142: How To Powerfully Handle Haters As An Online Coach

In this episode, Christine tackles an often-unspoken challenge faced by online entrepreneurs – dealing with haters and online trolls. 

The fear of having haters can stop many coaches and online creators from putting themselves out there and sharing their authentic selves. Hearing negative comments d

In this episode, you’ll hear about….

• How the fear of trolls and haters online is a common experience for entrepreneurs, and can be highly dysregulating to our nervous systems
• Why overcoming this fear is a rite of passage for every entrepreneur, and it can help us to develop resilience and the capacity to hold space for more clients and visibility
• Why negative comments and criticism can actually indicate that your message is resonating with someone, while repelling others (which means you're reaching the right audience!)
• How to ground yourself in the understanding that your mission is more important than the opinions of haters and trolls

…and so much more! 

The world needs more of your authenticity, so don’t let the haters stop you!

Have a question or topic you’d like to see covered on the podcast? Go to www.lifewithpassion.com/podcast and I’ll create a custom episode just for you!

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Welcome to Let's give visibleentrepreneurs. This is the
podcast where we bring you thesecrets behind what it actually
takes to get seen, get known andget more clients. I'm your host,
Christine Amerman. And I'msharing my best strategies from
over two decades of experienceas a media marketing and
messaging expert, to help youexpand your exposure, grow your

(00:25):
personal brand, attract dreamclients, and more, all while
staying true to your authenticself and unique vision. If
you're a passionate, heartcentered entrepreneur, thought
leader, or expert looking tostand out from the crowd with
confidence, you're in the rightplace. Are you ready? Let's get
visible. Welcome to this episodeof Let's get visible

(00:49):
entrepreneurs. Today we aretalking about the fear of having
a troll having a hater, or maybeeven multiple, how do you deal
with those trolls and haters online? Oh my gosh, you all if
you're listening to this,there's a good chance if you

(01:09):
resonate with me that you'rehighly sensitive, or that you've
had this fear, or both. And Ican remember, I have a friend
with like a massive amount offollowers. And I can remember
reading some of the commentsthat they were getting, and me
like my stomach hurting withlike getting really
uncomfortable. And then not evendirected at me. Right. So

(01:33):
sometimes we're reallyempathetic, and we feel for
other people. And hey, they mayalready have the thick skin
required to hold space toenergetically be able to grow a
massive audience, right? Theyprobably didn't develop that
thick skin along the way. Butmaybe you've already had a

(01:54):
difficult or traumaticexperience with the troll or
maybe you're playing just smallenough to keep yourself from
dealing with a troll, or ahater. So what do you do? What
do you do? Because honestly,this is a rite of passage. For
everyone, every entrepreneur,even before I was an online

(02:16):
entrepreneur, I was a professor.
And I remember my very firstsemester, the boss, my dean
telling me, Don't read yourevaluations, your reviews,
essentially just don't do it.
Just do not read them for thefirst semester. Like there's no
point there's no of course Iread them. And you know, I still

(02:38):
remember 2019 years later, 21years later, what what they
said, because our brains have anegativity bias, we are 20 times
more likely, just basicneuroscience 20 times more
likely to go with a negativethought than we are a positive
thought, yikes. Now, we're inpersonal development here. But I

(03:00):
think it's important to rememberthat we that's that's how we
were born like yes, of course,we can overcome that we can
train it out of it ourselves, wecan, we can, you know, catch
ourselves and rewire it and allthe things and this is something
that just about everyentrepreneur goes through. Even
if you maybe have a thickerskin, there's probably a fear of

(03:24):
something bad happening. I knowthere are times that I was
afraid that maybe somebody thatI unfortunately am not that
close to in my family was goingto do something to sabotage me,
right, even though that would beundeserved, just to be hurtful,
you know, maybe you've got thatearly on, I was told to run
Facebook ads. My very firstcoach told me to run Facebook

(03:45):
ads because that's how she hadblown up and become a seven
figure coach. And I didn't knowwhat I was doing. And I didn't
know what I didn't know. And Ichecked my online brain Mart
online marketing brain at thedoor because this was you know,
a new field for me coaching. AndI ran ads and I was honest about
my my journey to strangers. Nowmy journey trigger warning

(04:05):
pregnancy and infant child lossthis business The reason I
switched from running an onlinemarketing agency in 2015, to
founding life with passion, thisbusiness was inspired by the
full term loss of my daughter.
And so I had this really, reallybig why of like, if I'm going to
be here, and I'm going to keepbeing here and she's not well,

(04:27):
the way that I know to create alegacy for her and to parent her
since she's not here is tocreate a bigger mission is to
create a bigger why and helpthese high achieving women who
want to show up for theirpurpose, their passion, their
calling, and help the world. Sowe're still doing today helping

(04:48):
you create a business where youattract all of the clients that
you want so that you cancontinue to do this or grow this
to the level that you want togrow it. So I'm running out ads
to these women. And once youknow, they get in front of some
people who are nasty, and I hadpeople even questioning,
challenging saying that I hadmade the loss of my daughter up

(05:10):
to get attention. Which is ofcourse, like my biggest fear,
one of my biggest fears at thetime. I was so upset by that,
and like, How dare you I wasstill grieving. I mean, always
still be grieving, but it wasvery raw at that time. And I had
to figure out how to live withthat that had happened. I have a
client who was running ads toher live workshops and had

