Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #218: How to Overcome the HATERS, With Heather!

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

In This Episode You Will Learn About:  When to ignore the haters vs when to engage them Why the haters are a good sign! How to reframe haters in your life to motivate you to keep going! Why you should never let haters stop you Resources: Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  Get a signed copy of Overcome Your Villains  If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Show Notes:  Things are not always as they seem on the surface! Remember, SO much goes on behind the scenes. I’m here to remind you that we never know the FULL story behind someone’s success and we can’t just judge a final product. Today I’m reading a chapter from Overcome Your Villians to inspire you to realize that if you have haters, that means you’re making a difference with your message! Just stay focused on your goals and keep going!

Come on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals. We'll overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so glad you're back here with me this week. Okay, I was reminded about how things are not always the way that they seem very recently. So if you've been with me on this journey, that's a promo to my show, by the way.

I just thought that was funny. But if you've been listening to the show, at least for a little while, you know there's some total chaos happening with an opportunity to sell my condo, which I bought back in 2005 and never thought even had, I haven't been thinking of selling this place in years, right? It just hasn't even crossed my mind. I bought at the height of the market and sort of just always thought for sure that this was going to be an investment property that whenever I get married again, and move into a home, I would rent this out. That was sort of what I thought the only option was, right? Until all of a sudden, serendipitously, my neighbor walked up to me and said, hey, we just sold our condo.

You need to speak to our realtor. You can't believe the prices that our building is getting right now. There's no property available in our building. Literally 24 hours later, the realtor was here, and it's been a crazy couple of weeks. The reason why I bring that up is so many new people, are moving to Miami right now from New York and really all over the country and the world. And I've been seeing a lot of new faces in my neighborhood. So across the street from where I currently live right now, there is a gorgeous brand new park that everyone seems to think just

went up overnight. Now, I'm sharing this with you because I want you to remember in your life, you might see things and think, oh, that person just got fit. It happened so quickly, you know, just overnight. Something magical happened and they look amazing or, you know, oh, this person just blew up overnight and they just got promoted and things are going so well for them. I'm here today to remind you, that is not true. And we never have the true story behind the image or the promotion or the book going number one or whatever it is that we're seeing or the weight loss or whatever, right? So here's the true story behind this miraculous new park that just, sprouted overnight. I'm here to tell you it did not. I've been living here since 2005. So here's

the backstory to it. And hopefully someone who actually hangs out in this beautiful new park will hear this because the people that are hanging around there think it just happened overnight. Okay, I've made it clear. It did not. Years ago, we're talking pre-pandemic, right? We're talking, gosh, this is going back to whenever the last really bad hurricane we had here. So this is years ago. We had this hospital that was somewhat dilapidated across the street. It's actually now where the park exists. But back then, it was really kind of an eyesore, right? It had been somewhat destroyed in the most recent hurricane. And again, this is years ago. And I guess whatever it was, a city or whoever kind of abandoned it. And so, you know, homeless people were living in there.

It was broken windows, glass. You definitely did not want to go over near this piece of land as it looked a bit scary. And truly was somewhat of an eyesore in a really nice neighborhood in Miami Beach. So that hospital sat there for years like that. I'm not being dramatic. I'm being honest. So I don't know, again, I don't know the behind the scenes on what was happening with the city and who they were fighting with.

But I do know eventually what ended up happening was a very big construction company, you know, condo producing company, wanted to purchase that land. They wanted to destroy that hospital, tear it down, which it was truly an eyesore and definitely unsafe, right? And so there was some back and forth that I had heard about. This is years ago around the city and residents, even people in my building, were opposing this new company coming in. I mean, you cannot believe how much red tape went on here.

It's crazy. I did not get involved in this stuff. Thankfully, I am too busy in my own life that I don't get caught up in these kind of things. But, you know, some people who really were interested in making sure the right things happened, which is great, did get involved. and there was countless meetings because I got emails and I had letters sent to my condo from the city. And basically to make a long story as short as I can, there was concerned that yet again, another big condo building was going to be put up. And they wanted some type of a concession that if we're going to allow yet again another big building, P.S., this was before Miami blew up.

