Surviving bad feedback from a client

Like it or not, client feedback is part of running a business. It’s unavoidable.

Mindset Mastery is a weekly newsletter about the psychology of small business ownership for creative entrepreneurs from Jenni Gritters. If you’d like to support my work, I invite you to become a paid subscriber for $5/ month! Paid subscribers receive monthly journaling prompts, along with other perks.

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This month, I’m sending my paid subscribers an exclusive newsletter about a touchy subject, in addition to the usual journaling & business planning prompts. I think you’ll want to read this one because I’m talking about getting bad feedback from a client.

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You know the moment: A client asks you to “hop on a call” to “discuss the current project” and your heart drops into your stomach. Your mind immediately begins to race:

• What did I do?

• They probably don’t want to work with me anymore.

• This is it! This is how my business fails.

• I screwed it up so badly.

• Why did I decide to work for myself?

• They hate me, I’m sure of it!!

This happened to me last month. I’d been working on a writing assignment that ended up being slightly wonky. In the end, it was delayed by almost three weeks, and the editor wanted to talk to me about “how this would affect assignments moving forward.”

I should say that I know this editor well. She’s incredibly kind and lovely to work with. But it didn’t matter: My nervous system still went WILD. My brain started to run away without me. I tried to get my work done after getting the email but I could feel myself shaking, mouth dry, heart pounding. I couldn’t focus.

I know this is a common experience for all of you reading this newsletter, too. We depend on our clients to offer us repeat work, or to buy our products over and over again. When they’re less-than-pleased with our delivery, it’s valid that they want to share feedback. But it can also feel like one mistake might ruin the whole business.

So what happened? Was she actually mad at me?