Character is king. – AUDIO NSFW
Guys, what’s up? I just had a wonderful lunch meeting with a man that I deeply respect. As a side note real quick, I hope that you guys out there in the internet land, you guys have men and women that you can connect with that you deeply respect, people that can talk to, engage with, get advice from, bounce ideas off of, and have them pour into you probably because they’re just better human beings than you. I hope that you have great people that you can talk with and just talk about life, talk about anything. People that are not beholden or have any agendas. They’re just men women who will just have your interests in mind when they’re with you and engaged with you.
But anyway, after this conversation with him—we spent close to three hours with each other—I started pondering on this idea of respect because I deeply respect this person. I respect their grind. I respect their hustle. I respect him as a man, as a husband, as a provider, as a family man. He’s got lots of kids.
I just thought about this idea of respect and I was curious about it. So guess what I do when I’m curious? I look up shit up. I looked up the definition of respect so we could kind of further inform my ideas around this because I did want to talk about. I did want to talk about it with you. The title of today’s topic is Respect is Earned, Not Demanded or Assumed.
I looked at the definition of respect and I want to walk you through it. My thoughts around respect is being earned and not assumed or demanded. It cannot be demanded. You can ever demand respect. Anyway, I came up with this definition. It said “admire deeply a person”, “admire deeply as a result of abilities, achievements or qualities”, “someone that you admire deeply as a result of their abilities, their achievements or qualities.” I wrote a couple things down here and it was easy for me to cut through the chaff and the bullshit. You’ll see why.
You see when it comes to abilities, and the ideas I wrote down, abilities mean skill, maybe latent talent, natural abilities. These are things that you can admire deeply and thereby respecting an individual for they have natural skill. They have natural talent. They have they have abilities that are great, that allow them to achieve obviously amazing things or beyond normal or beyond average things.
But what I did is I put an X on it. I put an X on it. The reason I put an X on it is because I don’t respect that. I don’t. I don’t admire that. I don’t. Everyone has natural inborn skills. Now, if you are to focus that into something great, then that is respectable, but I don’t respect the natural skill or natural talent or natural ability in and of itself. In the definition of respect, it says, admire someone deeply as a result of abilities. It leaves it up to a little bit of interpretation here, but I interpret ability as skill, talent or latent or natural ability. I don’t really respect that. It’s what you do with those abilities, those talents, those skills. That’s what I can admire. That’s what I can respect. So I put it next there.
The second one was easy. “Admires deeply as a result of achievements.” Well, I just wrote down worldly billshit. Your achievements in life, most of them are just bullshit. Do you have medals from middle school, high school, and maybe even colegio, college, Universidad? Do you? I did. Do you have yearbooks? I did. I threw them all away. Most achievements in life are fuckin’ worthless. Most of them. Now, if you have personal goals that you’ve achieved, those aren’t worthwhile. But most achievements are just bullshit. Even gold medals are bullshit.
Hey, I am NOT an Olympic athlete. So I might be talking out of my ass here. I’ve heard enough interviews I’ve read enough interviews of world-class, top-tier, rank 1 legend, the best in the world athletes and from all the memory that I could conjure up, I don’t remember any of those world-class athletes saying that the sole motive for them to do all this was to get that gold medal, that gold literally. It’s a medal. It’s just a thing. No, they do it because of the challenge, of the process, of the desire to see limits of their potential, to see how great they truly can be, overcome some demon, overcome some challenge, overcome some heinous adversity in life.
When they win the gold medal and they sit down and reflect and they have some stupid-ass interviewer ask them dumbass questions, they never say, “Oh, you know what, I just woke up on a Saturday when I was 13 years old and I want to win a gold medal.” No. It’s always deeper than that. So achievements, guys, that was a long-winded way of saying achievements are bullshit.
The third one was qualities. “Admire deeply as a result of qualities.” Now, that I can get into. Deeper qualities, deeper personal qualities, philosophical qualities, lifestyle, the qualities of the individual and then I wrote it down: character. That’s what I respect. That’s what Peter respects.
I respect character of person. That’s what I respect. I think you and anyone out there in the internet world could probably put together a pretty rational and pretty well-constructed argument for why you can totally respect and admire deeply individuals because of their abilities and their achievements. I think you and anyone out there could easily put together a solid case for why that works for you.
But this is my podcast. And for me, abilities, natural innate abilities and your achievements, I give two fucks about. How’s your character? How’s your personal life? How’s your soul? How’s your spirit? How’s your home life? How’s your relationship life? How’s your relationship with your kids? These are the things that I care about. These are the things that I respect. I give two fucks if you own a Lamborghini. I give to fucks if you live in a nice house. None of that means nothing to me. This is coming from someone who has those things. So maybe I’m just talking out of my ass. Maybe I need to just sell these things, get rid of them. People would be like, oh internet proof! Fuck it! I love these cars.
I don’t give two fucks about these achievements, these worldly successes. I care about the content of your character. Actually, I would even go farther. I would actually say that sometimes skills, latent talent, and achievements can sometimes repel people because there’s just too much ego involved in that shit. It could actually be a negative against you. Sometimes, you could be like fuck that guy. He’s got these natural skills and he flaunts it like an asshole. Or look at her, she achieved that and she’s like all haughty and prideful that she’s like the shiznit. Let’s be honest, these can actually be roadblocks to people respecting these achievements and skills and talents if you don’t hold yourself in a respectable manner or have a respectable behavior. These are internal things that exude themselves outwardly. So character, my friends, character.
