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Episode 6: How To Deal With Negative Reviews

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Ever see Jimmy Fallon do his “Mean Tweet” segment? This is what I want you to think of when you listen to Ep 6 of Bella In Your Business.

There is so much negativity going on out there with pet sitters getting upset because someone wrote a negative review, told them their service was too much, said something “mean” to them, or just got their feelings hurt. I am here today to encourage you to be a DUCK and let it roll off your back.

Seriously! What you let into your head becomes your reality. It helps feed the stinkin’ thinkin’ and I want to show you that no business ever failed because someone said something mean. We all will get negative reviews at some point in time.

I even read what has been said about ME! Yes, me. Nothing online is private…. there are screen shots for everything. 🙁

bella in your business

Here are some of the show notes for you to follow along:

“It always has been your way or the highway Bella and you proved my point splendidly.”
“Very rude. Woman that I believe is the owner is very obnoxious and self-centered. You have to put up with constantly “I’m the best. Everyone wants to be like me. I’m so great people would pay double for pet sitting to be with my company but I decline” does anyone actually believe that? It’s pretty disturbing!”
“I can’t believe she is a consultant, she was so nasty with me when I decided to try a session with her.”
“Bella = narcissist”

What To Do When It Happens:

  • Consider the source
  • How To React
  • Attitude and Reaction is everything

Transcript:

Do you feel like your business is going around on a merry-go-round? Well, I’ve got news for you. This episode is sponsored by my incredible webinar series called Jump and Scale. It gets you off that merry-go-round and up to the next level in your business. It’s called Jump and Scale, and it’s free for you right now. Just go ahead and sign up at jumpconsulting.net/scale. You will learn how to grow your business, increase your staff, and not be held hostage to business. So go ahead, sign up for free. That’s jumpconsulting.net/scale. I’ll see you inside.

Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready, Bella’s got your chute. Let’s jump!

Welcome jumpers, today’s podcast is going to be really awesome and interesting. It’s going to be very different, something that you don’t always hear. And although we’re going to be talking about the negative, I promise you there is a light at the end of the tunnel and a bright sunny day behind these clouds. So let’s get started. Before we go any further, I would love to thank you for spending the time listening to me. Let me know where you’re listening. Are you out walking the baby and the dog like I do? Are you driving around in the car? I do that too. Maybe while you’re folding laundry? Again, I do that too. Maybe you’re cleaning the house, taking a walk, going for a hike. Let me know where and when you’re listening to the podcast. I’d love to know what you’re doing while I am clogging up your earwaves.

So in order to stay connected with me and never miss a podcast, I would be just so grateful if you would go over to iTunes or Stitcher and type in Bella Vasta or Bella in Your Business, the name of this podcast, and subscribe so that you can always have the latest and greatest episodes in your box. I have a couple of announcements that I want to go through. Tax season is here, of course. Taxes are due in just a few short days. How do you keep track of everything? Does your Power Pet Sitter or your online system connect with your QuickBooks? Does your QuickBooks have all the invoices, and do you keep up with it every single month? Putting in your expenses and your payables and all of the income and keeping track of your checks and credit cards and all those other forms of payment and method.

Tax season used to be really horrible for me. I used to literally sit down in front of the TV and print out all of my statements, my bank statements, and I used to sit down with a bottle—or who am I kidding, two bottles—of wine and sit there for probably about five or six hours and work on it. I used to go through my bank statements and line by line, put it in a proper column, and sometimes I didn’t even know what column it went into. Two or three hours into it, I just didn’t even care; I just wanted to get it done, and it was horrible. You guys, I lost so many opportunities on expenses or putting things in the right column or getting the right things deducted or reimbursed because I never had a bookkeeper. When I got a bookkeeper, all of a sudden things just changed miraculously. Not to mention that at any point I could have an instant snapshot of my company for today, tomorrow, yesterday, last year, and even projected for next year.

So if you don’t do it already, if you’re feeling the pains of going through taxes right now, I highly, highly suggest it. I also have a really valuable blog on how to save yourself money. Actually, I have two of them. One of them talks about having a bookkeeper, which I just mentioned, and the second one is about having a small staff. You see, you are paying federal unemployment tax on the first $7,000 for every single employee. So if you have 20 employees, you’re paying up to $7,000 of that tax for 20 people. But if you have, say, eight people doing the work of those 20 because they work more instead of less, then you’re only paying tax on that $7,000 for eight people. It’s a drastic difference, you guys, and if my memory is correct, it’s about $500 a person per year. So if you want to save money on taxes, you’ve got to really think about how lean your staff is, and that’s my scoop on that.

