Can't mentally cope with small business

[custardd]

Am I being unreasonable...

I am a small retail business owner and basically I am struggling hugely mentally with any criticism I get. I'm a florist.

95% of my customers are wonderful and love my products but the rare 5% that don't are really impacting me mentally and I just don't know how to get a business head on. I take every criticism so personally I can barely sleep at night with the fear of somebody complaining about the products. The complaints have always been through customers not reading properly within the product description.

This sounds so whingey but I can barely sleep at night as I'm petrified I'm going to lose my business. Times are tough as everyone is aware and i just find myself consumed with fear and doubting my own business that I really am proud of and otherwise confident about. I've spoken to others who have said I need to toughen up but I take everything so personally!

How do others with small businesses cope and get past this mentally?

@custardd exactly! people are so aware now that you can just plaster a bad review all over social media and ruin someone’s business so I feel like I’m constantly tiptoeing around people and being overly nice or giving away more refunds or replacements than I should just in case they give me a bad review 🙄

I also think when somone is being especially mean, what would I do if I were in their shoes? For example, if someone senior in the office is bellowing at a junior who doesn't have a lot of experience and lacks confidence.

Is that how I would treat someone? The majority of the time the answer is no! Just because someone is senior or a customer or whatever, doesn't mean they are the arch expert on everything. In fact, I would think that the vast majority of your customers probably have a miniscule amount of flower knowledge or creative skills compared to you.

@BCxx

It's ridiculous isn't it!!

I had someone even attempt to blackmail me (this is what's lead to the post tonight) saying let me return or I'll leave a bad review. I said yes you can return and suddenly they want to keep the product instead!!

Even if you were offering absolutely perfect goods and services every time, I bet you would still receive 5% of negative reviews. Why? Because 5% of the population will either try it on, not read stuff or have totally unrealistic expectations.

Any company that operates at scale will experience this, the only ones who don't have any negative reviews most likely will have only a small number of customers.

@BoxOfCats

Again - I've never looked at it like that at all!
As I take every review to heart I feel like I must be drastically doing something wrong if I don't have 100% positive reviews!
Thank you

I went to a small business yesterday. They had shut up shop 20 mins before closing. I'll not be inclined to visit them in future.

Oh OP I feel your pain! I used to run a B&B and every time a new review came in I would feel physically sick before I opened it. Any criticism felt sooo personal and I consider myself pretty resilient. But like a pp said, if they had a point (and sometimes they did), then it was actually pretty useful feedback and I could make changes if needed.

Good luck with your business 🙂

@FurryDandelionSeekingMissile unfortunately the sites I sell on class anything less than five stars as bad. If I don't maintain an average of 4.8 out of 5 over three months I'm penalised. So if everyone left "acceptable" 3s and 4s (some leave four because they never leave five apparently 🤷) I would pay the price for that. Fortunately I'm a high volume seller and manage to maintain the score, but it's very stressful being on that precipice every day.

A minority of the good ole General Public are arseholes whatever you do

Also, it's just you and you're in charge. You don't have a boss or a line manager telling you to sort it out or pull your socks up because poor management have a tendency of doing that!

I would actually use the information to track sales and see what's happening. Did they come in to the shop? Do you remember them? What sort of person were they? Did they fit your ideal customer demographic? Can you identify a 'particular type'.

My friend is a florist and she said that people who come in and only want to small amounts (£10 or £15 are the worst). They are the ones who £5 in the supermarket and are expecting a 'bouquet'. She said they often suck her time for very little return. To avert this, she makes a selection of things at different price points so people see what they get for the money for certain price points. If people only want to spend a small amount she pulls flowers out and adds them as she goes along then wraps in brown paper with a little bow. They're always lovely and she has honed her technique in dealing with people I think. She doesn't let them umm and ahh for ages while they have her attention! She also raised the starting price of the flowers in the water to deal with this problem as well.

Basically, see if you can identify the type of problem person and see if you can either limit them or eradicate them with your offering (in addition to correcting the any issues to deal with specific complaints where the business generally isn't as good as it should be).

It’s really simple. You grow some balls.

I'm not the business owner but I do run the business for them and I feel the same OP.
I cling on to the negative for some stupid reason and ignore the wonderful. Honestly we've won awards, been written about, steadily growing customers and I still think back to the guy 4 years ago who was very critical and walked away.

