Have you ever met someone who was just plain awful at receiving criticism? No matter what you tell them, or how clearly you explain something, they always seem to have some sort of excuse why they are right and everyone else is wrong.

You know the type. These are the loud, egotistical, overly-defensive folks who can’t figure out why the world won’t just shut up and listen to them.

I have a confession to make. I used to be that guy.

I HATED receiving criticism. Even when I knew, 100%, no-doubt-about-it that I was wrong I refused to admit it. The idea of acknowledging and correcting my mistakes scared me to death.

So if I told you that I deleted more than 2 months’ worth of work because my peers told me it was awful, would you believe me?

Probably not. And I certainly couldn’t blame you.

But it’s true, and I’m incredibly glad that I did it. Here’s how it went down.

After finally deciding to put together a book about travel hacking I sat down and began to brainstorm ideas.  I wanted my book to cut through all the BS and focus purely on the numbers. After all, at its very core travel hacking is purely a numbers game.

After creating what I believed was a final draft, I sent the book to about a dozen of my closest friends and confidants to see what they thought. Almost all of them told me the same thing.

It sucked. One even went so far as to tell me that it “read like an Ikea assembly manual”.

Frustrated, I reverted to my old tendency of assuming that they just didn’t “get it”. Many of them had never heard of travel hacking anyway, so what could they possibly know?

But after giving it some thought, I realized that they were absolutely right. The point of the book was to introduce travel hacking to beginners and I had completely failed at accomplishing that goal.

So I did what any rational person would do. I deleted the entire thing and started over.

I was determined to do it right the second time around. I asked for feedback on a regular basis, used real-life examples wherever possible, and even hired an editor to make sure that everything came across clearly.

The result is what you see today, and I can only give credit to those who helped me along the way.

Now before this starts to sound like some sort cliché rehab story in a made-for-TV movie (Hi everyone, my name is Bryce and I used to suck at receiving criticism), let me explain where I am going here.

Ever since the dreaded first draft failure, constructive feedback has driven everything that I do here at GFF. I LOVE asking you, my readers, to tell me what I am doing wrong and how I can better serve you. I listen carefully to everything that you tell me and do my best to implement it in to my work.

So today, I want you to complete one small task. I want you to think about what I can do to make your life easier and write it down. I’ll be asking you to share it with me later this week.

-Bryce

P.S. On Thursday, I’ll be conducting my first ever giveaway to encourage you to share your thoughts