How to deal with the anxiety of finding out you were the butt of a groups joke

Honestly, I wouldn’t share your reasoning on SM. If anything, I would do a piece on how offering your time, expertise and experience for free to help friends out can minimize and potentially devalue your business. People are not going to take free advice as seriously as advice that they have paid for, and they are going to be more than happy to blame you if their venture fails (Whether they took your advice, regardless.) You can also state that it is very important to establish professional boundaries to protect friendships, as all too often, the friendship will suffer when someone feels that they have been taken advantage.

Haters gonna hate...

Leave them to it

OP, don't respond at all, not even in private and especially not as business content. Your success in a short space of time is amazing. There's bound to be people who want to rain on your success in any way they can. Totally ignore and put your energy into your business instead. As a business owner, you should be open to constructive criticism but general bitchiness deserves to be ignored.

Op I can understand your upset but take a step back and do not do anything until three days and nights have passed and then see how you feel.

And please don’t use it as content as this would blow it up even more and reflect badly on you.

This has been reported to you second hand. It’s silliness between people with poor judgement. Don’t give it any further credibility by investing your energy in to it. Apart from anything else, the woman responsible has acted really unprofessionally. Don’t sink to her level.

If you feel you have to do anything, just write a jokey public post and say something like “thx for the shout out; the matching book bag is selling out fast 😂”.

But probably best just to ignore. Why give more credence to one unkind woman more than the many customers who have responded positively to your content?

This! You sound remarkable and they sound jealous. Don’t give them another thought and continue to grow your business from strength to strength.

I really wouldn’t do this OP. Just dust yourself off and carry on. She is so insignificant to you and your business. You don’t want to create a shit storm unnecessarily, you might then get her friends posting negatively etc.

Message her privately to say you know about the phone case if you really want to address it. And never work with her again obvs!

God no. That made my body cringe. You’ll only give them more reason to take the piss. You may have gone a bit too far into internet land if you want to turn this into content.

Be professional. The people buying your product or services don’t need to hear that you have an incredibly bitchy friend of a friend. That’s all this is.

You don’t need to respond, just know she’s a horrible person and delete.

I would message her and say “I hear you got a new phone case?! Enjoy x”

Honestly? She is jealous and bitter. Ignore and focus on your amazing achievements! Keep doing what you’re doing.

You wrote it for me. Well done OP x

So your friend who wasn't on the trip and heard something second hand thought fit to ring you up and recount some silly stuff. As other have pointed out who knows what she meant with that post Look you have done marvelously well with your business and shouldn't give these silly women a second thought. People will say things about people who are out there. There is a site that just rips into bloggers and the general vitriol when I stumbled on the site astonished me. You have absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about.

OP, well done on everything you've achieved, and putting yourself out there and employing so many people is amazing. Don't let these fools affect you.

You have given 12 people jobs within an 18 month period; I'm not sure you realise how huge that is.

During a time of economic crisis, you have created a business which is now giving an income to 12 different individuals (& presumably you hope to grow even more in the future).

There are really incredibly few people in the world who have self-started a business and been able to do that in such a short period of time. Businesses often take years to get off the ground and hire even a couple of staff.

Honestly, I would focus on that and being proud of what you've accomplished so far.

You should be very proud.

I agree with the others here. Yes there is the chance that you’ll get made fun of if you’ve put yourself out for the world to see. But at the end of the day it’s paying off supporting your family.

It’s hard but as they say “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”. Respond to the post with a pitch to your product or service in a good natured way.

“wow Betty Thanks for the gratis advertising… mention this phone case and get X% off your next whatsit”

You should message the perp and ask them if you can have one of those phone covers?
Then jokingly say you're sueing them for copyright infringement. Lol
Honestly, just ignore them. The person isn't your mate or client and you will always get some hate if you put yourself personally as part of your marketing.
It sounds like your business is a fantastic success so you've nothing to worry about there.

I would privately message her with what singingthypraises said = glad to hear my merch helped you win, so that she knows that you know then block her. Might make her think about being so mean in future.

Wow OP hats off for your success I’m genuinely impressed! Huge growth for your business there! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
The bigger your success the more haters gonna hate!! I would take this as a MASSIVE compliment. That someone went to such trouble to focus on you & spend such energy on talking about you in such away tells me they are massively bothered by you…hilarious .! 😅🤣
Their jealously is their problem. Let this be another booster in your journey like rocket fuel. So she put you on a phone case…now aim for her t-shirt! 😄 🚀🚀🚀

Fast forward to today, I get a message from a friend saying the content girl had gone on a girls trip and she had heard from a girl on the trip that they played a game of seeing who could buy each other the silliest phone case.

See this bit - the person who told you about it wasn’t even on the trip. I think you’re really missing context here.

I think you’re best leaving well alone… but you could always text the content creator that you heard she had you on a joke phone case, and your <insert random relative> would howl at that as a gift, so to save it from landfill could you have it? That way she knows you know, if that’s important to you. But mostly - I think you should ignore.

I always look for the owner of the page on a business SM account, I don't know why, but I definitely engage more if they are on there. I also love a little back story about how they got started. Anyway, I would ignore it. She sounds bitter because you didn't go ahead with her!

That’s a terrible idea. Bad for your dignity, but bad for your brand too!! You would look really unprofessional.

Tbh, the “joke” may not be as mean as you think. If I’m reading it right, person A is the content creator, but it was person B who made the phone case. So person B might actually have been lightheartedly taking the piss out of their content creator friend. Perhaps the content creator had been a bit boring going on about what a great job she did when she was working with you. Maybe someone said a while back that they’d seen your stuff and content creator said, “that was me! I made her famous! I’m like Simon Cowell!” The butt of the joke may not be you at all. Not saying it’s nice for you to hear about and worry about, but this info is third hand and out of context and possibly delivered by a stirrer. I think there’s every chance it wasn’t to do with you.

Congratulations of your business growth - that’s fantastic 👏🏻

They sound shallow and jealous, but I'd play them at their own game. Put up a post with some merchandise - phone covers, mugs, keyrings - with your face on, and make a big joke of it saying "Due to popular demand, now available to purchase from our online store". You may even sell some!

I also wouldn’t post anything like you suggested, it makes you sound a bit dramatic and while I understand your feelings, that does put me off a business.

To be honest, if I saw something like this on a social media business page, I would find it all very dramatic and probably use another business. Obviously this depends a bit on what your business is, but it would put me off as a potential customer.

She unprofessional, small-minded and mean so it’s good you discontinued working with her. I wouldn’t base your opinion of yourself on someone you don’t respect or like.

While it probably would’ve been better for your friend not to tell you about this, and better for you to turn the other cheek, I think I would be tempted to comment on the post saying something like ‘good to know my content still has the winning formula!’