8 massive benefits for businesses that have haters and critics.
This is the ultimate guide to dealing with haters – all in under 1400 words.
Notice that many successful people have haters?
Maybe haters caused the success as opposed to were an effect or result of that success?
You need to reframe your mind to crave the haters as opposed to coming up with things to tell yourself to make it not hurt your feelings such as:
“Don’t let it bother you.”
“They’re just jealous.”
“They hate their life and are losers.”
The reason these things don’t work to make you immune from the fear of haters is because they’re not always true. I don’t like certain business leaders at all for a variety of reasons unnrelated to their message. Their voice, their body movements, their questions, their laugh – I hate it all. But I don’t “fear their success” or need to “pull them down to my inferior levels by insulting them” or whatever reasons that can be real causes for haters to act out. Since I sound like a hater, but don’t fall into the descriptions of a hater, it breaks the efficacy of just insulting the hater to make yourself feel better.
Therefore, this is what happens when you read a mean ‘hater’ comment:
1 – Down deep you know that the hater isn’t always just “some jealous troll,”
2 – Which makes you stop believing all the mean things you tell yourself about haters
3 – Which makes you start to believe the haters instead
4 – Which makes you upset / sad.
Reality tends to be the most believable thing – and the reality is NOT that trolls are all “just jealous losers.”
Sometimes we just don’t resonate with people – that’s ok, and that’s why precisely we need to see your message / product out there.
Haters are the reason why you should still do something, even though it’s already being done.
But fear of haters is in our DNA – if you were in a small tribe a lot of outspoken people hated you, you were likely going to end up dead. Now, having haters can make you rich instead of making you dead.
All these things are pieces of advice to help you “cope” with hate critics and haters. Instead of trying to figure out how to make everyone happy and love you (last guy that tried that ended up dying on a cross), or trying to tell yourself that you don’t care (which rarely works), you can shift your mindset a bit. Both critics and haters are valuable in different ways:
Critics help you with logical problems: “Your book is full of typos!” “Your facts are wrong.” “You misquoted someone – check your sources, idiot!”
How nice of them to take time out of their day to ‘complain’ that the books facts were all wrong. Now you know better and it didn’t even cost a penny! Jeff Walker, a master of product launch marketing, recently interviewed Tony Robbins. At 50 minutes in the video, Tony claims that the word “lunatic” originated 100 years ago by people saying it was crazy that we could fly to the moon. The reality is “lunatic” has been used in the Bible, ancient Greece, etc. A critic does the research on the word to point out Tony’s inaccuracy. Now Tony is more knowledgeable moving forward and I’ve squandered 20 minutes of my day researching it to give my conclusion wrapped up in a 10 second bite for him via my YouTube comment.
No one wants to be a critic about a hobo’s terrible hair style – they’re a lost cause. But a critic pointing out a missed spot on a model is indicating that person being critiqued has hope to improve.
People love to point out what’s wrong; let them, as it’s the easiest / cheapest way to get better.
If you’re not getting critics, you’re not publishing / marketing enough of your works yet. However, maybe your works are flawless and all those critics actually love everything you do. Maybe that’s great, but maybe it’s just because you’re not pushing yourself to grow by doing things you may not be as awesome at.
Haters help you with the emotional side of your brand.
Seth Godin mentions he doesn’t read any of the reviews of his books on Amazon. It’s not because he doesn’t care about the opinions of anyone else, it’s because he doesn’t care about opinions of strangers and has general disdain for the general public’s opinion. Seth is writing books that publish to the masses, but I don’t believe he thinks his works are truly for the masses. They’re for the elite business leaders looking to get even a further edge, and I’m sure he’s interested in the opinions of those peers.
The 1 star reviews on Seth’s books aren’t because of factual issues (ie the book isn’t organized, plagiarized material, etc), they’re rating it poorly because they don’t “get it.” They’re haters. And Seth isn’t going to soften his message enough to be accepted by everyone. Haters let you know that you’re doing something that matters enough to have an emotional charge behind it, because usually when they’re someone that hates, there’s someone else that loves. Haters love to latch onto meta or tangential aspects. Adele’s product is music, but a hater will latch onto tangential ideas, “I never knew cows could sing so well!” Even Ed Sheeran said he’d see YouTube comments saying mean stuff about his awful hair would upset him for days.
Immunity from haters comes from knowing your product and not caring about opinions not related to that product.
His product isn’t a good head of wavy locks – it’s music. Now if someone said they hated the way he played, this might be valuable for him to consider whether he wanted that person as a fan or not.
The emotional reaction to Ed and Adele’s looks isn’t what they’re trying to sell. But the good and bad news is that we’re almost always selling emotions.
Would Adele have done as well if she looked like Brittney Spears? All those songs about jilted lost love might not be so relevant and congruent with the song writer being exceedingly hot.
Haters come mostly when brands are people, meaning basically any celebrity (musician, public business leader like Elon Musk, actor, politician, etc).
Those neck tattoos you saw on some guy that you hate? Someone else absolutely loves them. Hate is also much more vocal than Love. If you’ve got 5 haters, it’s likely that you have 25 fans. This is great to know that you’ve very likely got some major fans that are simply staying quiet and also that you’re creating something emotionally powerful enough to warrant a hater.
Finally, I saw an ad for a marketing agency that said, “We’re a real agency, not someone ‘in their garage'” This is a direct stab at Tai Lopez that released an insanely viral ad (~70 million ad views as of 2018) that which showed him in a garage full of nice cars and books. Haters of Tai will resonate with this and be drawn to new advertiser though. This shows a massive opportunity in general, which is…
If someone has a ton of haters, they want that product / message to come to them in some different way (a new person saying the same thing but with a slightly different spin).
Therefore see the following truths:
- If you’ve got one outspoken hater, there’s probably 5x more fans out there being quiet.
- If you’ve got one hater, you know you’re creating a product that inspires emotion, which is needed for strong fans.
- Watching haters hate usually tells you the industry is good (it’s got an emotional audience) and is ripe for a new competitor.
- Haters force you to get extreme clarity on what your product is and more importantly, what your product is NOT.
- Critics imply that you have hope for improvement and not a lost cause.
- Critics are the cheapest way to get proof readers, fact checkers, etc.
- Critics tell you that you’re likely marketing well.
- Critics help you find ways to continuously improve yourself.
TruthCake Chapter 5, Verse 44: “But I say unto you, Love thy haters as thyself.”
