Feedback Is A Gift

0:00I would rather launch something and be embarrassed than be afraid of the unknown. And I realized that I've made the worst decisions in my professional life, my personal life, when I have operated from a place of fear. And I have made the best decisions in my professional life, my personal life, when I have operated from a place of courage.

0:30Hi, I'm Gina Bianchini, and this is People Magic, where I'm showing you the easiest way to create a$1 million community. Hey, Gina, I'm all about workshopping and finding new solutions, but I hate unsolicited advice from people. How do you handle advice with an open mind? Look, I think it's a great question. I start from a place of feedback is a gift. Now, sometimes I use the phrase feedback is a gift in a mocking way of like, okay, feedback is a gift. Other times I'm like, oh my God, feedback is a gift. The difference in the intonation is the intention behind it and also whether or not it's valuable.

1:19So, for example, we don't talk about giving advice in People Magic. In fact, advice shuts a conversation down, and it's stories, experiences, and ideas that expand a conversation, give it room to really become valuable to people. So that's just looking at it from the lens of what kind of conversations and what kind of relationships do you want to develop with people magic at its core when you're building a community and monetizing it with memberships and courses and challenges and events. Then there is just advice on the internet. I unsurprisingly get a lot of advice on the internet. And that's just a function of being out there and available and running a platform that is used by nearly a million people who have created Mighty Networks.

2:16And what I have found is that it is always important to see it or listen, understand what it is somebody might be getting at with the nugget behind the advice, and also be able to put it in a place where it does not live in your brain. And it does not live in my brain. So one of the more recent examples of this is, I have a fancy mic here. I'm set up with a fancy camera and a fancy mic and like lighting and the whole thing. And somebody wrote, I can't listen to her because her mic is so bad. And so I went and I like researched it. I'm like, is my mic actually so bad? Because I've had situations where my mic has been bad.

3:03I have learned through people writing me and DMing me, hey, Gina, get a microphone. That's awesome. So I went and checked it out. Turns out this person was just being a jerk. People on the internet are going to be jerks. They are. It's one of the reasons why people magic and having your own space that is higher quality, that has more intention to it, that has a purpose for people to come together, and a set of boundaries and guidelines and culture building is really what it is, of share stories, experiences, ideas, not advice. Enter into what you are building and how to get the most out of it by starting with what you can give, not what you want to ask or what you feel like you deserve or need from other people in the community.

3:55And just those two things alone, this ability to not have advice, don't build a culture of advice, don't even use the term advice. Instead, think about replacing advice with ideas, with stories, with experiences. and then as you build and model a culture, and this might be a culture that you have for an in-person workshop. This might be the culture of a digital experience or your community. Model giving first. This is something we have to give. This is therefore also something we have as an ask. I am shocked. Once I made that flip from understanding that it's about leading with what you give, not what you have as an ask.

4:46I see asks masquerading as gives everywhere. The, oh my gosh, don't you want to go to my free workshop? Or would you like a free assessment? Being careful that you are creating things that do come from an authentic place of giving before asking is super important. Coming from a place of confidence in why you exist, not just philosophically, why are we on this earth as human beings, but rather, why are you doing what you're doing, I think is one of the most important things to be able to confidently operate in this world and especially operate in digital public worlds like social media or other places where it is about putting yourself out there.

5:41Not so much in private communities, especially in private communities or paid communities where the purpose is really clear. The reason and ways people are interacting with each other are much more intentional and much more clear in terms of stories and experiences, not advice, starting with gives, not starting with asks. And so when I think about why it becomes easier and easier for me to read, sometimes mock, the unsolicited advice I get on the internet is really because I'm clear on what I am doing and why I am doing it. I am here to bring people magic into the world. People magic is defined by the strategies that we're talking about here on this podcast, as well as the software that we're building with Mighty Networks that is all around how do we connect people to each other around the things that are most important to them in ways that can be instantly valuable, instantly energizing, instantly creative, and build optimal cultures because of these agreements around what cultures ultimately expand and create value much more easily and effectively and what cultures are gonna lead to absolute terrible engagement and toxic environments that nobody wants to be a part of.

7:14And with people magic, it is about scaling those cultures that are much more valuable, that are much more energizing, that are much more fun. They're much more fun. And because of that mission, because of that purpose that I know I'm working towards with People Magic and bringing it into the world and unlocking all of these incredible experiences that I invest an hour in the morning just writing on paper what that future story or what that future state looks like, it makes it a heck of a lot easier to really just take in whatever shows up. knowing that my time horizon for success, my time horizon for my purpose is ultimately two, three, four years out.

8:10So if we zoom out, I'm answering the question of, you know, what do you do about unsolicited advice on the internet with how to build really healthy cultures and specifically really healthy community cultures, how to actually be really clear about your purpose, which makes everything else easier to navigate, especially unsolicited feedback, even just unhappy people with something that you're building. And then finally, I would offer this. The power of doing something hard, like building anything, is in taking risks, doing things that might feel scary. Because sometimes when you get that unsolicited advice, that's one thing.

9:03But when you're afraid of getting unsolicited advice, it is amazing the number of things that you can find to do with your time or reasons that you can give for not launching into the world. And so find your own small community. Have a team. Have a kitchen cabinet. Whatever you want to call it. But have a group of people. I know I have mine. have a group of people that you can process things with and not process things in a in one of our traps whether that's the victim trap the nowhere trap or the complexity trap this is not about you're perfect and everybody else is dumb this is about processing unsolicited feedback unsolicited advice with humility, with humor, with the ability to look at something and say, okay, wait, are they right?

10:04Are they right? And be okay if it isn't sort of delivered in the way that, you know, would make it as easy to hear as possible. That's a skill. And it requires a clear purpose because, again, I'll just use myself as an example. people magic is more important to me than anything that could possibly be a blip right now that is embarrassing or somebody being critical of me. Do I care? Yes. I don't want to set the expectation that I don't ever care or I don't care. I do. But because I have a group of people that I can go process that with, including different intonations of feedback is a gift, depending what kind of feedback it is, that has allowed me to get really comfortable with, I'm going to go for it.

10:59A final mantra that's been really important to me just this week, which is we launched something new. And right before launching it, we were getting some information that was like making some of the people on my team a little nervous. Like, oh my gosh, should we actually do this? And like anything, I slept on it because I'm not gonna make a, you know, I'm not gonna make a decision, you know, without kind of letting my subconscious process it overnight. I woke up in the morning and I'm like, we're gonna go do this thing. And the reason we're gonna go do this thing is because if we were to not do it, we would be operating from a place of fear.

11:43And the worst case scenario for launching and doing something is that we might be, and I might be, slightly embarrassed. And what I realized in that moment was that I would rather be embarrassed than afraid. I would rather launch something and be embarrassed than be afraid of the unknown. and I realized that I've made the worst decisions in my professional life, my personal life, when I have operated from a place of fear. And I have made the best decisions in my professional life, my personal life, when I have operated from a place of courage, when I've actually taken that first small step and then the next step and then the next step.

12:33And then you look back on the steps and you're like, wait a second, Like, I thought that thing was hard. And that would be my wish for anybody watching or listening to this moment with me. It's better to be a little embarrassed if something doesn't go right than to be afraid of launching something because it won't be perfect. I'm Gina Bianchini. Thanks for tuning in. This is People Magic.

13:13Thank you for being a part of People Magic. If you want more of a deep dive in any of these topics, but certainly having the framework of People Magic Profit, head on over to the website. The link is in the show notes. Have your own burning question about creating People Magic? Well, I want to answer it. So here's what you're going to do. You're going to just drop your question in the review section wherever you're listening to this podcast and keep tuning in.