle is time, right? I don’t want to time away from my family. Then why would you give time from your family to a hater? Think about it that way next time. If you engage the hater, you are taking away an hour or four hours from your life that you will spend with your children, your kids, your spouse. Why on Earth would you do that just to make someone else happy and let them know that they got the best of you? Sorry, this topic… Fire me up!

No, I was about to say the same thing. Basically the moment you want to engage, I think you have to look at, you can either do good things with your time or you can be wasteful with your time. And so if you are responding to a hater, you’re being very wasteful to your time because there are people who still need your attention and this is not one of them. So you control your social media, ban them, delete them, block them, get rid of the troll. They’re never going to… say you’re selling something, those people are never going to buy your product.

Yeah. My favorite thing is blocking like I have blocked people, no problem. I have a huge list of people that I blocked because it’s not that I don’t want to not see them ever again. It’s just that I’ve made a rule in my life. I’ve worked really, really hard. Erin’s worked really, really hard to get to a point where we’re at where we’re very, very positive people. Everyone we surround ourselves with, very positive people. So we just don’t allow any negativity into our lives. And if you bring it, you’re gone.

Yeah, we’re very intentional.

Peace out!

We’re very intentional with who we surround ourselves with.

Okay, so here’s the question.

What if it’s family?

Yeah, what if it’s your family? [inaudible] is you. What if it’s a family member that’s hating on you? Like a cousin, a spouse.

If you are starting to post on social media and you’ve got your family and they’re used to you doing a certain thing and you’ve changed the thing that you do on social media, you might get some flack from your family, or your close friends, or all that kind of stuff. And there’s a story. I’m going to tell a little story. So when Miguel started to build one of our businesses, five, six years ago, he was this computer guy and he started posting all this fitness stuff and I was getting messages from people saying like, “Aren’t you a little embarrassed? Doesn’t he post too much of that stuff? It’s just really annoying.” And so remember I wasn’t super supportive at the very beginning.

And it was family.

Yeah, it was family and it was really close friends, people we hung out with.

You know what I did? Well, you didn’t… I blocked.

I was like, “No.” And so of course being I was super… I was insecure about it. It was my issue. And so I told him. I’m like, “Do you know what all these people are saying about you?” And you know what he did? And this was great. He’s like, he blocked them. And it really kind of made me realize this was not going away, this passion that he had, this business he was trying to build. This was not just some side thing. He was super into it. And I still had to work with this person. It was super uncomfortable for me, but he took a stand.

And the reality too is like, when it comes to family, I want to be clear, you might be thinking, “Well you see you’re telling me that block my family.”

No, no, we’re not necessarily saying that.

But it could get to a point where you do. I want to be real. I don’t want to just say what’s popular. What I will say on that is that if I have blocked certain family members… most of them I’ve unblocked afterwards because they understood it. Right? So what they need to understand is what they don’t get sometimes is that social media to me is I’m building a business, okay? I’m not going on there and posting cat photos of my cute little cats. And anyway-

I love cats.

You love cats. And I will once in a while show behind the scenes, but for me it’s a business, right? And so is there a trolling me like my family is trolling me or saying something and to be clear, my family… This is his podcast. I’m not talking about my immediate family whatsoever, but what I do want to say is that it doesn’t matter. It’s a best friend. I remember a best friend I had to block, okay? I had to block them because… and they actually messaged me, they’re like, “Hey, why did you block me?”

And I said, “Well, you’re posting negative stuff on my business.” And they’re like, “Well yeah, I think it’s ridiculous. You should allow me to voice my opinion.” I’m like, “No, I shouldn’t. This is my business page. This is my area where I’m posting and if you don’t want to support me and build this up with me, I value your opinion, that’s great that that is your opinion, but that’s not my opinion. My opinion is that I can change the world and make people healthier with this business that I’m doing and that’s what I’m about to do. And whether you support me or not, I hope you get that. If you don’t want to support me and you’re going to do things like that, then you’re blocked. And if you’re just going to stay out of it, I validate your opinion. That’s great. That’s your own opinion. But it’s not mine. So it’s up to you. If you can keep out of it and not be negative to me, I’ll unblock you. But if you don’t think you can, then you’re going to stay blocked.”

And I think also, let’s just touch upon this, if it’s family, you can have a conversation. I highly encourage you. If you know mom is commenting negative stuff on your stuff, have a conversation with mom. Tell her, “I’m posting on social media to build my business.” So some of that stuff, it’s going to be marketing, right? And let them know that’s the purpose of what you’re doing. So sometimes it’s just that they don’t understand. And in the end guys, if uncle Joe doesn’t support what you’re doing, uncle Joe is not your target audience.

