table of funtents

1. 👋🏼 it’s me, hi

2. 🖕🏼love thy hater

3. 🚪 parting words

👋🏼 it’s me, hi

HAPPY WEDNESDAY, MISFITS ✌🏼

I used this exact meme last year - and as it’ll prove relevant every year for the rest of my life, here it is again (awake from the dead):

💀 in scarier news, a creepy update:

After year 1 on LinkedIn and year 2 on beehiiv, I’m venturing into a world unknown for year 3: Instagram.

I actually started this IG in lockdown, deactivated it for 3 years then revived its corpse for a few reasons:

1. there’s a lotta brain rot on IG and I thought - could I take all our misfit lessons and actually add some value to feeds?

2. some of y’all (not me) think I’d be fun on video (judge for yourself from 2022’s archives. I warned ya)

3. IMO, half the fun is actual behind the scenes and learning as we go so YOLO

BAU cleared and onto the gourd stuff.

This time last year, we talked about prospects who ghost - but this year, I think we can get even scarier and confront our demons directly.

Without further ado, let’s bust some bad guys.

🖕🏼love thy hater

Haters.

Our very own villains, we love to loathe and curse them when building our ventures.

They make us look at the parts of ourselves and our businesses we feel most insecure about it. We fear them, thinking they can see all those parts and are going to expose us.

The greatest lesson I've learned (in keshty, but also probably life) is to love thy hater. And not in the toxic, unrequited kind of way.

In a world that tells you ‘haters gonna hate’ and ‘just ignore them’ (also valid to some extent) I’d love to throw in a rogue, alternative suggestion:

By the end of this episode, I want you to appreciate, thank and yes - even love - thy hater.

“I’m the only one with haters”

In order to love thy hater, let’s first agree the term.

Good news is haters don't have to be vocal, angry Karens plastering 1 star reviews all over Google. Those actually come on quite rarely.

Definition out the way, the second thing to do is accept EVERY single one of our businesses has haters.

I often hear other biz owners say they’ve got the ‘worst luck’ - that the market sucks, no one’s buying from them and any feedback they get is negative.

But the sooner we realise we’re not alone + this is more common than uncommon, a weight of pressure lifts.

IMO, we should accept (and aspire) that most people won’t want to work with us - because if we’re building something for everyone, we’re building for no one.

To illuminate how much we all have haters, here are 3 examples of my hater posse below.

1. instagram

When I created my original IG profile back in 2021, it quickly amassed a small following (2160 to be exact!).

I reactivated IG in August with "returning 10/25..." in the bio. Want to know how many peeps unfollowed since I reactivated?

344.

tldr: it happens ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2. beehiiv

I've shared before that every episode gets unsubscribes, but did you know I also mass unsubscribe people?

That's right - I delete my bottom 10% of subscribers every quarter.

My criteria for the bottom 10% is their overall open rate is less than 20% and they haven't opened my last 6 episodes.

Why this masochistic ritual?

Because they impact MM’s data, bring no productive feedback to the table and hold me back from building around engaged subscribers (like you 🥰).

3. linkedin

Since starting on LinkedIn, I've had so many unfollows - even peeps removing their 1st connection request with me - that I stopped counting (after 500)!

In the first 90 days of posting alone, I lost 412 followers (but hey, gained 1978).

This is actually good, because it means the algo is only working to put you in front of connections who want to see your content.

And if you aren’t already, you should be doing the same btw! Unfollow the accounts, obvious pod bros and AI bot profiles that no longer serve you.

💩 no bs reasons to love thy hater

I hope by now you’ve realised a few things about haters:

• we don’t really know why they’ve unfollowed, unsubscribed or disengaged

• we actually lack the time and capacity to find out why

• they’re likely putting 1 gram of thought into this while we put 9234 grams

To round off, here are 3 reasons why I want you to love your haters.

1. they’re your clearest data point

When someone unsubscribes, unfollows or closes the door on engaging with you, they're giving you the clearest data of your entire audience:

• they won’t be buying from you

• they don’t want to engage with your content

• they’re not going to be part of your cheerleading squad

Sounds harsh, but flip it on its head:

You won't expect anything of them, so you won't be disappointed when they take their money elsewhere.

By that point, you're probably not even thinking about them either.

2. they’ve done the hard work for you

There's nothing more irritating than dancing around a relationship that ultimately flops.

The time it takes to get a client on board, when it works, is of course time well spent.

But most conversations go nowhere. Most proposals end in a long, drawn out process (and ghosts). Most intros make you feel you've given much more than you got back.

The hater, on the other hand, won't put you through these motions.

They're blatantly not interested.

One day they could change their mind - sure. But until then, they're doing you a favour.

They're doing the hard work for you so you don't have to waste a second even thinking about starting the dance with them.

3. they spare you building around them

The long-term sustainability of any businesses hinges on our ability to delight our clients. We build, iterate and improve for our users above all others.

So when our haters exclude themselves from this category, they cut the noise and remove distractions in a world competing for our attention.

They’re explicitly telling you “don’t build around me” - and that instruction is much more of a blessing than it is a curse (even if we don’t always feel it in the moment).

🚪 parting words

Did this episode make you want to go and hug a hater, misfit? Because that was my evil plan along, mwahahaha.

I hope you’re watching Nightmare Before Christmas or Hocus Pocus this week and ringing in spooky season right 🎃

As always, I’m only a message away for thoughts, questions and topic ideas. I read and sincerely appreciate every single poll / email response! Please keep them coming.

Before you go, could you let a girl know what you thought of this issue with the pulse check below? Good intent feedback is always welcome ⬇️

xo, Neds