Another cool thing about taxes, if you don’t know, you can be an LLC—which everybody should be, whether or not you have staff. It helps separate your business liability from your house. Or maybe you might say, well, I rent an apartment, I have a lease on my car, or I’m paying it off, I don’t really have anything. The thing is, the way it was explained to me—and let me say this with a grain of salt, I am not advising you; this is my experience—it was told to me, “Bella, even if you don’t have anything right now, somebody could attach themselves onto whatever you might make in the future.” And now that I have a house and a husband and a daughter and some assets, that’s really important.

But I don’t want you guys to overlook it or not do your due diligence because it might not be the best or happiest thing for you to do in your business. Definitely become an LLC, talk to your advisors about it, and then also find out about filing as an S-Corp. It can save you lots and lots of money because the taxes are passed through the business to yourself. Take a look at it, please, please, please. Even if you’re not feeling it in the pocket, I just want you guys to educate yourself on your business and know what your options are because education is powerful.

The second announcement is that I just recently did this awesome short video with Kate McQuillan out of Ireland. Big shout-out to Kate. It seems as though I’m mentioning her every podcast, but she’s just fantastic. She started Pawsome Media, and she has these great graphics that she’s created. I mean, on her Facebook page alone for her pet sitting business, she gets in the triple digits for shares and likes. So yes please, I’d love some engagement. I bought all of her packages, and I’m using them and getting great engagement—more so than when I was trying to stumble through Canva on my own. So guys, I suggest you jump on over to pawsomemedia.com. Check out what she’s got to offer.

She’s got a lot of different things on there. The one that I love the most are these graphics, and a bunch of pet sitters have already started buying them and using them, and they’re getting great results as well. So check that out. Kate, thank you for your time on that and thank you for doing that for the industry. Nobody else is doing that, and it’s so unique and it’s so awesome because as we all know, our brand gives people an impression of us, and I want to make sure that that impression is a good one—not a “I don’t have any money to pay a designer” one. So check her out, Pawsome Media—it’s amazing.

Alright, now the very last announcement: I also did a video with Erica, and this ties into today’s topic. Erica Gomez is the owner of Wo Doggy, a pet sitting company. They, like almost all of us, got a very negative review on Yelp. It was their first two-star review, and it was their first review ever on Yelp. She is a fantastic speaker, very well-educated. I really love the interview that we did together. I would watch it over and over again, and I encourage you to check out the show notes here and jump on over to that as well.

If you can’t find the show notes, just Google “Erica negative review Jump Consulting” and it should come up on Google. There’s a good outline on that article, and it tells you about what to do when you get a negative review, how to formulate a response. She tells her story about how they had a negative review, and they formulated the most incredible response. They get people calling frequently saying, “I saw your review on Yelp and I saw your response, and I was really impressed and I’d love to work with you.”

And guys, this is what I’m talking about today: when the whole world hates you, what do you do? What Erica and her husband Gary did was they showed the whole world that they realized their audience wasn’t just this one person they were replying to. It was potentially lots of other clients, and they wanted to show those clients that if they ever had any problem, this is how they’re going to deal with it. It was genius and brilliant, and I really give my hat off to them. They did a fantastic job with that.

So getting into today’s topic: what to do when the world hates you. Ouch. Isn’t that stinky? Have you ever gotten those people that just tell you horrible things about yourself or your business? It’s kind of like when we’re little kids. When we’re little kids, it hurts and we cry, and maybe our moms tell us, “Don’t worry, they’re just jealous.” Or maybe they might advise, “Just ignore them.” But that doesn’t make the pain and the hurt go away. Unfortunately, when we become adults, that still happens. Our bounce back or reaction time, hopefully, is a lot quicker and we’re able to process that faster. But on review sites, we’re going to get negative reviews about our business. And personally, we’re going to have people say things that we just don’t like.

In fact, I have them. Have you guys ever heard of Jimmy Fallon’s bit where they read all those bad tweets? Well, that’s what I’m about to do. Here are some that I’ve gotten: “It’s always been your way or the highway, Bella, and you proved my point splendidly.” Here’s another one: “Very rude. The woman that I believe is the owner is very obnoxious and self-centered. You have to put up with constant ‘I’m the best, everyone wants to be like me, I’m so great, people would pay double for pet sitting with my company,’ but I decline. Does anyone actually believe that? It’s pretty disturbing. I can’t believe she’s a consultant. She was so nasty with me when I tried to schedule a session with her. Bella equals narcissist.”

So these are just some of the comments I’ve gotten over the years, and you know what, guys? Truth be told, it hurts when you first get it. It really does. I know personally that I can be really abrupt, and I especially know that sometimes when I’m typing it can definitely come across wrong—which is why I save my typing to my groups a lot of the time, a place where I believe that people know who I am, know my heart, and know that I’ve put my blood, sweat, and tears into helping pet sitters in our industry. Because their success is my success, and I just get so elated when I see people thriving, especially when I’ve been able to help encourage them.

