I had no idea Hamilton was such a big Ferris Bueller fan but what a fun way to kick off the new F1 season (The Aussie GP is this weekend) and showcase Lewis behind the wheel of one of the most iconic Ferrari’s ever. They had to actually track down the exact model and I really hope this one ended up in better shape than the one in the movie.

We moved to America on March 30, 1990 and from the moment we arrived at JFK it felt like I was constantly being reminded that I was different.

We didn’t have money. We didn’t have the language. We didn’t have a network. Everything just felt harder than it had to be. And even as a kid I realized that something was in fact different so I tried my hardest to blend in because the kids that were different got made fun of.

That meant I didn’t speak Russian in front of my classmates, I got similar (bad) haircuts to them, and bought similar (bad) clothes. I didn’t want to stand out because I didn’t want to get made fun of. Don’t feel bad though, this story has a happy ending.

As I grew older I realized that I wasn’t the weird one. They were just haters. From there I learned to embrace my culture, my work ethic, the languages I spoke, the obsession with Adidas (#ThreeStripeLife), and so much more. All of a sudden I stopped caring about the haters and started embracing them because I realized that the things they didn’t like were the exact things to push on and do more of.

I wish I knew then how much that would help me as a Creative because being a Creative means one thing: everyone thinks they know better and they’re not afraid to tell you.

This comment was from earlier this week

Embrace your haters

When you’re coming up as a Creative (doesn’t matter the discipline) you tend to do as you’re told. Part of it is fear of losing a job, part of it is maybe not knowing better, and part of it is definitely imposter syndrome. You're afraid to speak up so you don’t and you end up getting beaten up along the way.

But then we all have that one moment when we realize that what you’re told to do is wrong. For me it was building endless landing pages in the early days at HubSpot—it was a waste of my team’s time and skill so we weren’t going to build them anymore.

“But this is how we always do it!”

“You’re going to ruin the business!”

“You’re a dev, just write the code”

Those were all things I heard when I was proposing that marketers build their own landing pages (so that my team could build bigger apps and tools). And in hearing these things, I knew that I was doing the right thing.

But knowing you’re doing the right thing doesn’t make it any easier. I had people I respected telling me I’d ruin the Brand and that I was being lazy. They thought they were being helpful but they were just being haters. They didn’t want new or different. They wanted to stay in their comfort zones and stick to the script.

It reminded me of the classic Henry Ford quote:

I love this quote because I feel like most people just want a better version of what they have rather than something that may be worlds better. In the landing pages example, I’m sure if I pitched a way to make it easier for the devs to build more pages (faster horses) everyone would’ve been on board, but the second I wanted the marketers to do it (building cars), that was a deal breaker.

Could I have been wrong? I guess so but I knew I wasn’t. As the most senior technical member of Marketing no one understood the problem like I did. On top of that because I understood the business, I saw the opportunity that getting landing pages off of our plates would provide. It was objectively the right thing to do and I wasn’t going to let subjective feedback get in the way.

Spoiler alert: I was right… the system we built was used to build over 30k web and landing pages across 6 languages and generate many hundreds of millions in ARR and that doesn’t include the many additional hundreds of millions in ARR from the new work we could take on because we weren’t building landing pages anymore.

Why is this important for Creatives?

You know the funny thing about that story is that on the other side of it, once I proved I was right, I didn’t just get carte blanche to do whatever I wanted. I still faced haters on a daily basis. The need to continue proving success was very real as was the need to push through the noise. Doing that taught me a few lessons:

Everyone has an opinion

When you’re work is super analytical and requires deep dives into numbers, data, and spreadsheets, people tend to give you the benefit of the doubt—I actually saw a lot of this back in the dev days as well because no one knew how to write code.

With Creative work, it’s usually visual which means that anyone with eyes will usually let you know what they think. The problem here is that these opinions are rarely based on insights or experience. They’re subjective and unless the person sharing their opinion is your target audience or has done it before, their opinion doesn’t matter. Say thank you and move on.

The loudest voices rarely know what it takes to do the work

Hating is easy when you don’t have the skills to do the job—that’s why we trash talk professional athletes and artists from our couches.

What this means in the context of haters is that you may actually hear things that are unrealistic or even impossible to do. You can try to explain and I’d encourage you to at least make an attempt but I’ve found that more often than not, they’re talking not listening so say thank you and move on.

You need to believe in yourself

Regardless of if the haters are right or wrong, you need to be resilient. Because even if they’re wrong, it doesn’t make hearing someone critique you any easier. It doesn’t make someone not believing in you any easier.

Resilience is a muscle you need to build or you’ll never actually push yourself to get to the next level. This is a big reason why I love haters. Directly or indirectly, they’re always pushing you to get better, so say thank you and move on.

The feedback may be going in the right direction

This is going to potentially run counter to what’s come before this but not everyone that gives you feedback or pushes back is a hater. Sometimes people truly do want to help so you should take the time to listen to what they’re saying.

Sometimes the feedback actually makes sense. Sometimes it’s the wrong feedback but the thinking behind it is strong—meaning you should explore it—but you won’t know which it is until you listen. So listen to the feedback. Then say thank you and move on (noticing a trend here?).

It might be you

Here’s another quote for you: "If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole." (no idea who said it).

I’m all for standing up to or ignoring our haters. What I’m not about is being difficult to work with. Sometimes it is you and people aren’t hating, they’re just standing their ground. Remember, it’s good to be confident. It’s good to be able to stand up for yourself. It’s bad to be the person that no one wants to deal with. And if someone is brave enough to tell you that it is you, please say thank you and move on.

Say thank you and move on

By now you’ve caught on to how to deal with the hater… you don’t really. Haters want to argue. They want to prove that they’re right. So the best way to deal with them is to not engage. In Mel Brooks’ book All About Me (one of my favorites) he shares his experience dealing with studio heads.

Mel came to understand that they had no idea what they were talking about when providing feedback so he’d just say “yes” and then do what he believed was right. He talked about this in The New Yorker back in 2021 as well:

So rather than get into it, just say thank you and move on.

You don’t want to be for everyone

Last week some guy on TikTok commented on a recent clip from the podcast. He said, “I understood everything you said and nothing about this video makes me want to listen to your podcast.”

In the past I would’ve gotten angry. I probably would’ve dug through his profile and found something to make fun of like those kids I grew up with did. Instead I hit him with “that’s cool” and moved on with life.

It’s one random guy’s opinion (and it doesn’t align with the data I’m seeing). So instead of dwelling on this particular hater I released more clips, edited more episodes, and focused on what’s next because I’m building something I believe in for my audience.

Not everyone is gonna get what you’re doing. Not everyone needs to. And honestly, you don’t want everyone to. So keep going. And if you encounter a hater, just say thank you and move on.

Not sure if you saw it a few weeks ago but I went off on all-in-ones. It’s not that I don’t love having a single login but they’ve just all become way too big, way too opinionated, and way too mediocre.

Technology is advancing too fast to be stuck using tools that you hate. I’ve been helping teams build their own all-in-ones (think of your favorite point solutions connected by something like Zapier) and it’s been great. You get to use best in class technology and everything is still connected on the backend. As we get into Q2, let’s build your team’s ideal tech stack.