This phrase always baffles me.
Why balls? How do I grow them? How long does it take? What if I don't want them?

Honestly it's the least helpful piece of advice people give up there with "just get over it" and "then you shouldn't have had kids".

What exactly are people supposed to do with that advice?

That's fair enough, and it's annoying that you beat the brunt of the mismatch between what some individuals think their feedback means and what other people think that feedback means, but maybe it would be less upsetting for you on a personal level if you had the feeling that that someone leaving a 3-star review doesn't necessarily realise it will be seen as a bad rating, and might not be at all pissed off at your products/service. That doesn't mitigate the impact on your business, but at least leaves you feeling less like you're being personally targeted by a disgruntled customer, who's left a bad 3-star rating because they're so cross with your business.

*bear the brunt

You are an adult. You are capable of gaining emotional resilience and learning how to be assertive.

That is what it means. It’s just people aren’t willing to put in the time and effort to do so.

Oh, get over yourself!

Not everyone was born with cast iron knickers. The op said that she was criticised heavily when she was growing up. That can have a massive impact on people's sense of self, their confidence and ability to be able to speak up/not put up with random shit that generally gets flungs at you.

Op, there is some great advice on here. Are you feeling a bit more positive about dealing with some of the issues? Perhaps you could consider working with a coach or counsellor who could help you to deal with specific issues. It's helpful to have someone who can reframe things and get you to look at it from a different angle.

Fellow small business owner.

I very much live by the mantra that if everyone loved everything I ever made, I would be making something incredibly bland.

If it's a repeated issue with people not reading the descriptions properly then try to work out if there's anything you can do to make it clearer; often formatting or breaking things down into a FAQ, or even a comparison table, can really help.

Some people, however, will never actually read the information. I had one who didn't read the label and didn't tell anyone about her allergies. She then consumed a buffet item which had whole peanuts in and was clearly labelled as such, with staff on hand if there were any questions, and ended up in hospital with anaphylaxis. She, at least, admitted it was her own fault - but it just goes to show that some customers just won't read things even if it might save their life.

@Peekachoochoo Nobody is born assertive, confident or resilient. They are not personality traits but skills that are taught and learned.

If your parents fail to teach it to you, you need to learn it yourself. You need to take responsibility; you can’t blame your childhood and someone else for the way you are.

Eventually if you’re not happy being shy/weak/a pushover you do something about it.

I own a physical business - cafe and exercise studios - and I used to be exactly the same as you, letting any negative feedback really affect me. I think the pandemic ironically helped, as I know how hard I worked to keep the community together and to keep paying all my freelance teachers and I think it gave me confidence to know that I am doing the best I can, and I think others saw that too.

As ginswinger says, I also tried to reframe my response to see constructive criticism as that and to think it's better to know so I can fix any problems.
Sometimes people are just horrible though. I had 1 lady set up 4 Google profiles to leave me 1 star reviews, when she'd booked into an advanced class with an injury and arrived late. Initially I was gutted but honestly who has time to do that? She's clearly got some other unhappiness in her life I'd say.
Running a business has been incredibly hard from the beginning 8 years ago. But with every challenge that has nearly broken me, but hasn't, I've got more resilient. God knows if the business will survive a recession - but I do feel more hopeful now that if it doesn't, I'll be able to exit and survive.

Honestly though, it's relentless running a small business. Hats off to everyone that does it.

@YellowTreeHouse

Yes, I do know. I've been there myself but it wasn't until it was pointed out to me that I was a people pleaser that I actually realised what was going on. If you've grown up like that it becomes your normal. It wasn't until I got to my mid 30s that I realised that my upbringing or how my parents had spoken to me wasn't normal or supportive.

I was also very fortunate to stumble across someone who helped me to view situations that were happening to me as if I were a third party and see that the problem wasn't actually me but them. Up until that point, I had sucked it up to my detriment.

'Just sort yourself out' is generally not considered very helpful advice if you've ever worked with people who have suffered childhood emotional abuse or trauma.

Honestly, you will never achieve 100%. Because some people are idiots.

Don't waste any time worrying about them because they surely won't waste any time on you. Often, it you click on their other reviews, you can see they are serial complainers.

Just thank god you're not a nurse, doctor, teacher, binman, etc etc

@FurryDandelionSeekingMissile good advice, thank you.