17. Gotta love the HATERS!

This is the Build Your Salon podcast with me, Phil Jackson, here to help salon owners master the skills you need to build bigger profits and a fuller life. Hey everyone, today we're talking about haters, those wonderful people who drift around the internet seemingly just deliberately upsetting people and trying to find reasons to really disrupt what it is that you're doing and give some really quite negative feedback and that can get extraordinarily hurtful. And so I want to explore a little bit why it is that we think people behave in that way and what it is that we can do about it as business owners. And firstly, let's have a look at some of the reasons why people hate. Why it is that they have such a strong gut reaction to what it is that we're trying to do. And I suppose the most obvious reason is that they are jealous because they kind of wish that they were doing some of the things that we were doing or they're getting jealous of some of the material goodies that hopefully come alongside your business success. Or they're jealous of the freedoms that we have as entrepreneurs because we do get to dictate an awful lot of what we do. Our work life balance and the hours that we work and the days that we work and things like that, apart from being customer led, are also very largely led by what it is that you want to do. And lots of people aren't in that position. So I suppose there is a big chunk of jealousy there and we can feel just a tiny bit of pity towards our little trolls. But also, I think it's something a bit more guttural than that. It's a little bit more animal than that. And it's a fear that people have. What you need to bear in mind is that what you're doing isn't normal in the big sense of the word. If you think about it, most people sign up to work with someone else, get the qualifications they need to get that job and then beaver away in exchange for a paycheck. A relatively safe lifestyle, I suppose. Not probably as much as it was 10, 15, 20 years ago, but, you know, relatively stable existence. And they can pretty much accurately predict what this year is going to look like compared to last year, two years ago. And in five years time, things will be fairly similar for them as well. And if something goes horribly wrong in their career, then chances are they'll find another job doing a similar kind of thing for a similar kind of pay packet. And their lifestyle will stay fairly stable as well. But we don't have that as entrepreneurs, do we? We have a lot of freedom, as I've already talked about, and also a lot of say in our future. And if I look at the year that I'm having this year, it bears no relation to the year that I had two years ago.

And I hope it bears no relation to the year that I'm going to have in two years time, because I'm hoping that things will move forward in my business and opportunities will arise that I will either ignore or take advantage of. So I want my life to be constantly changing and evolving. And I want that kind of control over my life. But of course, if you're not fitting the pattern, what you're actually doing is putting your head above the parapet. What you're doing is saying that you are happy as an entrepreneur to break the mold a little bit and to disrupt the patterns of most people's lives. And people don't like it. People don't like change. They don't like people not fitting into the patterns and stereotypes that they have in their mind. So your success ultimately makes them uncomfortable, not necessarily because you're succeeding, but because you're not leading the same sort of life as them. It's that herd mentality. People don't like to see outliers. They like predictability in their lives and they like predictability in yours as well. So how do we deal with haters? The nice thing these days, of course, is that very rarely do you have to deal with a hater face to face. Most of what we put up with happens on the Internet. And there's, I know, OK, strictly speaking, we should not have to deal with this stuff. OK, I completely appreciate that in the great scheme of things, you should not have to put up with haters. But do you know what? This is reality. And if you're putting your face and your voice and your career out there in front of hundreds, thousands, millions, now billions of people across the Internet. Yes, I know we shouldn't have to put up with this sort of hate. But actually, the reality is that there will always be an element of that audience who just have this instinctive hatred of you. And you can try and change the world or you can kind of what I believe we should do best as entrepreneurs is you play the hand that you've been dealt. So how do we deal with it? Well, what we don't do is stop what we're doing. And that's the temptation. If you get a really horrible reaction to a blog or a video or a Facebook post that you've done, the first temptation is to never post on Facebook again, never put another blog out there, stop doing videos or hide behind a podcast instead. A bit like this. But you mustn't because what's happening is that you're starting to get hatred because you're also starting to get some influence.