Over the last two years since the pandemic has hit, Miami has literally become the new New York, right? everyone from New York moved down here. I don't even know if it's like a million new people. It's crazy. The traffic isn't saying there's not enough housing anymore. They're saying that the pricing now in Miami for housing is equal to what New York used to be before the pandemic. So it's just crazy what's, no one could have ever, I don't think anyone could have ever projected this because most people, myself included, had no idea this is coming. Okay. So this is going back years ago. There was all this fighting going on between this condo company, construction company, whatever it was, with this vision that they had for this beautiful new, big condo going up,

but the city was really trying to hold their feet to the fire and a lot of residents in my neighborhood because we would be directly impacted, right? Yes, will it be nice to have another condo building? It will be pretty. However, the concern I believe was that residents were concerned, oh, wait, that's going to drive my property value down if I live in a building that was constructed 20 years ago and there's a brand new one. People are going to want the brand new one. And now you know, no one's going to want this one. Again, no one realized that there was millions of people moving to Miami, you know, in 2022. So they ended up, it was definitely over a year. I think it was a couple years that this went on back and forth, this fighting, and then they would have these

town hall sessions. And it was crazy what would go on, right? And I was getting all of this mailers on it, emails on it, whatever. And it ended up something to the effect of, the city decided that if this company, I believe it's called like Park Five or something, wanted to construct this nice high-rise condo, you know, beautiful property that they could do it, but that they had to buy the hospital property, which is another block right next door to where they wanted to build, and that they had to beautify it, gentrify it, and make it something wonderful for the community, hence the beautiful new park we have, right? So this is going back years ago that this was all going on, and there was a lot of turmoil. I am sure that condo company spent a fortune on legal fees and

court cases and whatnot because I remember getting all these mailers and all these emails. So many people were trying to stop them from building this condo. Spoiler alert, they just broke ground on this condo complex maybe two months ago, just FYI. Right? There's still nothing there. They made a pit at the bottom. Right. So that just goes to show how long things take and that people don't realize the work that goes into something when you just happen to drive by and see the finished product, which, yes, the park is finished, but now the actual condo complex that this whole thing was about is just, you know, ground was just broken a couple months ago. It's definitely, I would assume it's at least a year out before this condo is going to be done, or even probably

more than a year. I don't know how long it will take, but at least a year, at the least bit. So all this goes on, there's all this fighting back and forth. They finally come to some type of terms and agreement, right? This is pre-pandemic, and then the pandemic hit. And everything stopped. So they were going to break ground. They were going to do this and that. And then everything shut down. And then there were so many issues, you know, in every major city.

There was riding. There was so much craziness going on, right? There was a lot of upset and whatnot. So no construction began during that time. Right. And then cut to, I believe it was probably about a year ago, they started breaking ground on this park, which at this point in time, they had blown up the hospital, taking that down, right, which was great, but it was just this big rock pit sitting in our neighborhood.

And then they broke around about a year ago, and I believe it took about a year for them to build this park. And it was funny the last couple months, people kept saying, what is it going to open? What is it going to open? But to the people like myself who've seen this whole thing transpire, it's probably been over six or seven years this whole thing has happened, right, from them first trying to make a bid to construct their content. Dominium, which, as I said, just broke around maybe two months ago. I just had to share with you, yes, the park is done. And it's so beautiful. And people are finding so much joy. And I'm so sad that it didn't exist back when I had a young son. You know, my 14-year-old does not want to go hang out in the park. However, it would have been cool when he was a little kid, right,

to have been able to do that. And I'm so happy for the people that have that now. I see so many families and little kids running around and people walking their dogs. And it's just, it's so, it's beautiful. But the moral of the story is this. Things are not necessarily the way appear. So many people believe this thing just went up overnight flawlessly and it was this wonderful project. That was not the case at all. It's been a huge court battle. It's been a huge fight. It's been one problem after another. And it still took a really long time to actually build, right? You know, from pulling that blowing up, they had to literally blow up that hospital and then remove all that debris and then break ground and then the pandemic and then the riots and then everything stopped and then it started

it again. And just the next time you see that person and they're celebrating their weight loss, they're celebrating their promotion, they're celebrating, you know, selling whatever, 100,000 books, know that we have no idea what that backstory looks like. We have no idea from that moment of having that vision and coming up with that commitment to have this goal and go after it, what that work actually looked like. Because I can promise you this, 99.9% of the people that enjoy that park right now have no idea how many years in the making this was. The blood, sweat, and tears that company put in, the city put in, the residents put in, right? And how many startups and how many times we thought it was just going to fail and not happen. So stay committed

