I remember one time, this guy posted a picture of himself on social media. It was at a restaurant and he was wearing a tank top (for context, this was in the summer, in Florida). He was also a minor local celebrity, a member of a local band, so of course his post got a lot of views. What I remember is he probably got thousands of views, but there were maybe six or seven comments like “I can’t believe you wore a tank top to a restaurant. How inappropriate!”

I’m not sure what went through his mind, but the next day he posted a long defense to his clothing choice, “I had no idea everyone was going to be offended.”. And even at the time I remember thinking, “Dude, most people had zero problem with this. Just because a few people decided they wanted to say something doesn’t mean you did anything wrong.” Even if only 1,000 people saw the picture, that means less than 1% were “offended” enough to comment.

Why does this matter, especially in business? Because you will never be able to please everyone, and there will always be people who feel the need to criticize no matter what you do. If you have a document out for peer review, or you open up your product for beta testing, you are going to get at least some negative feedback, even if its the best document or product in the history of documents and products. So don’t over-react to the tiny amount of criticisms that you get.