808: This bothered me! (Here's how to deal with it, though...)

Hey, what is up? Welcome to this episode of the Wontropner to entrepreneur podcast. As always, I'm your host, brian LoFromento, and in today's episode, we're going to talk about something that we all inevitably confront on our business journeys and heck, even more than that in life and that is criticism. I'm so excited to talk to you about this one today. Let's dive in. All right, I'm going to come clean to you all right here, right now, that this year, here in 2024, we are behind the scenes, we are starting to take YouTube more seriously at the Wontropner to entrepreneur podcast.

Obviously, we are a podcast first and foremost. This is our bread and butter. We're so grateful to be featured in top charts all around the world. We're one of the top 1.5% of shows on planet earth, which is crazy, and it's only thanks to all of you listeners. So if you are hearing my voice right now, then you are one of the people that I want to personally thank, because obviously, we are nothing without our listeners, and the entire reason why we do what we do is for you, the listeners. You know that we are not a show that's supported by ads. This is simply because our guests share our belief in bringing this content to you so they help us cover our production costs. No one's making a ton of money from this stuff. I'll be honest, this is not the most profitable thing in the world to be doing, but, with that said, we are so committed to getting our message out there to give people the resources in the real life conversations, unfiltered, unedited that gosh.

I wish I had access to these things when I was 19 years old and starting my first business, because sometimes in entrepreneurship, it just feels like there's this dark sky and so many clouds as to what actually goes on when we grow business. We always hear about these success stories and all of these entrepreneurial magazines and blog posts and YouTube videos, but we don't really hear the real stuff behind it. So you already know I'm preaching to the choir here. This is what we are committed to bringing to you, but, with all of that said, we want to bring it to even more people, and that is a constant question that we ask ourselves behind the scenes of this show is how can we reach more people, how can we serve more people, how can we continue to show up for more people? And obviously, a big channel that we can do that on is YouTube. Now, why am I telling you all of this as a background story? Well, it's because YouTube is new to us.

We are very much figuring out how to grow on YouTube and as part of that, we are inevitably I'm sure I mean, we don't know this in the moment, but we kind of have accepted it that we're doing things wrong and we're, like I said, we're figuring things out and so, along the way, we're uploading videos, we're uploading shorts and we've got amazing people behind the scenes. Shout out to Laura, who you have all heard from very recently when we did our Q1 retreat down in Medellin, and Laura's a key member of our team. And so Laura and I are the two main people that, when we put things on YouTube, we both see the comments, we both see the analytics, we both deal with inbound emails, which our show gets a lot of emails on a daily basis. This I promise you. Even if it's just pitches, we get 20 to 40 pitches. Plus we get dozens, literally dozens something about the pure volume of emails that we handle inbound here at the show and we're constantly interacting with a lot of people and putting ourselves at the mercy of the YouTube comment scene.

And so, with that said, we've received our fair share of criticism, and we always do, and I personally know I mean I'm 16 years into my entrepreneurial journey I know that anytime you do anything, you will inevitably receive criticism. People love to criticize and lately I've been thinking about it because, I'll be honest with you, criticism doesn't bother me all that much anymore. But I do know that this is one thing that threatens our actions, threatens our progress, threatens our persistence and belief, really at the beginning of any new journey, and so for me personally, youtube is a new journey for the show. I'm excited about it. I have no idea what we're doing. I know that over time we're gonna make it work, but we are still in its infancy.

So if you haven't given us a follow, search my name on YouTube. Just search Brian Lofremento. You will inevitably find us. You'll also see some interviews, videos, which is cool, I think, if you listen to this in audio only format. I always love putting a face to a name, so obviously you can see our guests on the little graphics when you play these episodes. But if you wanna see us and see their personalities and see their hand movements and examples that they like to give visually, definitely go check us out on YouTube, but what I will ask you to do is don't criticize in YouTube, because here's my approach to criticism. All right, so this is really what today's episode is all about, and I hope that you take it on board.

And lately, what I've been thinking is when I go in to delete the inevitable bad comments, the criticizing comments that are just mean. They're not even constructive, they're just straight up mean on YouTube, which is the nature of the beast. But what I can't help but think when I see these comments is I. Before I delete them, I always click through to the person's YouTube channel, cause when someone leaves a comment, you can just click their name on YouTube and you can see every video they've ever uploaded. And guess what? The ones who are just outright mean, the ones who are criticizing the most, are the exact same ones that have never uploaded a video to YouTube. These are the exact people who will criticize what we're uploading, our long form content, our experimental content with regards to shorts, and they will criticize what it is that we are creating, what it is that we are uploading, what it is that we're trying to put out there to be of service to others.

And so, in my head. Where I go, when I click their names to go to their YouTube channels, is in my head. I've just started saying show me yours and I'll show you mine. Show me your YouTube channel. If you're so good at this stuff, if you have such a firm grasp on how to correctly do this stuff, show me yours. Show me what you're doing.

And I think that this is obviously it's a, it's a reactionary comeback, and I don't say this to anyone else. I don't believe that we need to respond to the people who are hating on us or criticizing us, because they don't deserve that energy, and that's why, for me, I'm more using it to talk to you today, because I don't want this to stunt your progress, to stunt your motivation and inspiration and susceptibility to taking action. I don't want any of this stuff to stunt it, and that's why I think that the more appropriate mindset is just to say, yeah, show me yours and I'll show you mine. If you've got an unbelievable YouTube channel, I will listen to you, because you for sure know more than I do about YouTube. This is an absolute fact.