(05:32):
somebody in the chat at one ofher live workshops, trolling and
saying hateful mean things whileshe was trying to conduct a
workshop. It was reallydistracting. I also had a troll
early on, it's been at leastfive years, I would say. And I
was running a webinar, and I hadsomebody criticizing me in the
comments. And I said, You knowwhat, that's okay. I'm not for

(05:54):
everybody. If this doesn'tresonate with you, like move on
and find somebody who does, andthat's fine. And I said it with
like, a lot of detachment. Andit's actually something that I
had learned from watching DeniseDuffield Thomas handle it, I'd
seen her do something similar.
And I thought, well, that's sucha gracious way to handle

(06:14):
somebody who's critical. insteadof ignoring them, just call it
out, address it and be be kindand firm. And I did that and
don't you know, I have a longterm client and friend who still
talks about seeing that example.
And how that gave her like, somecomfort of okay, I have
something to say if somebodyshows up like that. So hopefully
that's helpful to you. So muchof this is overcoming this fear,

(06:36):
this inherent fear that we haveof judgment of criticism, of
ostracization, because back inthe day, when safety was in
numbers, safety was in thetribe, doing something that
would get you kicked out of thetribe was deadly, so often,

(06:57):
right, because you would bealone, you would be abandoned,
and you would be left to theelements. Now, often, we react
as if a hater or a troll onlineis going to end us, right, or
our fear of that. And the like,one thing that I can tell you,
is that, okay, that's normal,it's normal to have that primal

(07:18):
fear, because it's been passeddown, right, a lot more
generations where that was true.
And that wasn't true in our DNA.
And, you know, it's like mystudents who are terrified to
get up in front of their peers,and sound ridiculous, or appear,
you know, less than smart, whenthey were giving speeches, when
I taught speech, I say the samething to my clients. Now,

(07:41):
essentially, you get up, you doit, you realize you don't die.
And then that gives you theconfidence and the courage to do
it again. Because confidencecomes from doing something, it
doesn't come from waiting untilyou feel confident to do it. And
in a way, if somebody isoffended by what you say,
triggered by what you say,that's great, you're eliminating

(08:02):
something that means yourmessage is resonating with
someone because it's clearlyrepelling somebody else. And
that means you have someone thatit's clear for, and you want to
become known to your Cloneableclients. This develops
resilience, this helps youdevelop the capacity to be able

(08:23):
to hold space for more clientsfor higher prices for more
visibility, it means people areseeing your stuff. It means some
of the wrong people are seeingyour stuff, which means a lot of
the right people are right. Andyou can also use it to create
content to get a little bitmeta, just like I am with this
episode. Listen, haters andtrolls. It is terrifying. And

(08:46):
I'm not going to be one of thosepeople to tell you to just get
over it. Right. This is highlydysregulated to our nervous
systems. And in fact one of thefight or flight responses that
isn't as well known. I learnedthis from a client who does
trauma healing for women genius.
Dr. Amy Hawaii. Thank you, Amy.
She taught me that beyond fightor flight. You might have also

(09:10):
heard freeze. You might haveheard fun. Then there's a fifth.
And because most of theneuroscience around trauma,
trauma research has been done onmen, specifically veterans,
that's the majority of the bodyof work. It's changing and yet
that term PTSD was invented forfor veterans. The Fifth Element

(09:30):
there is flock.
And this is something specificstereotypically stereotypically
to women. Were in the tribesunder duress, under fear. Women
would flock together they wouldcreate a tight circle they would

(09:51):
put their kids in the middlethink about what we see other
mammals doing right in order toprotect themselves from threats.
So flock is a really naturalhuman In response to having this
fear, we want to be around ourpeople. We want to be insular,
we want to self protect, right?
And you can really groundyourself in this ability to go.
I'm going to use this as anexperience to prove to myself

(10:15):
that my fear can come true andit's not going to kill me. I'm
going to prove this experienceto myself that my mission is
more important than these hatersand trolls, who have something
that's making them so unhappy orchoosing to focus on something
that's making them so unhappy,that they're projecting their

(10:36):
unhappiness onto other people, Ieat me how sad for them. Right,
instead of just moving on to thenext person, they've got a
project. And that's about them.
That's not about me, I survivedthis, I'm gonna get greater
confidence from having done it.
And now I can move on and holdmore space for more people and

(10:57):
more clients because I'm on theother side of this rite of
passage. Hope you enjoy thisepisode. Let me know what you
think. And if you haven'talready subscribed and followed
the podcast, please do that sothat we can reach more people.
These messages. Were here forthe, you know, the people who
are doing really importanthealing work, transformational

(11:20):
work, making the world a betterplace, living their callings,
living their passions, I trulybelieve that we each live our
calling in our passion, theworld is served. I believe that
we each are here to serve theperson, we're here to serve for
a reason. If we all listened tothat, then we can have a more
holistic, more healed world. Solisten to your calling. Don't

(11:41):
let the haters stop you. And ifyou've been having this
conversation, maybe with abusiness bestie someone else has
been telling you, oh my gosh,I'm just so scared that what
happened to XYZ will happen tome or you know, you know,
they're playing small becausethey're scared of criticism.
Would you consider sharing thiswith them as well? If they would
benefit from it? I'd be sograteful. Thank you for helping
us further our mission. Andthanks for joining us for

(12:07):
another episode of Let's getvisible entrepreneurs.