How to handle naysayers when starting a business?

So one of the hardest things when you are starting as an entrepreneur, when you're trying to start some type of anything, whether it's a business or a non-profit or an organization, is you're going to want to share your idea and what you're working on with a lot of folks.

And you're going to get different reactions. It's not unlikely that you're going to get a lot of folks who will tell you things like, "Well, this is already done before. Why do you think you're going to be able to do it?" Or, "This has never been done before. Why do you think you're going to be able to do it?"

And it's very hard to judge whether, "Okay, are they just being naysayers and just being negative and I should just power through it?" Or should I listen seriously to what they have to say?

And like all things, take this all with a grain of salt. It's hard to know for sure, but I like to think about whether people are coming from a point of view that they really want you to succeed. If there are people in your life that you know at the end of the day have got your back and really want you to succeed, I would listen to what they're saying.

Now, it doesn't mean what they're saying is absolutely true. It's completely possible that they might have a different tolerance for risk than you do, but it's worth processing. It's worth at least listening.

And sometimes, when people say, "Oh, well, this has been tried before. Why do you think you doing it is going to work?" Well, the answer to that is sometimes how you do it matters a lot more than the idea itself. Khan Academy is an example of that.

I wasn't the first person to think that online could be a way to disseminate information. I wasn't the first person to think that software could personalize education for folks. I wasn't the first person to make content on YouTube or to help teach people through video.

But there was something about how it all came together, and also the time and space and how accessible it was that things caught on. That would have been very hard to predict had I not at least tried.

And the way that I protected myself from both the positive and negative feedback was I told myself, "You know what? This is all good information. I'm going to listen to what people have to say, but I'm also going to try it. I'm going to try it in a way that I can start to learn what is actually working and what's not working."

And you know, if you can work on your day job, so to speak, while you start to fiddle and you can start to build those data points and points of confirmation that you might be onto something, well then it makes you a little bit more resilient to what folks might tell you.

And you should keep listening, but you shouldn't rest everything on necessarily what everyone tells you.