I think that we can learn something from everyone, but for those people out there who they don't have what you want and they are not even in the game. It's so easy to criticize from the sidelines, and so I saw it on Instagram. Actually, I'm gonna loop in something so brilliantly articulated that I saw on Instagram. It said something very simply. It said never take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from. That's powerful. Never take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from, and I feel like that's the mindset that I've started to adopt, knowing full well that we're at the very beginning of our YouTube journey. It's just, if you can't give me advice on how to grow, why should I listen to your criticism? And, for all of us in business, this episode is not about our YouTube channel, because I know that we're gonna continue to get those. I'll never forget. In 2008, when I started my soccer blog, one of the first 10 comments we ever got on our blog was who is Brian Lofromento and who gave this monkey a keyboard? I don't know why they called me a monkey, but that's exactly what they wrote, and obviously I was writing articles about soccer and also just being an American covering English soccer.

You inevitably put a target on your back and people are gonna criticize you for a lot of things that are out of your control, and it bothered me at first and I would slow down and I would question things. I would shake my mindset a little bit and you all, hopefully you know. If you've listened to the show for any amount of time, you know how, in general, unshakable my mindset is, because I'm fueled by excitement and I'm always excited, and that carries me, carries me through those moments where someone says something that really gets to me. It carries through so many moments for me because I have my eyes on the prize, so to speak, is that what I'm excited by is being of service to others. So I don't care about the rest of the stuff that comes with it, but I think that's the important takeaway. Heck, if this episode is just me talking to my 19 year old self, this is the important stuff to consider when it comes to dealing with criticism.

And so, no matter where you are, you the listener I'm talking individually to you right now. Wherever you are in your entrepreneurial journey, if you're at the very beginning, if you already have a little bit of traction, if you're already getting those YouTube comments who are questioning who the heck you are and why you think you can do this, or you are getting people who reply to your social media posts or your blog posts or heck. Maybe this silence is deafening sometimes, and maybe it's the silence that you feel like others are judging and criticizing you. Well, that's where I invite you to adopt. This new mindset that I've had recently, especially with the YouTube stuff that I shared with you here today, is that show me yours and I'll show you mine. You know what I'm trying and I'm showing up and that's the important thing, and I want to give you you the listener. I want to give you credit for that.

If you're making posts on social media and it's just crickets, you're not hearing anything. Kudos to you because you're playing the game, and unless someone is actually playing the game and can show you that they are and they're in a position to give you advice, you do not need to listen to their criticism. Forget it. It's not valuable and actually it's not even qualified. I think that's at the root of today's episode is really that acknowledgement that if someone's not qualified to give you that advice, they're not qualified to criticize you, and so that's what you need to know. If you've been looking for some sort of external validation, I wish I could give you a diploma or a certificate to tell you that you're qualified in your journey, but others who haven't played the game, they're not even qualified, and I think we do need to talk about this.

I don't often like to give any energy to the negative stuff because, for example, it's why I'll never engage with a hater. I'll never engage with someone who is just offering mean criticism. If it's constructive criticism, please. I'd love to have that conversation because I love to grow, I love to learn new things, I love to hear new perspectives, but if it is just unqualified criticism, we do not need to give it attention. However, we do need to give ourselves attention. We do need to talk about today's conversation, which is in how we mentally deal with and cope with and overcome these unqualified bouts of criticism which we will, in all, inevitably face, not just today, but we're going to face it again tomorrow. That's what I'm more excited about you and I sitting down here in this solo Sunday episode and talking about, which is why we're doing it. So I'm so grateful that you're here.

Hopefully this is something that you think about next time you feel that criticism from any corner. Think about that. Would I take advice from this person. Can they show me theirs before they look at mine? Because if they can and if you would take advice from them. Listen, it might be constructive criticism, but if not, there's no place in your life, in your business, in your mind, in your energy, there's no place for that unqualified criticism. That's it for me today.

We've got so many amazing episodes coming up. I feel like gosh, our internal team, they must be getting sick of me in Slack, because every single week I can't help but jump into Slack and be like, oh my gosh, this guest was amazing. Oh my gosh, this guest talked about this, and I've never heard anyone talk about that before. We've just got so many amazing episodes coming up this week. I'm really excited for you to hear from all three of them. I'm not going to tease them today, because what I really want to see you do is Pound that subscribe button, no matter where it is that you listen to podcast episodes, cause you know you can find us anywhere and everywhere as well. As if you wanna start tuning in and seeing our guests in all of their glory, with all of their emotion and examples, then even check us out on YouTube by searching my name, or I'm sure you could search the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast and you'll find us, but pound that subscribe button, cause I'll see you, as always every Monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and Sunday here on the show.

Hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast. If you haven't checked us out online, there's so much good stuff there. Check out the show's website and all the show notes that we talked about in today's episode at TheWantrepreneurShowcom. And I just wanna give a shout out to our amazing guests. There's a reason why we are ad free and have produced so many incredible episodes five days a week for you, and it's because our guests step up to the plate.

These are not sponsored episodes. These are not infomercials. Our guests help us cover the costs of our productions. They so deeply believe in the power of getting their message out in front of you, awesome Wontrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, that they contribute to help us make these productions possible. So thank you to not only today's guests, but all of our guests in general, and I just wanna invite you check out our website, because you can send us a voicemail there. We also have live chat. If you wanna interact directly with me, go to thewantrepreneurshowcom. Initiate a live chat. It's for real me and I'm excited because I'll see you, as always every Monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and Sunday here on the Wontrepreneurs to Entrepreneurs podcast.