Entrepreneurship: Dealing With Mixed Feedback

When trying to do your own thing and leaning on others for opinions, you may hear 20 different ways on how to accomplish a task. For every one person that loves your business concept, three others are ready to shoot it down. Taking advice is important as an entrepreneur, but what advice do you take?

Stick to your guns.

 Okay, so someone just ripped your new and innovative business idea to shreds. You should hear every opinion out and not react emotionally. However, never lose sight that this is your company and operates under your philosophy. This is your chance to do things your way! With any negative advice, you should be able to take some considerations out of it, but don’t be willing to surrender the basic premise of your company. A company that succeeds is one that is true and sincere to its core values right from the start.

Who is your feedback coming from?

Sometimes the weight of the person delivering negative feedback should have an impact on how deeply you delve into it. Is this your co-owner who has a tremendous say in this project? Is this an outside vendor that could be replaced and is not worth sacrificing integrity over? So many people will tell you what to do and exactly how you should do it. You need to weigh who these people are in order to accept if you should do all of what they say, some of what they say, or none of it at all.

Depend on your team.

You might be the leader of the company, but you should have a close-knit team that can engage in high-end conversations. If you are plotting major changes to your entrepreneurial vision, you should include others. If a mentor of yours said your idea is no good and people on your team agree, they may be right. This doesn’t make you a failure as an entrepreneur, it actually makes you stronger! The ability to hire a team that can guide some of your decisions into more profitable regions is vital to a growing startup.

Feedback as an entrepreneur isn’t always pretty, but we didn’t get into this business to be light-hearted! Engage with me on my Facebook page and learn more about the entrepreneurial spirit that drives me each day!