When the Speaker Becomes the Student

Almost a year ago, I spoke to a group of students at Santa Monica College. I knew the professor well and since it was a business course, he invited me to share some of my thoughts on entrepreneurship and the story of DEUCE Gym. 

When I finished my talk I left with a common feeling that I have after speaking engagements. “I wish they cared more,” I’d think to myself. I always leave wondering if anyone was sucking the marrow out of my time with them. I rarely feel I can answer, “Yes”. 

Then came their feedback. 

You see, DEUCE Gym’s organizational culture is a self-proclaimed “developmental” one that uses feedback as the gasoline for our growth engine. So, when the professor sent me the student’s feedback and most of them mentioned that they noticed our website was out-of-date (and that if I’d like I could hire them to build me a new one), I wanted to retort that my website wasn’t the focus of the talk and if they paid attention (like I wanted them to) then they would have had better feedback. 

But, I didn’t. Even if I was right about that feeling, there’s nothing in a thought like that for the development of me or the company. This is the hard truth of negative feedback. There’s zero advantage to pretending it’s not there or, worse, disparaging the person giving the feedback.

Since numerous students mentioned the out-of-date site, I had to throw out the conspiracy theory that they were just selling me their web services and consider it, especially since we allegedly love feedback. 

The result? We have a new website that is leaps and bounds ahead of what we had. In many ways, we all have the choice to maximize our interactions with each other. In that way, it’d be silly to wish they took more from my talk if I didn’t take more from their feedback. 

The joke is only on the man or woman who doesn’t heed the hard truths around him/her. To the SMC Intro to Entrepreneurship class, thanks for the push for this beautiful website.