“I run my student critiques around a single question: what would make this work better, not whether you like it. The moment someone says I didn't like it, I ask them to point to the specific choice that produced that reaction. Taste becomes useful when it has to name a cause.”

“The moment someone says I didn't like it, the session dies unless you have a shared target.”

“I learned this the hard way when I moved from personal training into business coaching and had chiropractors and health pros attacking me personally instead of engaging the actual system I was building.”

“I ran a weekly podcast for six years where feedback could easily slide into I just don't like that host instead of this episode isn't landing, so we started asking people to finish this sentence: The listener will stop scrolling if... It forced taste into the back seat and kept the work in front.”