You're becoming visible, which means actually your marketing, your online marketing, your social media strategy is working. And that's what haters are proof of because you're getting in front of people. You're getting in the game with your social media strategy. Focus on your goal and focus on the good. So if you're getting one or two haters, the temptation is to focus on that negative. That's human nature. We all do it. But what you need to do is put that into context. So, for example, if you get one or two haters against a, I don't know, let's say a Facebook post. And they could actually be quite hurtful to you, especially on a personal level. But what you need to do is look at that in terms of the reach of that post. So if you're getting one or two haters against an audience of, say, 5,000, proportionally as a percentage, it's such a tiny element of the good that you've done. And most people liked it. Maybe they didn't comment because they don't feel quite as strong as the haters do. But it doesn't mean they didn't enjoy your content. And it certainly doesn't mean that you should stop putting stuff out there. I know with bullying and hatred, we should ignore it. Yeah, right. I defy anybody to get to the Hollywood status where they say, I don't read my negative reviews. That's absolute rubbish. We scour our Facebook pages for feedback. We scour our Amazon pages for book reviews. And we do the same on feedback on podcasts and comments on blogs as well. I don't believe anybody really ignores the stuff that goes on on their websites. And I don't think you should either. You should be monitoring this sort of stuff. I do think that you're allowed to reply. I always reply to negative feedback. But I only reply once. So what I don't do is get into a backwards and forwards argument. So I try and make sure that that reply is pretty much the last word. And then if they respond to my reply, I tend to ignore from there. So I always respond once. What I don't do is respond on the day that I receive the hatred. So if somebody leaves me a really nasty Facebook post, I don't reply that day. I will digest overnight, have a little think about it and perhaps respond the next day. And in my replies, I am insanely nice. I'm so sweet. It's like saccharine and butterscotch all rolled into one. Because what I don't want is my audience seeing me responding at the same level as the hater wrote their comment in the first place.

I don't delete that sort of negativity because in a similar way as I don't think you should delete your salon reviews if they're negative. I don't think you should delete hate either really. I think people will judge you, not necessarily on what the haters said, but they will judge you on how you've responded and how you've handled it. The only time I would report a post is if I felt that my personal safety was being compromised and then certainly I'd be straight on it. The couple of times that I've had haters, actually my audience has dealt with that for me, which is a lovely feeling. And I'll talk to you about a couple of examples. So for example, I had a YouTube video which received a comment from a very charming chap. He said that he had watched three of my videos now and he had decided that I was a ridiculous fat faggot. Well, the fat bit hurt. Everything else I could kind of take with a pinch of salt, to be honest with you. I didn't report that post at all. Somebody else reported it on my behalf and had it taken down. But I didn't actually really mind. I thought it was quite funny. And I guess this is kind of what I'm trying to get across to you is the way that I deal with haters is to find one piece of positive and then put a spin on it to make me smile. So what made me smile with this guy was that it had taken him three videos to decide that he actually couldn't stand me, which I thought was really funny. And in fact, I think if he's watched three of my videos, he's probably my most avid viewer ever. So I thought that was a really good thing. Similarly, I've had a couple of negative posts. One got taken down, one's still on there. You know, not quite so nice book reviews for my book, The Hairy Book of Innovation, which is on Amazon. The one guy said, unfortunately, he didn't feel it was terribly good. So I responded to him and said, I'm really sorry about that. My contact details are in the book. If you want to reach out to me and tell me what I missed, then please do. Of course he didn't, because most of these people just can't be bothered after the first vent. And the one thing that I thought was really positive was that he bought the book. And guess what, guys? I can spend his royalties exactly the same way as I can spend the royalties from somebody nice. I also had a comment on my Facebook page, which basically said, if I knew so much about salons, why didn't I go and get my effing haircut?

Which was charming, as you can imagine. Again, I didn't take that post down. Somebody decided to report that to Facebook for me on my behalf, so your audience will rally around. They'll either reply or get it taken down for you. And let them, of course. And the one piece of positive I thought on there was, do you know what? It was time for a haircut. So perhaps he had a point. Didn't put it terribly nicely, but it made me feel a little bit better. You know, just find the little kernel of something that can make you smile. So if you've had a horrible story of hatred and you feel the need to let somebody know about it, I will be your shoulder for sympathy. Send me an email, phil at buildyoursalon.uk. In the meantime, keep up the good work, my fellow salon builders, and I will see you next week. Take care. Hey everyone, it's Phil. Did you like the episode? Be sure to subscribe and tell your friends. For more help in getting more from your salon and your life, head over to buildyoursalon.uk. Enter your name and email for our newsletter list. In the meantime, keep on building!