to your goal. Stay in your own line of vision, right? Don't get too caught up in what we see Jane or Jack doing because who knows what that real story is. Who knows what that trajectory really looks like and stay committed to your vision, to your goal. And no, yes, good things take time, but great things pretty often take a little bit longer. Hang in there. Don't give up. When you want more, start your business with Northwest Registered Agent and get access to thousands of free guides, tools, and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business. All in one place. Build your complete business identity with Northwest today. Northwest Registered Agent's has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years.

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That's when I got this flood of haters. Anytime you put yourself out there, anytime you do something bigger and go to the next level and become more unique and creative, that's, you know, an open door to invite the haters in. I see it as a positive. It means we're reaching new people. We're reaching beyond that little tiny knit circle. We have of tight friends and colleagues and we're getting out into the world, which means we have the potential an opportunity to make a difference and reach more people. Hooray, celebrate it. I really am not

very bothered anymore by the haters. At first, oh my gosh, I was mortified. It was such a problem, such an issue for me. I truly thought about pulling my book right now. I was so down about it, seeing how people put up websites, anti-Hethermanian websites with complete lies. I have people that to this day I saw this, you know, have dedicated these sites saying that I'm a bad business person. Not true. Right. I will always do the right thing in business. Just facts.

Look at my track record. The results speak for themselves. So people literally vilify me making up stories. But you know what I've learned? That's about them. It's not about me. And I'm not going to lose my time or energy focusing on them. That's giving my power to them.

Oh, stop the press. Not doing that. Right. So I really learned over the past few years to let people spin in their vitriol or anger or whatever it is. Spin it up, bro. Like go for it. You do you. And I'm going to be over here doing me, putting my energy, my thoughts, and my efforts to creating positive things and taking that next step that will take me towards my goal and my vision. And that's the work that people don't always see behind the scenes. Okay. So much so that haters have been an issue in my life the

last few years, I wrote a chapter on it. It's chapter 17 in my book, Overcome Your Villains, and yes, if you didn't know, I narrate it. All right, so here we go. Chapter 17, don't hide from the haters. The greatest prison that people live in is the fear of what other people think, David Ike. Are you ready for a rude awakening? Some people like to pretend that being a perfectionist means that they are held to a higher standard. It makes them somehow better, than you and me. I call BS on that. Perfectionists are just like you or me. They're scared. Scared they will be judged. Scared of making a mistake. Scared their work or ideas won't be accepted or praised. When you strip perfectionism down, you are left with fear. Here's a question to ask

yourself, would you rather have published an imperfect book with just three errors? Or would you rather be lying on your deathbed someday, telling your son or daughter that you had the perfect book in your mind, but you were never able to write it. Done will always be better than perfect. Yes, my first book, Confidence Creator, has three mistakes, and I am so proud of them. Would I rather have no book and no mistakes? Hell no. See fear as a green light that means go and go faster. And that rings true for the video you want to create, the email you're hesitant to write, or the question you want to ask in your next meeting. Done will always be better than perfect, and doing it will build momentum for you.

The more I have thought about fear and perfectionism and the more I have stepped into my fear, the more I realize that so much this fear is rooted in fear of haters, the villains in your life, and their judgment. When you begin to shine your light, the haters will come for you. They love nothing more than trying to bring you down. It reminds me of turning on a light when you're outside and the bugs start swarming around, stinging, biting, leaving behind painful welts. I think of this every time I do something different and the haters come from me. I imagine the light and the bugs, and it makes me smile.

Yes, gross analogy, but you get the point. The haters don't come for you if you don't turn off. on your light. If you decide to play your life small, without your light shining, no one will come for you. But then, guess what? You are left in the dark. We were not put on this earth to hide in the dark. In fact, we are here to make the world a brighter, better place. And that means shining the light you were given. One of the first big experiences I had with this was when my first book came out. I knew the haters would be coming from me for sure because I did something different, something unique. I was prepared to celebrate the haters until one hit me pretty hard.