It’s not. And sometimes you will have to explain those things. And to be super clear our family has been super supportive of all of our businesses. And actually my mom even, she was one of the first ones subscribe to the podcast. She sent me a little screenshot, which is pretty cool.

Yeah. Our moms are super supportive of what we do.

You will probably see all comments from our moms. So that’s really, really awesome. So I wanted really talk about your baggage in this because a lot of the times the stuff that’s going to really hurt the most, a haters attack, it’s going to be your insecurities or your baggage.

That’s so true.

And that’s why it hurts, is that if you’ve got some limiting beliefs or insecurities in your personal life that you haven’t had a chance to work on or even if you are working on them, if someone attacks those parts of you, that’s going to sting the most.

It’s true. And I think [inaudible] this is why listening to podcasts, personal development is so key, that’s another episode, but because you’ve got to build up that brain power, right? Because at the end of the day, you’re only as powerful as your brain. And so as an example, going back to the haters that we were getting, I mean when I started, I had people all over the place because I was doing really well, Erin’s doing really well, corporate jobs. And people were like, “Why are you doing this thing? It makes no sense.” To the point where I was getting hate mail. At one point, when I actually left my full-time job, within a week I had one of my best friends who I thought that was like a colleague, he sends me a photo… actually it’s funny… sends me a photo of the car… somehow I guess he was driving, and he saw a photo of the BMW that I used to drive at the time with like a Domino’s pizza delivery sign on it. And so he sent me a photo of the BMW with the Domino’s delivery and he’s like-

Not that there’s anything wrong [crosstalk 00:10:29]-

No, there’s nothing wrong with Domino’s delivery. There’s nothing wrong with it. But though it was the intent in which it was done.

Absolutely.

So the intent in which it was done was it was sent and I remember it was with a message, was like, “Oh, I guess things aren’t going so well with that. Let me know when you want me to get your desk ready.” Right? Again, nothing wrong when delivering Domino’s pizza. I would do it if I needed it to fund my business. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, but the intent in which it was done, right? Was to try and hurt me. Right? But to me, that didn’t affect me whatsoever. Right? All I said to him was like, “Oh, that’s hilarious. That’s awesome.” But then I gave them no ammunition. For most of you either you’re not there yet, so you’re way better off just ignoring.

Yep. I don’t even respond to that stuff.

Don’t even respond to it. But once you build up that muscle and once you have that belief… When we were doing the free fit clubs, we had a personal trainer at one point, basically try and sue us, send me a letter without suing, but basically the letter said, “If you don’t stop these free fit clubs, I’m going to get you shut down.” And at the end of the day it was because they were afraid that-

We were going to take their business.

We were going to take their business. Right? They were charging insane amount of dollars for personal training when here we were offering something that was next to nothing. And so people were jumping all over it and it was changing communities and it was awesome. And that movement had to be stopped by a hater or at least they wanted to try and they weren’t able to, right? Funny story, that hater actually ended up joining us about a year later.

Guys, sometimes that does happen, but I don’t want you to not block them or not engage with them in hopes that maybe one day they will. And one thing I will just say on this is that sometimes the stuff that you are posting or sharing is going to make someone feel like they are not doing enough because you are doing more than them. And that’s not necessarily all on you. I think that sometimes the haters that are talking about what you’re doing, they’re talking about themselves. It’s a reflection on themselves and we might feel like it’s a personal attack, but it’s more about what they’re not doing in their life that you are doing in yours.

Yeah. So I mean if you think about it this way, a lot of times the reason haters will engage with you is because you’re proving that there’s another way. And when you prove to people that there’s another way and they realize that there is another way and they should be taking action, right? So let’s say you start a business and it starts to succeed or you start a podcast and it takes off, right? Then you have all these other people that maybe hadn’t thought of the idea of doing a podcast or doing all these things, well they’re going to come out of the woodwork and they’re going to hate on it. Not because they hate your podcast, not because they hate your new business, just because what it says about them, it says that they haven’t been able to take the action in order to make it happen.

