“Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots.”
Do you really want to know why you don’t have results?
People become aware of the importance of feedback, but… they can’t deal with honesty. As long as you agree with them, compliment their idea you are good. But when you put the truth in their’s face you become.. hater, the jealous, arrogant one, egoist, bully!
I’m experiencing this in my business. I’m offering powerful conversations. Those are powerful only because it’s honest, deep, disruptive, uncomfortable talk. I’m not doing it to torture people! I’m doing it to get them the results they want.
Think about your biggest achievements. Did they happen when you felt comfortable, cozy and relaxed?
You don’t have the results you want because you are blind! You are so close to your ideas that you loose objective perspective. Oh, hold down… I’m not a narcissistic jerk who thinks only about himself. I’m asking for other people’s opinions… Let me stop you there. Who do you ask for feedback and how you ask?
Common answers:
a. I asked my family & friends
b. I asked on Facebook groups about entrepreneurship/ business
c. I did survey with some strangers
Do you know why non of this answers is correct?
Because none of them is your target audience. You can’t ask whoever, whatever and assume it as great research. Many of fashion entrepreneurs ask for feedback only online. What’s wrong with that? The face-to-face communication and text are two completely different things.
You can’t fully express your emotions by text. When you write, you want to keep things simple and short, what can cut the most important features off. The answers to your question will be short as well. People are busy, they have so much shit going on that they won’t write an essay about your business. People also want to be nice. For example the facebook groups about business are created as a “support group”. Many times there are some rules about using those groups, like “keep it positive”, “be nice”, “don’t judge”, “hate free”. This are nice rules. But you won’t make oney with nice answers.
Let me show you an example. Those are the screenshoots that will prof some of my thesis.
Typical problem: no results in business. The big question: why I don’t have results? Additional info (based on info from the comments): she struggles over 9 months!!!
I won’t overwhelm you with all the responses she gets but most of them were like “be patient, Hun”, “ it’s so cute”, “good luck” OR people started sending some business proposals “I worked with a really wide range of businesses and I could help you too. PM me” She received offers about marketing manager, business strategist, all kinds of coaches, ads specialists. The person who wrote this post politely respond to each comment.
She put time, energy, thoughts into it. But did she get the feedback she needed? She gets honest feedback from me (like number 2 on the photo above). I get well known angry face (btw, not from the author of the post). Why? Because I was honest. I didn’t try to be nice. She asked for feedback, she received one. Her response to my feedback was nice. (number 3 on the photo) She appreciated my honesty and actually agree with me. She also shared more struggles with me, so I was able to give her my perspective (number 4 on the picture).
I have observed few Facebook groups for a while, so I really know what I’m talking about. We could analyse some posts about choosing a logo design or branding colours. And whatever the top is is, I still wouldn’t count on the feedback from Facebook groups (small exception for your Facebook group or the community that is FULL of your target audience).
We can see that Facebook groups are not the best option but where else could we search for feedback? What is my advice?
a. ask THE expert in certain industry
b. ask your current and previous clients
c. ask people who contact you about your offerings (what makes them decide to contact you? What attract them in your offer? etc)
d. search for the face-to-face environment with your target market and start a genuine conversation!
See you in the next post,
Patrycja Franczak