Now, pump the brakes before you detach here and say, This is exactly why I won't write a book or do something that calls attention to myself. Here's the sad truth. I also had haters when I got my first promotion at work. When I got fired, when my son ran for class president and won, and when he lost. My point is you don't have to write a book to deal with haters. Haders will be there no matter what you do. No matter if you are succeeding or failing, they're coming.

When you launch a book, people can review your work on many different sites. Knowing that we live in a review and rating world, I knew it would be important to gather great reviews of my book. But I didn't think about how much a negative one could hurt. Here's some perspective. When you have hundreds of decent reviews, one negative review, gets lost in the pile. No biggie. But when you launch and have only a few reviews, one bad one can be a game changer. That's what happened to me. And that can happen to anyone when asking for reviews of your

work. When I launched Confidence Creator, I steered everyone I knew to Amazon to leave rating and reviews. What I didn't know, as a first-time author, was that the book review site, Goodreads, is also very important. It had a couple of good reviews of my book already, and then someone created a ghost account and left a one-star review. I wouldn't have even known about it if a friend of mine hadn't seen it for herself and reached out to me. She sent me a text and a screenshot of what the faceless ghost account had left. One star. That crushed my overall rating on Goodreads, taking it from a 4.5 to a 2.5 rating. I was livid. I knew my book was not perfect.

Three errors. But I also knew that my book was really good. And it absolutely did not warrant a one-star review. That the review was submitted under a ghost account that had just been created, strongly suggested that this was an attack by a hater. Sadly, probably someone I knew. Get ready for the irony. Here it comes.

Remember the woman, my villain, who thought she had fired me from my executive position when I actually had fired her. Her birth name is Barbara. And guess what? The name on the ghost account was Barbara. No photo. No history of reviewing anything else. No information at all. Just a one-star review for Confidence Creator. Once I put those pieces together, my anger started rising. I thought, if this lady was actually my villain hiding behind a ghost account, I need to call her out on it. So that's exactly what I did. I decided to go to social media and post this. When you decide to shine your light and be your authentic self,

know that the haters will come. Taking the risk to create and innovate will anger those that haven't or leave them jealous or uncomfortable. And none of that has anything to do with you. On Goodreads, someone has posted a one-star review of my book. It's a new ghost account named Barbara. no information, no history, no picture, and no reviews other than to review Confidence Creator with a one-star rating. A fan messaged Barbara on the review. What was it that you did not like

about this book? Shockingly, no reply. When I shine my light, I've been confronted with haters, and ironically, Confidence Creator is about owning your voice and being confident in who you are. So for Barbara, I hope you actually read Comference Creator today and begin to create confidence for yourself so you can own your one-star rating or anything else for that matter, because it's yours and you should be confident in your opinions, even when they aren't with the crowd. Own who you are and shine your light and you can and will when you create your own confidence. Hoping this post inspires Barbara to read the book so she can own her profile and her voice, which I will applaud, one star and all. Rock your hashtag confidence creator. That single post

did things I never could have imagined. It inspired people to go to good reads and flood my book with positive ratings and feedback. Until this incident occurred, my strategy had been to ignore haters, and frankly, that is usually the best approach. But I discovered that it can pay off to selectively leverage negative reviews and comments left by haters and villains. Calling out this hater ended up helping me. Another time a hater came out of the woodwork to attack me, happened when I posted a photo of me on social media with these words. I don't lose.

I either win or I learn. When I wrote the post, I had no idea that these words came from a Nelson Mandela quote. I had even Googled the quote before posting it to see if it was attributable to any in specific. I had seen it all over the internet with no author, no attribution, and I thought, okay, I'll post it. So I posted the image with the quote without any attribution. Soon after, a woman commented on my post, that is a Nelson Mandela quote. Okay, that was news to me, but I was grateful that the woman had let me know so I could correct it. I thanked her,

and in the text portion of the post, I added, the quote in the image below is attributed to Nelson Mandela. Case closed. Or so I thought. The woman then commented back. What you did in this post is not good enough. You must delete the post now. I thought that was crazy. And why would someone whom I don't know, who doesn't work for the social media platform I'm posting on, dictate to me how I attribute someone's quote and what is acceptable or not acceptable to them? I didn't delete it. and the post started going viral because the community saw the thread and started jumping in with their own opinions. In the end, I left the post right where it was, but I also created a new post with Nelson Mandela attributed in the image and in the text portion of the post. I also told a story about what had happened.

