One of the biggest things that prevents a lot of people from really owning their message unapologetically?
A fear of trolls, haters, & critics.
Many new entrepreneurs fear that they’re not going to be seen as an expert and that people are going to judge them; that people are going to publicly call them out. We create this STORY even before it happens.
This fear of embarrassment and humiliation holds most people back from actually achieving excellence. Today, I’m going to give you some practical steps so that you know what to do when you encounter a troll. Or, when you’ve got somebody in your life who’s just not being that supportive person that you would hope they would be when you were working towards achieving success.
Or would you be like, “OK. Clearly that person is a little crazy…” You’d probably think they’re a lil crazy! But for some reason, when that stuff happens to us in the online space; when we do this live video and we pour our hearts out, and somebody writes something mean? It feels like the freaking end of the world!
We can literally ignore a hundred beautiful comments and inbox messages of people saying to us, “You’ve literally changed my life with this video / post!” … and all we can think about is that one flippin’ person.
Why do we do that to ourselves, right?
But, like with that homeless man’s comment, we don’t really take it in. We don’t really think much of it. It’s just a random person and so we go, “OK, that was weird.” I’ll give you an example.
Just the other day, somebody commented with a GIF on my video of this man with ginormous eyebrows with the comment, “This is all I see.” I laughed so hard! And why? Because I know I have big eyebrows. I know that they move sometimes when I talk. I’m OK with that! I’m not freaking out about that. And my followers don’t really care either. So, I laughed at it. I thought it was hilarious.
I wanted to share that with you because a lot of times people think, “Oh, well this person is successful so they don’t get any negative comments.” Yes I do! We ALL get them. It is a rite of passage.
Really, I think once you start to get some serious trolls, you’ve made it! If you’re getting trolls, you’re clearly getting people who are actually paying attention to your stuff. They are taking time out of their day to come and write something on your post. So you’ve got to celebrate that.
You’ve got to celebrate every single troll, especially the randos who will come on your post. What they’re saying is just nonsensical (“Show me your boobs!!” … and you think, “umm, what the hell is going on?”), and so we don’t really give it much attention. Those trolls are a little bit easier to ignore and filter out.
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But… then we get into the ones where people are being mean.
Maybe it’s a little bit passive aggressive. Maybe it’s a little bit manipulative. Maybe, this is somebody who you know or someone who has a real profile. They’re not even a troll, but they’re trolling you right now. And so you’re not sure why they’re taking time out of their day to do this.
You think, “Did I do something wrong? Is there something wrong with me?”
Like, if you’re a fitness coach, maybe they say something to you such as, “I don’t agree that that is the right way to build a booty.” Or they say your content could have been better. All of a sudden, we go into our head. “Oh my God what did I do wrong?” Those are the people who were kind of pulling at strings. Those comments can stick with us a little bit if there is some insecurity over what they have said.
If there’s some thought or fear in our subconscious that we believe might be true, and then a random person says it? It seems as if they’re confirming our biggest fear and then we can go into panic mode. So, they do this tiny little thing… and we freak out.
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That kind of troll is a medium-level anxiety.
The really bad trolls deliver full-blown character attacks.
One of my clients shared with me that a random girl reached out to her. A mutual friend of a friend inboxed her on Facebook with literally no prompting and said, “I was going to join your program in the next class. But, I see that you’ve upped your prices X amount.”
The girl then attacked my client’s character, attacked her integrity as a business owner, and then accused her of just wanting money. My client was upset, saying, “Can you believe she said that? Why would she say that? Does she even know who I am?” This client is probably the most integrity-based, loving, giving entrepreneur and coach that you will ever find anywhere! So, even if it was just such a bizarre comment, this was a full-blown character attack.
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We’re going to get into a little bit of where that was coming from. But, I want you to really understand the differences between the sliding scale of trolls; that some are worse than others. Some are easy to brush off, but there are definitely ways to filter ALL of them out so that they don’t take you down. Because, you can get one comment that could bring you down for a couple of days, or you could start doubting everything that you’ve created. And that’s just craziness.
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If you’ve gotten some kind of negative response or you’ve gotten some kind of troll, we have to take a look at what’s really happening for you. How are you responding to the troll? Are you being triggered by what has been said?
In the first example (my eyebrows), I wasn’t really triggered by that.
But, I also had another client whose brother told her that she should really wear some makeup on live video, and that that hit home for her. She was like, “I’m doing this wrong. Should I be wearing make up for my video?” And I had to reassure her that she was so gorgeous without makeup and did not need to fix anything.
I said, “That’s part of your brand. He’s not your ideal client. That’s very nice that he’s giving you some feedback, but you didn’t ask for it. It was so unsolicited.” Just like my client who had the character attack, they were both triggered.
Why were they being triggered and not wanting to put things out there? Wanting to hide away and soak in what was upsetting them? Really, your triggers are defined by your personal beliefs, perceptions, and experiences. It comes down to your ability to filter out the bullshit.
A psychology teacher in my high school would say, “I’m going to pull the bullshit cord on that.” He would mimic pulling a string from his back pocket and say, “Bullshit. I call bullshit.” So, anytime you have a troll or somebody who’s throwing you shade and you know it’s not true? Just pull the bullshit card.
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When I was reading “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz, it offered the metaphor that we have a wound on our skin. If you walk up to it and you stick your finger in it, it’s going to hurt. But so many of us are very surprised when we get triggered by different things that people say or do.
