Dealing With Ignorant, Irrational or Irreverent Critics… It’s a Part of Coaching

I am no stranger to criticism and I would consider myself to have very thick skin, but I’ll be honest the pot shot criticisms many people like to take can change my mood for the day.  If your a coach, teacher or anyone that puts themselves out to help others and puts a lot into it then you know that dealing with criticism can be a part of your job description.  Since I know for a fact that this type of stress DOES run good people out of positions like this, I thought I would write about how I handle this.

I learned at a young age that success attracts criticism.  My Dad drag raced since before I was born.  He always had one of the fastest cars at the local tracks and he was a good driver so he was always in the mix.  I can remember as a young kid, before I even started wrestling, sitting in the bleachers and hearing a group of Chevy loving adults (my Dad was a big Ford guy) talking about how my Dads car had all this illegal stuff on it to make it go faster and to give him better reaction times etc…

“Yeah, the track owner likes him so they let him get away with it”.  This was their rationale on how he didn’t get caught.

Disclaimer:  I’m not trying to say Chevy lovers are evil, I am sure the Ford guys were doing the same thing to the Chevy drivers too:).

Of course, they had no clue who I was and I would run to my Dad and tell him what I heard.  He and his buddies would chuckle and explain to me how things work, on the car and in life:).

I continued to see this same trend as I went into wrestling.  From my high school coach, to my college coach and then my mentor when I started coaching myself.

I have learned to embrace criticism as a sign of success.  But knowing these types of people are out there is good.  It often provides motivation and it reminds me of just another reason to always do the right thing on your way to success.

This way when you do start to get criticism it won’t eat you up and make you paranoid.  You can always look back on the principles you rely on to make your decisions and the good you are doing along the way.

So when people make posts on social media about what scumbags we are for asking for an email to give away wrestling advice I fall back on the same beliefs I learned as a young kid in the bleachers.

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My goal is not to throw a bunch of techniques and random advice out to the world for people to stumble upon.  My goal is to offer advice on wrestling as pieces of a bigger picture. I want wrestlers, coaches and parents to learn what it truly takes to tap into your fullest potential in the greatest sport on the planet and that isn’t going to happen unless I can take them on a journey.  It cant all be dumped on them at once and I am going to need regular and constant contact to make a true difference.

That is why you are forced to come into our community before we start handing out some advice.  Some people will get mad and leave and maybe send or post a nasty message along the way and that is fine, because the ones that take full advantage can gain a ton of advice that can make a big difference to their development as coaches and wrestlers.

That is also why we offer special promotional packages where you can pay only $7.00 to get access and test out the whole arsenal of advice we have to offer.  Yes, these packages come with a set of payments after a trial period but this is all in an effort to make things risk free and affordable for as many people as possible and to get this valuable advice into as many peoples hands as possible.

Don’t worry, if you don’t think it is valuable you can send back the trial DVDs and get a full refund.  We always have a 60 day money back guarantee.  Yes, it may be a little work on your end to send back the DVDs but the potential upside is worth it, in my opinion.

So you can see when people accuse me of being a scumbag for asking for an email or they say it’s a rip off to offer a ton of resources for $7.00 (which we claim to be the cost of shipping and handling, but the truth is our cost are much more) and then charging some payments to keep everything after checking it all out.  I don’t take it to heart.

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These people just don’t get the big picture and they don’t understand what we are trying to accomplish.  And if the critics ever do start getting to me a little, all I have to do is get one email like this and it brings me back to my senses.

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