And sometimes what will happen is that they will feel like maybe you’ve done it a different way and they will feel like you are insulting the way they’re choosing to do their life. And even though that’s not your intention, sometimes they will feel attacked that you feel that your way is like that… when you’re posting about a different way that you’re attacking the way that they’re living their life, which is not ever the case, right? But it’s the way that they are taking on what you’re doing. If you’ve ever heard that analogy, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this, is that when you have crabs in a bucket and one crab tries to get out of the bucket, all of the crabs will pull that one back in because they’re trying to do something different and that’s not what the group does.

That’s true. They don’t. And so you got to be really cognizant of that. One thing I want to go back on the whole baggage thing, and I’m not going to go in a lot of detail, and I think we’ll do a podcast specifically-

Getting rid of your baggage.

Getting rid of your bag.

Yeah, I like that.

And the reason I wanted to go back to it is understand that one of the biggest things as well that we didn’t want to dive into too deep on this podcast to deal with haters is getting rid of that baggage. If you think about it this way, if you were to have, let’s say, I don’t know, 20 bags with you and let’s say that’s all bags that you’re carrying and you were trying to get in an airplane with 20 bags. I mean these days, you get one bag, I mean you don’t even get to carry-on anymore. I was trying to get on a plane the other day and they were like, “Is that your carry-on, sir?” “Yeah.” “We have to tag it.” Like, “Why are you tagging my carry-on?”

Because now they are telling you where to put it.

Yeah. Now you can’t even get on a plane with a carry-on without it being tagged potentially going under the thing. There’s so many rules. You can basically bring a little bag and that’s it. And so that’s kind of how if you look at that plane being the plane to success, right? You can’t have massive success with 20 bags of baggage. They will not let you on that plane to the successful promised land. And so then the big reason for that is like, for example, if you believe you’re not good looking enough for video, if you believe that your audio sounds terrible for podcasting, if you believe that maybe you’re just not smart enough, or maybe you believe you know enough about a certain topic, but there’s too many people already that talk about a topic.

If you believe all those things or you believe you are overweight, whatever it may be, you’re not smart at math… If you believe those things, if a hater attacks you on any of those things, or if something doesn’t work out for you, you’re going to take that so personal that it’s going to really bring you down and you might not be able to get out of it. Right? And in business, it’ll just happen. And business is all about failing as fast as possible. Right? And so when we talk about that baggage podcast that you’ll see coming up in a couple of episodes, make sure you listen to it because we’re going to give you key strategies on how to get rid of all of that baggage.

I love it. I love it. And so one of the last things I want to really talk about is that you’re going to get haters. If you start putting out the right content and you get a hater-

I don’t like it Erin.

… I want you to pat yourself on the back. You are on the right track, okay?

You suck. You suck.

I love it. I love it.

I hate it.

Okay. So even when we were doing our live to launch our podcasts, we had some weirdo jump on in and said that I was wearing binoculars.

Why were you wearing binoculars?

That was one of my insecurities. It could have totally thrown me off.

I had someone come on and say I was hot.

You are hot. Anyways, but I want you guys to realize that if you get a hater, find a way to turn that into content and promote your business because that means you’re moving away from the people who are not part of your circle into the people that you want to attract. Right? Thank them for being a hater because now you know you’re on the right track and it takes away their power. I remember there was one video I did and someone was attacking my weight and I screenshot the photo or the comment and I made a post about it because so many times we let all of these insecurities govern how we run our business. And if you allow the hater to do that, it takes away your power. So I’m going to move into the challenge now and today is a special day because I’m going to let Miguel give you the challenge.

So today’s challenge is almost like a future challenge. Hopefully. I mean, It might happen you today, so the next time that you get a hater and you’ll know, right? Because you’re going to get all fired up and you’re going to be all upset that you got a hater. Next time that happens I want you to think back at this podcast. I want you to think back at this podcast and maybe even save this podcast for later so that you have it noted somewhere to come back to this podcast. And then I want you to use what we taught you in this podcast. We’ve taught you so many things in here, so many valuable things. Maybe what I want you to do is next time you get a hater, listen to this podcast again because this is going to really help you power through that hater. And in a lot of ways, take advantage of that. And by all means, the first thing I want you to do once you get the hater, be like, “I got a hater. I am taking action. I’m starting to live the boss life. I’m now a boss. I’ll go listen to that podcast again to get fired up. And I did it. I completed the challenge.” So that’s my challenge to them today.

Yeah, bosses don’t engage. Okay guys? So I want you to remember, you’re like, “I’m a boss now.”

Bosses dominate. So with that, we want to make sure that you ditch the employee mindset.

And start living the boss life.

We will see you in the next episode.