There’s something that happens when you start something of your own. The moment you announce a business venture, launch a side project, or even mention an entrepreneurial idea, certain people in your life will become convinced you’re making a mistake.
It won’t always be obvious at first. Sometimes it’s disguised as concern, wrapped in phrases like “I’m just being realistic” or “I’m only trying to help.” Other times it’s more direct: mockery, dismissive comments, or predictions of your inevitable failure delivered with an unsettling certainty.
Here’s what nobody tells you when you’re starting out: some people will actively try to hurt your feelings about your business. Not because your idea is bad, not because they have superior knowledge, but because your courage to try something threatens their own self-narrative about why they haven’t.
When you take a risk, you hold up a mirror to everyone who chose safety. Your willingness to fail publicly makes their private dreams look like private failures. And rather than sit with that discomfort, some will redirect it toward you in the form of skepticism and casual cruelty.
The comments will come from surprising places. That friend who always supported you will suddenly have doubts. A family member will bring up your venture at dinner parties as a punchline. Acquaintances will ask when you’re going to get a “real job” with a knowing smirk.
What makes this particularly painful is that these attacks often target your most vulnerable points. They’ll question exactly what you’re already questioning yourself about. They’ll voice the fears that wake you up at 3am. It’s as if they have a map to your insecurities and they’re following it with precision.
The truth is that building something requires you to be open, exposed, and vulnerable in ways that regular employment doesn’t. You’re putting yourself out there. You’re attaching your name, reputation, and ego to something that might not work. That openness is necessary for creation, but it also makes you an easy target.
Some people can’t resist taking the shot.
The loudest voices often belong to people who have never built anything themselves. It’s easy to point out potential problems from the sidelines. It costs nothing to predict failure when you’re not the one who will experience it. The person telling you that you’re wasting your time has never put their own time on the line. The one saying you should be more realistic has never tested what’s actually possible.
This doesn’t mean everyone who expresses concern is trying to hurt you. Some people genuinely worry because they care. The difference reveals itself in how they speak to you. Those who care will ask questions and listen. Those who want to wound will make declarations and walk away.
Hurtful comments often say more about the speaker than about your business. When someone mocks your venture, they’re often revealing their own fear of judgment. When they predict your failure with glee, they’re exposing their own relationship with risk. When they diminish your efforts, they’re justifying their own inaction.
Your job isn’t to convince them. Your job isn’t to prove them wrong in arguments or defend every decision you make. Your job is to build what you set out to build, to learn from actual results rather than predicted ones, and to let your work speak for itself over time.
Some of the people who hurt your feelings today will congratulate you later if you succeed. They’ll claim they always believed in you, that they knew you had it in you. Let them. Holding grudges takes energy better spent on your business.
And some will never come around, no matter how successful you become. They’ll find new reasons to dismiss what you’ve built, new ways to diminish what you’ve achieved. Let them too. Their opinion was never the point.
The point is that you tried. The point is that you’re building something. The point is that you chose courage over comfort, and that choice will shape who you become far more than any business outcome ever could.
So when the comments come, and they will, feel them. Let yourself be hurt if you need to be. Then get back to work. The best response to people trying to hurt your feelings about your business is a business that keeps going anyway.
