A short YouTube Q&A segment featuring Ryan Daniel Moran answering how to handle haters. Moran advises not to waste attention on negative commenters, argues that making bold public statements will naturally attract both supporters and detractors, and that standing for beliefs builds loyal customers and faster growth for brands.
Dennis Murphy asks, how do you deal with the haters? My buddy and mentor, Jesse Elder has a quote that I have restated a hundred times. It seems particularly relevant as an answer to this question, but Jesse answers a little bit differently. He says he is asked, what do you think of the war in Blank Country? What do you think about what such and such politician or celebrity said? And he says, I simply answer, I don't think about it. We all have a very limited amount of attention and our brains are wired to see problems. Haters and naysayers your brain interprets as problems. My buddy Nathan Latke says, it's a lot easier to get people to hate you than it is to get people to love you. Because it is natural for people to push back on against someone who is making a statement. Look, the reality of the situation is if you are making any sort of a statement in the world, there are going to be people who disagree and people who disagree are going to be louder than the people who agree. So if people aren't disagreeing with you, it probably means that you're not being loud enough with the thing that you believe in. So if you don't have haters, I encourage you to be a little bit more bold about what you do as a brand, what you do as a company, what you stand for publicly. We as human beings crave to follow people who represent our beliefs. And I believe that by representing something, you create more core raving fans, that creates more repeat business that means faster growth as a company by you standing for something. Even as a physical products brand, even as a blog, if you stand for something that you believe in, you will attract people who naturally resonate with that and you will get some haters in the process. I am comfortable with that because I know that YouTube haters can't do anything to me. I know that Facebook commenters can't hurt me unless I let them. But by making a statement, you do create a net positive on among those who do agree with you. Most importantly, it just puts you in front of the people that you want to be doing business with anyway. And if you're doing a good job, then those who believe in your ideals will come to defend you. Anyway. I used to spend a lot of time and energy replying to negative comments. It doesn't really bother me anymore. Yes, sometimes there's that one that just digs in a little bit, but really that is just a sign of you being bold about what you believe in. And I think the world needs more of that.
