Strangling your business one censorship act at a time

The longer I’m in the online business world, the more shit I observe. And there’s something that really needs to be said. Ready?

You can’t grow your business by stifling honesty and censoring your clients.

It’s going to backfire. Loudly.

See… there’s this belief out there that anything negative is a disease and those who have a differing opinion are spreading darkness and are just your “haters.”

Sorry, but no.

Are there people out there who are never going to be happy and delight in tearing others down? Absolutely! But the larger majority of so called haters are those clients you’ve disappointed. Misled. Fired without cause.

It’s like some online gurus are running a “successful” restaurant where every reviewer is getting a healthy kickback (i.e. an affiliate referral commission) and so when Joe Friday off the streets says your food tastes like dirt he’s the bad guy. You kick him out, bad mouth him, delete his Yelp review and tell your friends you have a bully in your life so they’ll rally behind you.

But maybe, just maybe, haters are telling you the truth you don’t want to hear.

I get it, we all need to manage our brands and put our best face forward and I’m not advocating airing out the dirty laundry here.

But censoring honesty is already hurting your business, even if you don’t see it yet.

Because no matter how much you try to ban negative comments or even write it into your contracts (seriously? because your feelings can’t take criticism?), people will talk.

The option is whether they’re going to share with you and your community the problems they’re experiencing or if they’ll do it behind your back, anonymously and in forums where you can’t engage in a discussion.

Banning negativity doesn’t work, it just drives feedback away from your ears.

I get it, no one wants to hear how they’ve disappointed or failed to deliver for a client but maybe, just maybe, you need to know so you can do better. Maybe instead of reaching 10,000 people and trying to shut them up, you can amazingly serve 1,000 people or 200 or 5 and serve them well.

You might be thinking “I’d never do that!” but there’s another lesson here. Look for online reviews and find out before working with someone what their policies are. They’re usually listed as something like “non disparagement” or in more innocuous terms like “this is a safe space of positivity” but if the effect is that saying something negative gets you silenced, banned or removed from the program then I say it loudly: run the other way.

The only value of censorship is protecting the egos of those who are afraid.