Fitness Business School – Dealing With Criticism

Full Transcript

Hey Pat Rigsby here. And in this episode, I want to talk with you about criticism. I want to talk with you about having a thick skin and why it is a must as a business owner. So let’s get to it.

Welcome to the fitness business school with Pat Rigsby, the podcast for fitness entrepreneurs who want to make more income, have greater impact, and enjoy more freedom in their ideal business. If you’d like an accelerated route to these goals, email me at [email protected] and put BGA in the subject line and I’ll get you all the details about our business growth accelerator program.

One of the biggest challenges I see with business owners is how thin skinned they tend to be on average, how, how they tend to take a lot of things. Personally, they take email unsubscribes personally. They take cancellations very personally. And I understand to an extent, especially with something like cancellations, because we are such a relationship centric business. We are people, the people that care about other people’s success and well being and, and really you know, connect with the people that we serve. At least if we’re doing it the right way. So when somebody leaves, we take it personally, we take it is this shot against us that they don’t like us, that they don’t see what we do as valuable instead of realizing that, you know, it’s about them, things change things, you know, priorities, change schedules, change people’s interest in desires, changed their willingness to commit to something multiple days a week and paying for it and getting up at five in the morning to come in to exercise all that stuff. It’s flexible for them, right? Like it’s going to change sometimes for reasons the, that we understand and accept.

And sometimes for reasons that, you know, we feel like are just an excuse and that’s when we take it personally, but you know, let’s face it. If, if we’re going to be a business owner and not be miserable, we have to be okay with some criticism. I mean, I get people that email me, you know, it probably happens every other month. I get somebody who replies to an email and really it is profane and aggressive and rude to me. You know, dropping F bombs, calling me names, things like that. And you know, it it’s, it’s strange. It it’s, frankly, it’s really very strange, right? At the end of every email there, if you scroll to the bottom, there’s an unsubscribe link. People manually opted in, we didn’t opt anybody into the mail list on their behalf. They did it. And with a couple of clicks of the button, they can unsubscribe. But instead they take the time to open an email and type something mean and aggressive and rude. And, you know, I mean, I’ll admit it, stuff like that got under my skin a long time ago. And now it in, in a probably twisted sort of way, it actually makes me kind of happy because I understand, I believe what Aristotle said, right? To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing be nothing. And let’s face it with those people who were saying that stuff to me, I didn’t subscribe to their newsletter, read it. Okay. They gave me their time and when somebody leaves great, they’re, they’re solving the problem in advance right there. My person they’re saying, you know what, we’re a bad fit. And that makes me happy. Maybe not the way that we arrived at them getting to be a bad fit, but I only want to connect with people who are good fit.

And you know, now at this point, I don’t know. I don’t ever look at unsubscribes personally, unless somebody replies and says unsubscribed me or says something like that. I just, I don’t check those stats because I’m interested in the people who do want to hear what I have to say. I’m interested in the people who do want to potentially work together. Do you want to work together? And you know, I would encourage you to, to feel the same way, because I’m going to guess that if you go out in your town, and this is a conversation that Holly and I used to have, when we first got started with the online side of business, she had this really big email list of over 50,000 people. And invariably there would be people who’d unsubscribed. There’d be, people who’d be rude to her or whatever else I’m like, okay. So 50,000 peoples bigger than the town we were living in at that point. And so if we go to Walmart or they’re going to be people that you wouldn’t want on your email list at Walmart, if we go anywhere around this town, are we probably going to find people you, you would say, Hey, that’s not my potential client. That’s not my person. And of course the answer was yes. Right? And those people, you know, we, we have our own kind of community unity, our own virtual city, if you will, those exist online too. They’re not our people.

And that’s okay. Let, if somebody else wants to raise their hand and kind of go back to the, the phrase that I kind of subscribed to very regularly, if someone shows you who they are, believe them, be okay with that. And then if somebody leaves the, that you’re training or coaching, maybe it’s okay to be a little bit more sensitive to that, but understand that we each make decisions in our own best interest all the time. There are things that you or I do on a daily basis that may not make sense to other people. Like there are plenty of things professionally that I choose to do. I do a lot of stuff that is more family oriented. That for people who are the hustle and grind mindset that think that you need to be working 15 hours a day and everything should be tunnel-visioned business first, it would make no sense to them. Well, great. They’re living their life, I’m living. And they made, I take it personally that I don’t want to buy their, their approach to business or the way that, you know, the, the way that they market, the way that they sell, the way that they operate.

But I’m never making it that decision based on them. I’m making it based on me. Where do I need to be right now? What is important to me right now? What are my values? What are my priorities? And I think we would be well-served to, to understand that when people leave and obviously a lot of people had clients leave during the pandemic. And we might’ve taken that personally, knowing that man, they had their own stuff and we’re having to deal with all sorts of things themselves. So, you know, be okay with the mindset that you can’t build your ideal business, trying to be all things to all people, okay, you got to go be the right solution, the right coach, the right problem solver, the right mentor for the right people. And you may have to cast a bit of a wide net to start to attract people that might be the right person. And then it’s a filtering process. You’re sifting. You’re, you’re putting your message out there consistently. And some people are going to say, no, that’s not for me. And some people are going to say, yes, that’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. Don’t be mad at the ones who it’s not for them. Say, thank you for giving me a shot and move on and get back to that kind of a tried and true statement that that’s been around for years to avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing be nothing. And as a business owner, let’s face it. That’s not an option. You can’t be invisible and be successful in our industry. So be okay with people who are not a good fit, just see them as part of the journey, part of your process, to finding people who are.

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