My daughter got in the car from summer camp. I asked her how her day went and she started complaining about how her friends began yelling at her during the game to sit down because she ran past the blocker. She said that everyone was yelling her name over and over saying, sit down!!!! She ignored them for a while because she knew she was right and didn’t have to sit down. She knew the rules of the game. But, eventually she got tired of the yelling, gave in and sat down only to find out she was right after all.
This make me think of life as a business owner. When we start out we have these plans and dreams of what we are going to do with our business. We open up shop and get to work excited to share with the world what we offer. But somewhere in that first year we run into “those people”. You know the ones. They tell you how you are doing it all wrong or how your idea won’t work or how you should do things like they did. I call them #distractions. Now don’t get me wrong, we all can use good advice and wisdom in running our businesses but then there are those that simply distract us.
Sometimes they distract us for a moment, a day, or a week but sometimes it can be much longer and they can even derail us completely or discourage us to the point that we want to give up. Running a business is hard enough without the #distractors.
Here are 3 things that have helped me when the distractors show up:
1) Ask yourself if what they had to say was worthwhile. Is this something that is truly going to help you or is it just opinion? If it will help you then use it as wisdom, if not then chuck it and move on.
2) Ignore it. If you find yourself getting derailed by others advice then ignore it and keep on your path. If someone is simply giving you their opinion and it’s not something that is illegal or harmful to you in some way then ignore it and move forward!
3) Smile, thank them and do what the hell you want anyway. This is typically my choice. I smile and thank them for their input and then I do exactly what I wanted to in the first place. I do listen to the advice of others but I find so much of the advice that I don’t solicit is useless.
If you are on a mission and distractors are getting to you, stop and try one of these.
Whatever you do, don’t get discouraged and give up. Just because they say your idea won’t work or that you should do it differently doesn’t mean you should! At the end of the day it is your #business.