One of the biggest issues I have as a marketer is that I want people to like me. I don’t obsess over it, but I want people to think I’m a good person and I want to have a good reputation. That’s why in both my financial advisory business and in Advisor’s Platform, I’ve always strived to be as honest as possible and to never sacrifice my reputation for money.
It takes 20 years to build a reputation, and five minutes to ruin it. - Warren Buffet
That being said, you are never going to please everyone. There will always be people who dislike you because either they just don’t like your message or they don’t like your delivery or maybe they just don’t like themselves and take it out on others.
When you keep your network very small and only let select people in, you don’t really experience it that often. You’ll get the occasional person who you don’t get along with, but for the most part, you’re shielded from the negative people out there. Once you start marketing, especially on social media which was created to express opinions, you will quickly and abruptly find that there are plenty of people who take issues with you.
There’s a famous quote which I always think about when it comes to marketing,
“If you’re not pissing someone off by noon you’re not marketing hard enough.” - unknown
Think about the biggest digital marketers in the world — Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tai Lopez, Grant Cardone, etc. Many of them have more people who hate their message than those that love it, but the key is, they focus on their true fans and the people who appreciate their message rather than the negative.
We’ve run campaigns for people and they want to turn it off the second one of these negative people pop up, and I have to reaffirm them: “That’s a good sign, it means it’s working”. Our most successful campaigns ever have had the most amount of negative comments and feedback, because we are saying something that actually resonates with people. Our least successful campaigns have been ones that everyone was happy with and shared because they didn’t actually say anything of substance.
Stop worrying about pleasing everyone and focus on making content that resonates with your true fans that love your message.
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Written by Don Anders, CEO of Advisor’s Platform