So when sometimes it might come off as “it’s my way or the highway,” sometimes it is. And I could go through and rationalize a lot of things, but in the end, I have had to come to terms with—you know what? They’re right. It is my way or the highway, and I do think a lot of myself, and that’s okay. Because you know what? It really depends on who’s the one actually saying this stuff.

First, I want you guys to consider the source when someone tells you something. Is it really an opinion that you even care about? Are they someone that really matters in your life, or are they just a hater? If they’re just a hater, they really don’t care, and you need to remember that. The second thing: is it an opinion that can influence the business around you? If it is, I definitely want you guys to Google that video that I just did with Erica—it was brilliant.

But the number one thing is, you’ve got to remember a lot of the time when it’s personal, people are just jealous or it’s a reflection of themselves that they wish they had. Or they’re just angry. They’re angry in their own life. Of course, your feelings are going to be hurt, and it’s going to be really hard for them not to be. But I want you to build a bridge and get over it. Tomorrow is going to come, that comment is going to be buried, that comment is going to be replied to, filtered, more comments will come on top of it. The world’s going to go on, and not one comment—and Erica and I talked about this—not one comment is ever going to kill your business or it should never kill you as a person.

It’s really your opinion on whether someone’s going to get to you. I know you’ve all heard this, and none of this is really like “wow,” but I’ve just been hearing a lot of people post on the forum saying, “I can’t believe this client said this about me,” or “I can’t believe this client expected me to do this,” or “What do you guys think about this?” And it’s like, who cares? Remember something my husband actually says a lot: everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. They totally are. It’s not always your job to agree with it or defend it or try to get them to agree with your opinion.

Sometimes it’s as simple as, “Okay, that’s fine. You think that I’m a narcissist? Okay, well, clearly you’re probably not a good candidate for my group, so goodbye.” And there’s no harm in that. Why do you have to wait for them to disqualify themselves or for them to leave? You can just go ahead and delete it. This is someplace where you have total control. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

Every single time someone says something to you—like, “My gosh, Sally, you are beautiful,” or “My gosh, Sally, you are ugly”—you have a choice. Common sense says beautiful is great and ugly is horrible, but someone might hear that and think, “No, I’m not,” or “You must be lying.” Another might hear “You’re ugly” and think, “No, I’m not.” You have every single right and responsibility to yourself to decide whether or not you actually want to take that in.

It does not penetrate the duck’s skin—it’s oily, and it just rolls right down. Be a duck. Quack, quack, quack. Find your flock. Think about all the good feedback you get too, and think about all the people who constantly say they love you. That might be nine and a half times out of ten, guys. It probably is. So who cares about that other half percent?

Let’s also talk about seeking guidance from those who you love. Maybe you really do think you messed up, or maybe you think there is some truth—and that’s what really hurts the most. Think about it. Ask people you value and trust. Ask your colleagues. Ask your husband or wife if they can be honest with you. Ask a friend or someone neutral to a situation. Because self-reflection is always great.

It’s not always great to be hoity-toity and stuff, but if you’re doing things because you have a conviction—because you’ve actually figured out this is the way I want to run my ship, this is who I am, this is what I stand for—and you’re not going to let anyone tell you otherwise, then thank them for eliminating themselves from your life, from your tribe.

That’s what I have to say to the haters. So, what do you have to say to the haters? How do you guys do it? How do you put up with it? I want to know the bad things people have said to you. Post them on the Jump Consulting wall, I dare you. Let’s see all the funny things people have said about us. I’ve been told people drink the Bella Kool-Aid—that’s another one, which is actually kind of funny to me. There have been times that people have said things that really do hurt, but you’ve got to just brush it off.

You’ve got to brush it off. And I’m saying this because I know so many of you out there are getting negative feedback. “That’s too expensive.” “You can’t do it.” Maybe it’s a friend or relative saying you can’t have a pet sitting business, “That’s just for eight-year-olds.” There’s always going to be negativity in your life, and what you do with it matters so much.

I did a whole podcast on this—maybe my second podcast—and I talked about how attitude is everything. I’ve written a blog on how attitude is everything. I want you to realize that the world does not make you, or situations do not make you, feel a certain way—only you do.

This has been your sixth episode of Bella in Your Business, and I want to hear what you guys think about this and what people have told you. So go to jumpconsulting.net, click on the Facebook tab, or go to facebook.com/jumpconsulting. Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher—look up Bella Vasta—and I can’t wait to talk to you guys again. Quick and dirty podcasts are going to be. We are just under 20 minutes. Have a super day and remember, keep jumping.

Thanks for jumping with Bella in Your Business. For more information, free articles, free coaching sessions, and more, go to jumpconsulting.net. And remember, Bella’s got your chute.