When someone leaves a bad review

True story: I wrote a perennial selling book! It didn’t hit the NYT best selling list but it was an Amazon Best Seller & 5 years later still sells monthly copies.

It has 99 reviews on it (come on! Someone get me that ONE😆) and there are some really false reviews, as well as some 🫤 unhappy reviews.

There was a time shortly after it’s release when somebody was wrongly going after me and without actual cause; the only real attack they could hit me with was leaving (false, lying) terrible reviews.

It was a dark time, TBH!

I wanted more than anything to take those reviews down.

I wanted to get rid of her reviews and all of the people she lied to about my book, who left false reviews.

My biggest pain point is being misunderstood, misrepresented, unseen. And that is at the core of what they were doing.

That aside, I’ve had clients throughout the history of my entrepreneur lifes let me know they aren’t happy with xyz.

Whether that’s here thru photography, writing publicly on my blog or other IG account, YouTube channel, my books, whatever.

Here’s the thing I’ve grappled with, but am accepting over time:

I am not for everybody.

Neither are you.

There is no way to make everybody happy or give everybody a perfect experience.

You and I, we are human after all.

Humans make mistakes, but even when we don’t make mistakes we are still not everybody’s cup of tea or glass of wine or mug of coffee.

I used to work in a café.

Sometimes we would get things wrong. Not because we sucked at what we did. But because we were doing too many things at once.

OR because people didn’t specify what they wanted, or more often: they came to us for something we didn’t offer or specialize in.

I wish we could get rid of bad reviews because they often feel like misrepresentations of what we offer & our hearts/purpose/mission.

But everyone will get bad reviews — even your fav restaurant, coach, author, etc.

Take any lesson that will help you move forward & do better, but reject any poison.

Shake them off: they do not define you or your success.