While there is no shortage of opinions, successful entrepreneurs learn not to let the opinions or criticism of others cloud their judgment or alter the way they do business. Successful entrepreneurs are not afraid of what others think of them and they’re also not afraid of failure. The funny thing about failure is that it often parallels success.

A fear of success can be just as real as a fear of failure for many entrepreneurs. Maybe you worry about what people will think of you when you gain success and wealth from expertly running your business. For some, the fear of success can be worse than the fear of failure. They fear the sustainability of success after they reach it, or they fear imposter syndrome and believe that they really don’t deserve success, no matter how hard they’ve worked for it.

There can be a lot of guilt associated with the fear of success, and physiologically, the reaction is the same as the fear of failure. Like fear of failure, one of the components in the fear of success is worrying about what other people will think or say. I encourage you to be immune to that.

There are a lot of people with no qualms about sharing their opinions too. But there’s only one opinion that counts when it comes to running your business—your customer’s, your paying customer’s. The folks who are giving you money are the ones who truly count. What they say really does matter, and that’s what you should be listening to.

Very often, our peers, friends, families, business associates, and the people we hang out with will share their opinions. These people probably don’t understand how to run a business or how to market a business, and won’t unless they’re entrepreneurs themselves. They don’t understand how and why you make the decisions you do, but that doesn’t stop them from sharing their opinions about what you do or how you’re going about doing it. Again, unless they’re business owners, they probably don’t have a clue about marketing.

My Two-Step Filter

I’ve developed what I call my two-step filter. As soon as you hear a questionable opinion, the first step is to evaluate the person’s expertise in the area in which he or she’s providing the criticism or negative feedback. In other words, have they earned the right to offer a critique?

The second part of the filter is to evaluate to what extent you trust and value the person who’s making the criticism or the negative comment about your idea. If you do trust and value this person, if she’s made constructive and worthwhile criticisms in the past, maybe you should take note. If not, it’s time to put up your immunity wall. If what you hear comes from someone who’s neither an expert nor someone you trust and value, it’s just needless noise. It’s the stuff that swirls around every day because everybody’s got an opinion on just about everything.

In the end, you can’t control what people will say to you, you can only control how you react and what you do with the opinion. Please share this with other entrepreneurs you care about!