Forum participation will affect your business. How you allow it to affect it is greatly up to you and how you handle situations. Recent events, either because of not enough sleep, too much talk or some other contributing factor, have made forum participation life for me less than pleasant…and I have no one else to blame for this but myself. So learn from my mistakes, else you are destined to repeat them.

When you participate in a forum, two things are going to happen. You can take these to the bank. People will agree with you and people will not agree with you. Let’s start with the easy part…those who agree.

You have a responsibility to these people. They obviously look up to you for some reason. So whatever that reason is, make sure you justify it by your behavior. In other words, when people DO say nice things about you, don’t let it swell your head and your ego. This is a very dangerous thing to do. What ends up happening is that you begin to believe your own inflated press. That leads to behavior that is not very flattering. In short, nobody likes a know it all. So be humble. It is very easy to lose the respect of those you had it from in the first place if you act like a jackass.

Next we have those who will not agree with you. Some will have very valid reasons for not. Some will be the same jackass know it alls that you might have become. In either case, take the criticism with a grain of salt. By lashing back, you simply dig a hole bigger than the one you are already in. And then what happens is as bad as it was, it gets worse. People start saying things that escalate into nasty all out wars. Ultimately, this does nobody any good and may just get you booted from the place altogether. I am fortunate to still be a member.

In the grand scheme of things, it is only a forum. It is not life and death. But acting like it is can adversely affect your life and your business. After all, if you want to interact with these people and form relationships with them, you can’t go around acting like a jackass. It just makes it that much harder to get anywhere as ultimately, you have to do everything yourself. Need a favor from a forum member? Don’t hold your breath if you’ve done any of the things I’ve mentioned above.

I may or may not have done serious harm to my reputation at this one forum. Only time and the members themselves will be the judge of that. All I can do is learn from my mistakes and make darn sure I don’t make the same mistakes again.

So please…please learn from this. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies.

Don’t let YOU be YOURS.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim