~by Haley Lynn Gray~
I celebrated my first negative book review.
It sounds mad, and I’d been waiting for it. Getting your first critic is a rite of passage — it means enough people have encountered your work that one of them has bothered to object.
Mine wasn’t even a good one. Somehow I’d hurt their feelings with the book, which they hadn’t read.
Maybe next time I’ll get a better hater.
Repelling people is the point
Here’s the part that took me longer to understand than it should have: you want to repel some people, on purpose.
Anything specific enough to attract the right clients is specific enough to put off the wrong ones. Those are the same property, not a trade-off.
If you write something that nobody could disagree with, nobody will remember it either. If your business appeals to everyone, it appeals to no-one in particular, and “no-one in particular” doesn’t hire anybody. The businesses that struggle most to describe themselves are usually the ones trying hardest not to exclude anyone.
So when someone decides you’re not for them — too direct, too expensive, too much — that’s the system working. They weren’t your client. Wish them well and let them go; the planet is big enough for all of us.
What changes as you do better
As your success grows, people find more reasons not to like you. They’ll decide you didn’t work for what you have, or don’t deserve it. Some will try to throw you under the bus.
It isn’t fair, it’s common, and it’s worth expecting rather than being wounded by each time.
Some of it is simply that visibility attracts comment. Some is that success makes people examine their own position, and that’s uncomfortable, and the discomfort attaches to whoever prompted it. Almost none of it is actually about you.
The distinction that matters
“Not everyone will like you” can become a shield against hearing anything, which is its own problem. So it’s worth separating criticism into two piles.
Worth hearing: It describes something specific you did. It comes from someone who has engaged with your actual work — a client, a reader, someone in your field. It suggests a change you could make. And it’s frequently uncomfortable in the particular way accurate things are.
Not worth hearing: It’s about you as a person rather than about anything you did. It comes from someone who hasn’t engaged with the work — like my reviewer. It’s unfalsifiable. Or it’s asking you to be smaller rather than better.
The test I use: does this person want me to improve, or want me to stop? Those feel different, and the first kind deserves real attention however much it stings.
Dismissing everything as haters is as much a failure as taking everything to heart. It just feels better.
Why this is harder for women
Worth stating plainly, because the generic version of this advice skips it.
Being liked is policed more heavily for women, and being disliked costs more. A man who is direct is direct. A woman who is direct acquires a reputation, and the reputation follows her into rooms she isn’t in.
Which means “stop caring what people think” isn’t quite honest as advice. There are real professional consequences and you’re not imagining them.
The workable version isn’t not caring. It’s deciding in advance whose opinion you’re willing to spend. Some disapproval is worth accepting for a business that works and a life you can stand. Knowing which disapproval you’ve decided to accept makes it considerably easier to absorb when it arrives — because you already priced it in.
I decided a long time ago that I’d rather be useful than universally liked. I still notice when people dislike me. I’m just no longer surprised by it, or particularly moved.
What to do with the first one
When you get your first proper critic:
Read it once, then leave it for a day. Your first reaction is never your best assessment.
Ask whether it names something specific. If yes, there may be something in it. If it’s about your character, your appearance, or your right to be doing this, there isn’t.
Don’t respond immediately, and possibly at all. Almost nobody has improved their position by arguing publicly with a critic.
And notice what it means. Enough people saw your work that someone objected. You were visible enough to be disagreed with, which is further than most people get.
Some people will love what you do, some won’t, and some will be jealous pains in the backside. It’s all normal. You don’t have to be liked by everyone to be worth taking seriously.
More on staying professional when people aren’t and being visible enough to be noticed at all.
About the author
Haley Lynn Gray is the founder of Leadership Girl, of In2itive Biz Solutions, and of the Women’s Entrepreneur Network — a community of more than 77,000 women in business.
She writes here about what happens when running a business starts demanding that you lead one. More about Haley →
