If you’re an entrepreneur disrupting your industry, you’re going to have critics. This is the best way I’ve found to handle them.

Challenging the status quo

It comes with the territory. If you’re doing things differently, if you’re defying conventional thinking, and if you’re vocal about it, you’re going to get criticism.

The incumbents with the most to lose from what you’re building, together with competitors, worried that you might just succeed will take aim at you.

Entrepreneurs are resilient but not immune, especially when some of it gets personal.

The perfect antidote to the criticism is to read (and re-read) part of a speech given in 1910 by Theodore Roosevelt at the Sorbonne.

The Man in the Arena

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man* stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

“If you’re committed to creating you will get your ass kicked”

Brene Brown

The best-selling author, Brene Bown captured the essence of the Man in The Arena in a recent talk she gave. In a modern take on her critics, she made it clear that ‘If you’re not in the arena also getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback!”

Being bulletproof

“You’ll never be criticised by someone achieving more than you, only someone achieving less.”

Ignore Them.

*Also applies to strong women.

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