Criticism and Failure: Building Resilience

The summer slump hits digital entrepreneurs uniquely hard. As the kids finish school and family time beckons, that confident business strategy you crafted in January starts to waver. Sound familiar? We're diving deep into one of the most challenging aspects of entrepreneurship that intensifies during these seasonal transitions: handling criticism and failure.

I'm getting vulnerable about my own response pattern to criticism – the initial frustration, the people-pleasing reflex, and finally, the necessary step back to actually solve the problem. Whether you've faced disappointed course customers, coaching clients with unmet expectations, or followers frustrated by your response time on social media, this episode offers practical solutions to these universal challenges.

Remember when I used to answer business messages while trick-or-treating with my kids? That created unsustainable expectations that eventually led to Sunday complaints when I wasn't immediately available. Learn how establishing clear business hours protects both you and your clients from the 24/7 availability trap that digital entrepreneurship often creates. We'll explore how proper terms of service for your digital products can prevent refund issues and content theft, while well-crafted contracts for service-based work eliminate misunderstandings before they begin.

The secret to reducing criticism isn't about handling it better – it's about preventing it through clear boundaries and expectations. Join us at the Insiders Retreat in Murrell's Inlet this November where we'll create comprehensive 90-day plans for 2026 and map customer journeys to serve your audience better. Ready to transform how you handle criticism and set boundaries that make your business thrive? This episode is your starting point.

Chapters

• 0:00 Summer Business Mindset Challenges
• 1:06 Handling Criticism and Creating Boundaries
• 3:35 Setting Clear Expectations in Courses
• 6:22 Contracts and Terms of Service
• 7:37 Planning for 2026 at Insiders Retreat

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Summer is usually the time that I find most clients start to waver in their business, they start to question things, they start to second guess themselves. So you're going to notice, over the next couple weeks I'm going to be talking a lot of mindset issues that we need to be thinking about as business owners, and it's relevant to the season that we are in, as far as summer being here, kids being out of school, traveling, that we're trying to get done, time we're trying to spend with our families. So today I really want to dive into criticism and failure, because I think that this isn't something that we often talk about, of how people handle it, and I'm going to be very honest and open when it comes to how I handle criticism and failure, because I have a tendency to first get annoyed, then try to be a people pleaser and then realize that I need to walk away and take a second and actually think out how to problem solve through the issue that is coming at me. I've had lots of different kind of examples of ways that this has come across with me and has happened within my business, whether it was customer service, because someone didn't feel that the course met their expectations, or if it was a client that I was working with who felt that coaching might not have met their expectations, or if someone felt like I just wasn't on top of things as often as I should be immediately responding to them if they sent me a direct message on Instagram or via Facebook. And I think the first thing that we have to talk about is the fact that you have to create boundaries for yourself. You have to determine how on top of things you are going to be and be able to decide whether it is relevant, especially let's talk about the fact that this is a digital business owners that you all are how available you are going to make yourself, because the second you start answering questions, messages immediately, that becomes the expectation and there will be criticism and pushback if you don't answer immediately.

Speaker 1: 2:20

In the beginning, when I first started, I had a bad habit of answering immediately. I could be out trick-or-treating with my kids and I was answering Facebook messages that people were sending me at eight o'clock Halloween while people are out trick-or-treating. I quickly realized, as I saw people getting frustrated with me because I wasn't answering on a Sunday, that I had to create business hours for myself and for them. They needed to understand that there are business hours to a digital business, not just so that they knew they weren't going to get in contact with me, but more so that they recognize that for their own business, because when we are readily able to grab our phones and answer and be there immediately, we start to create that expectation that we're going to always do that. So by me creating boundaries for myself, it created boundaries for others to be able to replicate within their own business and see that it's okay to do that.

Speaker 1: 3:27

Regular businesses work Monday through Friday. They're not answering messages on Saturdays and Sundays. They're not answering at 10 o'clock at night. They have regular business hours and you have to stick to those business hours, even for clients that are your top clients that may have your cell phone number, cause at some point you may give cell phone numbers when you're working with a client, one-on-one potentially. There still needs to be that understanding that, hey, it's a Sunday, I'm not answering your text messages about business. I will get back to this as soon as Monday morning and that will be the expectation. So being able to approach it, being able to put boundaries in place for yourself so that if you are getting pushback, you are getting criticism from people that you're not on top of things, that you can really be able to say this is what my operating hours are and you lay that groundwork for them to understand that.

Speaker 1: 4:25

Now, as far as other criticism, when it comes to maybe a course didn't meet up to their expectations, you are going to need to walk away from the situation, especially if you feel like where they're coming from isn't true. You need to make sure that if you have a digital course, that there are expectations that they had to have completed the course. They had to have completed so many hours, because for someone to turn around and say that they want their money back when you can see that they haven't gone through it at all is a problem. But if you had terms of service for the course and expectations of how much hours needed to be completed in order to be able to get 100% money back, guarantee if you offer that you need to have those expectations laid out for them so that they understand it. This way again, by setting up these expectations for yourself and for your clients, you're laying it out. As far as looking at those terms of service and being able to say this is what you have to do, and this is was a learning lesson for me, because in the beginning, I didn't have this and I could see that people were not completing the work. They were telling me that they didn't feel that the course met their expectations, but they hadn't gone through anything, or they had gone through everything within an hour, downloaded everything and were planning on utilizing it for themselves. So, again, not just themselves, they were planning on using it to create their own course and use that material. So you also need to have terms of service that are on the for a course that say that obviously, the information in the course is copyrighted, it cannot be replicated, it cannot be used in their own. That is important as well.

Speaker 1: 6:12

And then, when it comes to clients and working one-on-one or working as like a go-between for a brand, contracts are so important. Having the clear contract that states that these are the expectations, this is the work that you're doing, these are the deliverables and this is what the expectation for payment is, so that you are all on the same page. Whether you're working one-on-one with clients, whether you're working one-on-one with clients, whether you're working with brands, whether you are working as a go-between for an agency for travel or for an affiliate, you have to have contracts so there's an understanding of what is expected on your end as well as theirs. So when we're looking at this idea of criticism, it actually isn't really about the criticism, because you will find that once you have these boundaries and these contracts laid out, there isn't as much criticism. There's no way that they can, because your contracts cover you as long as you're doing what you're supposed to and I know all my people listening that are unhinged members are doing what they're supposed to. So you have to make sure that you have those contracts to cover yourself. Terms of service, all of that needs to be laid out, and you need to make sure that you have operating hours.

Speaker 1: 7:31

We're going to continue with this idea of mindset and leadership throughout the summer, so make sure you dive in. If you haven't already filled out an application for Insiders Retreat, what in the world are you waiting for? We are heading to Merle's Inlet, south Carolina, in November. It's going to be four days of hands-on, coming up with a 90-day plan for 2026. It is the planning that you are going to need, as well as mapping it out for your customer and where you are servicing them best. See you in the next episode.