Transcription
Number 14. Reputation control. I get lots of questions with people and say, "Well, what about, you know, my reputation? People are saying bad things, etc., etc."
To control your reputation is very, very simple. You need to do more good than bad. You're never going to have people 100% happy, but as long as in general you do more good than bad, you'll be okay.
Also, you'll find that people don't often really go out of their way to slander you unless you've really, really pissed them off. And one of the easiest ways to piss people off is to ignore them. So in business, no matter how bad things are going, you never ignore them. Even if they're blowing up your email and messaging you non-stop, "I'm unhappy, I'm unhappy, I'm unhappy!" Try and find a solution.
People only get worse and they only get bitter if they're ignored. Because if they're emailing you, then they're not writing all over blogs and forums and making their complaints public. They're complaining directly to you, which means you can manage it. So this is another very important thing about business.
Everything I've taught you so far, you obviously see there were some struggles along the way. And I learned the most important thing you can do to manage your reputation is to take all the criticism personally. So they can't spend the criticism anywhere else. So if someone has any kind of problem, contact them. Say, "Hey, you got a problem? Let's talk about it. See if we can work something out, blah, blah, blah." Even if they're a complete unreasonable idiot, if you completely, if you continue to email them back and forth and let them vent a little, they're very unlikely to continue to just spread crap all over the internet.
Because that's the word we live in now. It's easy to find customers with the internet. It's easy to lose customers with the internet. So for reputation control, make sure you're prepared to speak to people even when they're being dicks. That's point.