Because we have unhealed emotional wounds. Even though we can’t see it physically like we can on our skin, we have to take time to recognize it. We have to say, “OK, there is an unhealed part of me. There’s some belief that I have that’s not serving me right now. The belief is causing me to revert back to an earlier time in my life where something happened; where this negative belief developed. And I can make a new choice as a grown adult.”
By this I mean, when you were a young child, you were not fully cognitively developed to filter things out. As little kids, we think the entire world revolves around us. It’s not until a little bit later (after we hit the double digits) that we really start to develop that part of our brain where we can recognize that other people have problems.
So, until we get to that place, we’re little sponges and we take everything in as our responsibility. We are the ones at fault and we develop these limiting beliefs. So, when somebody presses on that emotional wound, we are triggered. Awareness is the first step to healing.
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In life, there are three types of people… critics, consumers, & creators.
We all have the capacity to be all three at different times, but which one are you the majority of the time?
If you’re reading this, you are being the consumer. Consumers want to learn and grow. But, I hope that you are also a creator. I don’t just mean a writer, a performer, a vocalist, a painter. You’re still a creator. And one of the best pieces of advice that I heard about being a creator is: when you put your work out there (live video, blog post, sharing your story), it is not your responsibility to babysit your work.
That means once you post it, let it go. As tempting as it is, do not be that person that has to go and look at what people wrote about the post. We want to look because we are looking for that significance.
We are looking to be praised. We are looking for that affirmation that what we did was good. But, when we do that, we create this need for people’s approval. And, if we don’t get the approval, “Well the post wasn’t any good.” “Well, the video is up, but nobody gave me a heart…..”
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Do you believe it was good?
Do you believe it was a piece of your heart?
What if it changed one person?
What if everybody loved it, but nobody commented on it. Is it still crap?
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Your responsibility as a creator is not to babysit your work. It’s to create it. That’s why you were put on this freaking earth.
Stop wasting energy on things that aren’t filling you up.
When I used to perform a professional actor, I was very used to going into audition rooms to be critiqued. You would walk in, and they would make a judgment about fitting the role. You’re either too skinny, too fat, too much of a soprano, too much of a belter, too short, too tall, not pretty enough, too classical looking, too Disney looking.
There’s a million things separating you into a million categories, and it’s so easy to feel like you’re not enough. But have you ever seen a Broadway show? Performers are pouring out their hearts and souls, with years of mastery and work.
And it’s so easy for someone who’s NOT the creator of the work to say, “Well I loved the costumes but I didn’t like the way that one guy sang that song.” I see some big Broadway commercials interviewing the audience and I want to shake these people because they’re just not realizing the impact that they have on someone else’s energy. So this is like a whole other lesson: be careful with your words. Be careful what you say.
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Going back to what triggers you:
Ask yourself first and foremost, where is this coming from? Why is this person suddenly coming to your content to attack it? Are they trying to be malicious, or are they trying to help? Are they trying to be supportive? Is there any truth to anything that they have said? This is definitely something that’s difficult for those of you who are building your own businesses. When you you get a message, an e-mail, a comment… it feels very personal because it’s your work.
You’re the face of your brand. You can’t hide behind anything else. It’s you. So, I would recommend having a team or an assistant who can first go through some of your comments or at least your e-mails. You don’t want to be the first person to be taking that, so let your team handle it.
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If someone reaches out to you and says that they hated your course because they didn’t learn anything new….
Well, is that true?
You may end up going into the backend of your membership site, and you may see that they’ve only gone through the welcome video. Maybe they haven’t even gotten through the first week of content. You can dig deeper with them, saying, “Hey, we checked behind the scenes and we saw that you didn’t actually go through any of the content.
So, what’s really happening?” Often, it’s really nothing to do with you (unless of course you’re being a sleazy salesperson and you have no integrity in your business. In that case obviously there’s some work to be done). If there’s some truth to what they’re saying, you can do some work on that as well.
But if there’s not, really read between the lines. What are they really after and what has led this person to have this perception? “Well, I was busy and I don’t have time for this. And I have a fear of building a business and I don’t think I’m going to be successful because I don’t think I’m enough.”
If that’s the truth, it has nothing to do with your course. There’s always another story. There are always multiple layers to what’s really going on. What we need to be as business owners are full on psychologists. We need to remove any of our own personal feelings and emotions from it.
When we get super logical about what we are reading, we can recognize if their intention here was to attack, to get their money back, to make us feel low enough so that we just give into those demands. People are going to try different tactics to get what they want.
That being said, when people are just being nasty, the goal there is that they’re probably chasing some kind of significance. Their sole goal is to get a rise out of you because they might feel invisible.
First of all: you can always delete the negative comment. Secondly, you can always solve it. Everything has a solution, right? And, finally, if you’re freaking out at something a troll said, remember: you’ve got people who are your lifers. Your followers have your back. So, when a troll posts on your stuff, all of your tribe members come to support you.
When they come to support you and they defend you, it builds traction and engagement on your video and on your content. So, thank you trolls! Thank you for helping my people re-establish their faith in me, and thank you for boosting my Facebook algorithm (because we all know the Facebook algorithm is hard enough as it is). Thanks for having my back!
If you’re not already inside the Facebook group Online Coaches Manifest and Monetize, come on over hang out with me!
