The two-speed problem.

Criticism shows up fast. Real results show up slowly.

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This essay was originally published here.

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You can do something great for your business and still have all kinds of people tell you that you did something wrong.

This kind of thing happens more often than you’d think. And most people, when it happens to them, will fold fast and change course.

Back in December of 2023, I updated my personal website for the first time. My friend Andy built the new site, and it was a real upgrade. The new site was cleaner, the brand was easier to understand, and the landing pages were designed to convert. My previous site had been neon green and black, a mess I’d cobbled together myself without any eye for design. My goals for the new website were to elevate my brand visually and to get higher conversions on digital product sales.

After months of work on the project (and a big financial investment), I launched the new site when Jennifer and I were down in New York City for a long weekend. I finally had a beautiful website I was proud of, and we were ready to celebrate. So we popped into The Lowell Hotel for celebratory drinks on a sunny afternoon.

And at that happy moment, right after the bartender took our order, that’s when I made the mistake of looking at Twitter.

Someone had tweeted about my new website. The color palette was boring. It looked like every other creator’s site. They missed the neon green. The old site “popped” and was different than everything else. What a stupid decision to change. This would be the downfall of my brand.

I might have brushed off a negative tweet. But it was gaining likes and comments, with other people agreeing about how much my new website sucked.

I’d spent all this time and money, and the public feedback was saying I’d made a fatal mistake.

But in reality, the site ended up doing exactly what Andy and I built it to do. It sold more products at a higher conversion rate than the previous site, and it established my first clear visual identity. When I went to a design conference a year later, I was told that one of the most common requests was to make a site that looked similar to mine. But sitting there on launch day at the fancy hotel, I didn’t know any of that yet. The only feedback I had at that time was a negative Tweet and a bunch of comments that were in agreement.

A few weeks ago, I changed my website again. And I got similar feedback again. Emails asking “What happened to the old site?” and telling me the new design is “sad.” People said it looks plain, that it lost all the color, and that it’s forgettable like every other Claude Code website.

I’d anticipated this feedback because I intentionally used the most minimal template I could find. Plain was actually the point this time around. Because I wasn’t building something to establish a visual identity or to be aesthetically appealing. I built this new site for two reasons only. To bring in more readers and to provide a better reading experience for the people who visit.

While I can’t measure the reading experience, new subscribers are up a shocking 49.1% in a little less than three weeks. It’s an early sign, but a good one, that the design is working as intended.

But this isn’t an essay about website design or conversion rates.

What I want to highlight is the difference between what you’re actually optimizing for as an entrepreneur and what other people believe you’re optimizing for. Because if you can’t learn to focus on your desired outcomes (and momentarily set aside critical feedback that isn’t aligned with those outcomes), you’ll stay stuck. You’ll find yourself on a hamster wheel, working to please everyone in the crowd, and failing to achieve the outcomes you set out to hit.

When you build something for a specific outcome, you usually can’t see statistically significant results for a long time. Sometimes it takes months, quarters, or even years. The data shows up slowly. But reactions show up fast. The day you launch, publish, change, or ship something, the opinions start rolling in.

So you’ve got two different signals coming in at two very different speeds. The data on your priority outcome is slow to mature, but reliable once it arrives. But the opinions and surface-level feedback are fast and loud and right in your face immediately. When you’re nervous or underconfident, and your real result hasn’t arrived yet, you’ll probably focus on the fastest feedback. And if you’re like most people, you’ll hyper-focus on the most negative feedback. That’s just normal human behavior. That was me back in 2023, on my website launch day, letting a few comments ruin my day instead of being patient and waiting for the data.

I’m not suggesting that you should ignore negative feedback, especially from readers, customers, and people you are working hard to deliver for. That feedback will probably be very valuable in the future.

What I’m suggesting is that you should keep in mind whether the feedback is directly aligned with your priority outcomes. Because a lot of times, the fastest feedback you get has little or nothing to do with where you’re actually trying to go. People react to how they view something from the outside looking in. And they can’t necessarily see what you’re working on internally. So they were never measuring what you were measuring anyway. And if you fall victim to every piece of misaligned feedback, there’s a real possibility of moving in the wrong direction.

So, these days, before I build anything, I get clear on the one or two key results I’m actually after. With this new website, my primary goal was to convert more traffic into newsletter subscribers. Once I have that priority established, I move from the key outcome to getting practical about it. I write down a few hypotheses about what might actually convert more subscribers, and then I stack rank the list by what I think will have the biggest impact. Then I pick one to work on, build it, ship it, and start watching the numbers.

I don’t let the fast comments dictate what I do next. I let the numbers do that. If conversion rates are a statistically significant improvement, I accept that I’ve made the right decision, and I move on to the next hypothesis. If the numbers take a dive, I undo the change, run a review of why I think it happened, and then move to the next. And when the criticism I get along the way isn’t aligned with my priority outcomes, I choose to set it aside to revisit later. Somebody can tell me my website is ugly, but ugly (or pretty) isn’t on the list of things I’m measuring. At least not yet.

This process is important for any entrepreneur. And you’ll probably get it wrong a few times before you learn to experiment successfully. And before you can tell the difference between feedback that’s about your goal and feedback that isn’t.

All the while, if you’re a normal human being like me, your instinct will be to please people. To fix “the problem” that commenters say will surely be the end of you. Most people can’t handle the criticism. So they fold fast.

But I don’t want you to fold.

So the next time someone tells you that you got it wrong, don’t ask whether they’re right or not. Ask whether their feedback is aligned with where you’re going.

If it isn’t, set it aside for later. Because you’ve got a successful, data-driven business to build.

Cheers,

Justin Welsh

P.S. If you enjoyed this, a Restack would be the kindest compliment you could pay. Have a great weekend.

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