I hadn't known who the quote was attributed to, and when I found out, I made the proper attribution. I went on to explain that someone didn't think that was good enough, so I had to I was now reposting it with the proper attribution both times. That new post went viral. And here's why. Everyone deals with haters and naysayers and people telling you that what you did was not good enough. So people could relate. In the end, if you move through with good intentions and make mistakes and own them,

99% of people will relate and understand. Here's the funniest part of the story. Turns out the quote isn't actually attributed to Nelson Mandela. During the final editing process, it was brought to my attention by one of our many editors that this quote has been attributed to numerous people and it is not sourced properly. Knowledge is power. And it would have been powerful to have known this during the exchange. However, I am still pleased with how it all played out.

Take away. Be careful before you attack others. You never know you may have bad information like that woman did. Last year I had the chance to go on Gary V's podcast, and one of the topics we dove into was haters. Here's how Gary handles them. Judge the Judgers is what he said. That really had an impact on me. Instead of being judged and then judging ourselves, why don't we look to the person pointing the finger and wonder why they're pointing it?

What's their real motivation? The reality is they're probably struggling, angry or jealous of something. when we can try to find empathy and understanding for those people, we can make the world a better place. I have never been attacked by those who are incredibly happy in their life, and I try to remember that. Sometimes I put the haters to work for me. Sometimes I ignore them, and sometimes I feel badly for them. But one thing is for certain, I never let them stop me. It will always be harder to create and innovate than it is to critique and judge. I will take the harder, more rewarding road every time. And I hope you will join me, building a solid foundation with the bricks that are thrown at us.

Key takeaway. Haters are a sign that you are succeeding. Hators are a sign that you are shining your light. Haters are a sign that you are not vanilla. Let's celebrate when the haters come. You can also take action by leveraging haters' comments to elicit help and support for you. All right, that was chapter 17 from Overcome Your Villains. If you have not gotten this book yet, what are you waiting for?

Get the Audible version. It's my favorite. At the end of every chapter, I go off script and I give you a real updated, off-the-cuff version of what's happening relevant to the topic. Who knows what I said about this chapter? Because I literally recorded this over a year ago, the Audible version, so I don't remember anymore. But it's so good. I get the most unbelievable reviews on it. Get the Audible version.

And if you don't have an audible account yet, go set up account and you get it for free. You don't have to pay, right? If you know someone that's graduating, get them this book. This is a great gift for any graduate. This is going to set them up for success in business and life. For sure, my back process will help anyone overcome adversity or challenges that they are facing or that they will face soon enough. Okay.

And then if you want an autograph copy of this book, you can get one of confidence creator or of overcome your villains. go to Books and Books website. It's a bookstore, a local bookstore in Miami. Just type in books and books. It will pop right up. And then when you order either one of my books, you just put in the notes below, I would like this autograph or I would like it written out to blah, blah, blah, this is a gift, write whatever you want. And what happens is I've set up a situation and a partnership with books and books in Miami such that whenever you order autograph books, well, number one, they have cases of them. I sat for days in that store signing and autographing so many books

so that they're already there signed. But if people want them personalized, I go down there once a month and I personalize books. So go ahead. Let us know what you want the book to say. I'm going to come down there and write it out for you. Go to books and books. Or if you just want an autograph copy of Confidence Creator or Overcome Your Villains, go to books and books now, and you can order yours. My personal opinion is the audible version is the best. And if you don't have an audible account yet, go ahead and set one up and you get it for free. Okay, here's to you overcoming your villains, throwing shade to the haters and achieving your goals this year, just like me. I can't wait to see you next week. Please, if you like this episode,

go ahead and share it with somebody. No one succeeds alone. That includes me. And I am not able to produce this content if I don't get downloads. So please share it with others. It would mean the world to me, go ahead and post on your socials. When you do that, that tells me you like the episode and I create more content for you. If you got questions, you want me to answer them live on air, go ahead and send me a DM. Go to my website, Heather Monaghan.com. I got you. Until next week, keep creating your confidence. You know I will be.