3 ways founders can turn feedback into action

People say they love feedback, but the truth is, most times we don’t know what to do with it. Especially when that feedback is constant, plentiful and contradictory. That’s the reality most startup founders face: They’re routinely bombarded with feedback from investors, customers, peers, mentors, family, friends and sometimes even random people on the internet.

The right feedback is a gift that can bring enormous benefits, but a deluge of opinions can leave you overwhelmed, vulnerable and stuck in a loop. Without a strategy, you risk either being swayed by every piece of advice or stubbornly digging in your heels and ignoring the best of it entirely.

For all of its challenges, managing feedback is a crucial part of building a successful business. The good news is that it isn’t a skill — it’s a muscle, and one you can build over time. Here are three ways to get started.

Understand your goals

After our first meeting together, a founder asked me if I had any “immediately actionable” feedback for her company. She didn’t want to waste my time (or hers) with broad or deep input on her business — she just wanted an investor’s take on items she could immediately address.

In other words, this founder understood her goals.

Taking feedback as a business owner becomes much easier and more valuable if you know what you’re looking for ahead of time. This means having a clear understanding of your own business goals and vision. You don’t want to become a watered-down version of your own business by accepting every piece of advice. A clear plan helps you determine exactly what you want to get out of feedback.

It also means knowing exactly how much — and what type of — feedback you can handle. That founder set boundaries in place by limiting the feedback she received from me and making sure it was the kind of advice she could put to work.

Control how you react

When I was a founder, I said I wanted all the feedback. Now that I’m on the investor side, I’ve learned that most founders don’t handle it well. At best, they dismiss it. At worst, they get angry. The latter response is always shocking, but it’s also shockingly common. And the only thing it accomplishes is an unnecessarily burned bridge.

If you’re feeling vulnerable and you get hard feedback, your reaction is likely to “come from the liver.” I’m no exception — I’ve definitely reacted poorly to feedback in the past. But one ill-advised outburst could damage a reputation, so it’s crucial to try to avoid reacting on the spot. Adding a buffer helps mitigate that.

Consider having someone else — like a co-founder, customer service representative or executive coach — collect feedback and deliver it to you. Ask them to treat criticism or comments as market research or incorporate them into customer surveys, so by the time it comes to you, it’s already been through an emotional filter.

If you can’t add a human buffer, consider adding a time buffer. In other words, force yourself to step away for a time before reacting. This will give your brain space to sit with the information, work through the initial feelings and respond in a more even-keeled way.

Contextualize and prioritize

Once you’re past the reaction stage, it’s time to look at the feedback a little more closely. Your goal is to gain the most that you can from each piece and discard the rest. Remember, no one is perfect at giving advice.

The first step to contextualize is to consider the source. If you’re a small business getting advice from a big company employee, you should probably discard their advice on building the company, but their thoughts on your industry could come in handy if they’re also an expert in your space.

Next, look for the patterns. Focus on the feedback as a whole rather than zeroing in on only the positive or negative. Odds are you will find trends, and those are the signals hidden in the noise. If you find an outlier, look extra carefully at the background and experience of the person it came from before discarding it entirely.

Finally, determine whether you can — and want to — take action on what you learn. You’re the expert on your business and it’s up to you to decide what to do. The key is not to take all advice — it’s to take some and leave some, and to do so thoughtfully and with your eyes wide open.

Accepting feedback can be hard and knowing what to do with it even harder. But there’s a big reward to be won if you put in the effort. After dozens of investor meetings and a lot of rejection, the founder I mentioned above used feedback to successfully close her fundraising round.

“I asked for actionable feedback from every investor who passed and saw a clear trend from their responses,” she said. “I took the feedback you and others gave me and used it in my next few meetings. It helped me get to the yeses I needed to run a better process and close!”

She now takes a similar approach to every part of her business, from product road map to company culture. As a business owner, advice and criticism come at you from every direction at all times. Taking it all in is a waste of time. Discarding it in bulk is a missed opportunity. It’s up to you to reap the benefits. With a bit of preparation, a lot of practice and a thicker skin, you can turn that feedback firehouse from a pain in your behind to a veritable founder superpower.