There’s a lot of presidents, there’s a lot of CEOs, there’s a lot of men and women of industry who hold all these titles. These are achievements. Titles are achievements. I’ve met a lot of them when I was a consultant for 12 years. I met some of the most powerful individuals in industry, Fortune 50 companies amazing shaking their hand, talking with them and having just amazing conversations about how I could help them improve their software development.
These are great times. I tell you, people are respected for the title only until you fuck up. Isn’t that the truth? People will respect you for it—Mr. CEO, Mr. President, Mr. Board Member, Mr. Big Shot whatever—until they have some sort of moral failing, some ethical moral failing or consistent ineptitude overtime, the title will gain respect until the moral failing or the character shines through. Isn’t that true? Or they just underperformed or lacked integrity. That’s the real truth isn’t it?
Isn’t the real truth is that men and women of industry, they get to these high titles of respect and then we find out that what their character is. We find out what their character is. One thing that I have done a lot of reading about and obviously there were specials about this on TV shows and these types of things is Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. That was an epic failure.
If you haven’t heard about her, she was supposed to be the next Steve Jobs. She had created this “medical breakthrough” in being able to have one prick from your finger and you’d be able to have a thousand different tests run. It was a miracle to be able to do all of that with one little drop of blood and easy applicator system. It turns out Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos was all made up. It was vaporware. Even the likes of people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett invested in her. Even the guy who owns Virgin Airlines, Richard Branson, I believe, even invested in her.
I mean she sold a bag of goods so deep and so wide, it was amazing that some of the most respected men and women of industry invested in her and it was all vaporware. It was all made up. Isn’t that the usual happenstance? Now that was an epic failure in the world stage, but isn’t that the usual happenstance? Isn’t that how it happens? That people are given respect because of the title and then we find out the real content of their character, the moral failing, the lack of integrity.
Respectable leaders. Here’s what I’m really trying to say. Respectable leaders get results the right way. They get results with integrity. They get results with character. They get results with consistency of character. That’s what we’re gonna talk about.
THREE WAYS TO EARN RESPECT:
- Consistent behavior
That’s actually one of the things that I talked about as a software development consultant when helping companies understand how to improve their software development speed. That we need to create consistent behaviors within this overly complex system or at least have consistent behaviors to the best of our abilities so that we can at some level measure some output that makes sense.
You want to earn respect? You have to have consistent behavior over time. Are you the person that you say you are? Is your yes mean yes? Does your no mean no? Are you going to act in consistency over a multitude of different experiences over life? That is what your measured by. You want to earn my respect? Have consistent positive behavior over time. No one enjoys a negative Nancy. Wake the up and reprogram yourself back to positivity. Life is worth living for fucks sake.
Man, I can’t tell you how many negative Nancies I meet all the time. I don’t even want to get into it. I should probably do another podcast on why it’s important for you to never think negatively ever.
- Take responsibility
You want to earn respect? Take responsibility, personal responsibility. What this means is a character of integrity. Yeah, it was your fault. You were part of it. Take responsibility. Oh, you’re the manager? You’re the boss. It’s still your fault. I found this to be one of the most fascinating things in the corporate world as an engineer developer for a Fortune 50 company right out of college and I was also there before college as an intern, but even as a consultant for these large companies as well. It’s slayed me this idea that managers of development teams could go home at 4:30, 5:00, and 5:30 and they would ask their engineers and developers to stay there at 7:30 to 9:00. What?
Sometimes as a consultant, I would be there until 9:30-10:00 with these engineers and developers and I was a consultant. Was I getting paid for those hours? Hell no! Brother got paid by the day. Those were free for me to them. But I wanted to earn the respect of the engineers and developers because I wanted them to see that I was willing to do what it takes to help them succeed even when their manager is at home at 5:30 having dinner with his spouse and kids, and all the rest of us are sitting at work.That type of integrity, that type of take fucking personal responsibility attitude guys will earn you respect over time.
- Do the shit.
Now, that needs some qualification, doesn’t it? Do the shit is what I wrote down. Respect is earned through the hard times of life and through doing the shit. Meaning taking out the trash, meaning smashing the like button, meaning doing the menial tasks that are way below your pay grade. That is what earns the respect of others. Is that you’re willing to traverse the entire company and do everything necessary from the role of the CEO all the way down to the guy just writing the code and even lower still.
Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to do the shit? Are you willing to persevere and be a stability for other people in those troubled times as well? Are you willing to go above and beyond and rise to the occasion and be a fucking man? I mean war makes the ordinary extraordinary. I’ve talked about that before. War and hard times make ordinary men extraordinary. That is one way to earn respect. It’s you’re willing to do the shit. You’re willing to do what it takes. Respect is the privilege of the trustworthy and dependable. I’ll repeat that. That was pretty damn good. Respect is the privilege of the trustworthy and dependable.
You want to have great respect in life from your peers? You want have great respect from other people? By the way, the goal here is not to have people like you. Being respected does not equate to being likeable. I find this fascinating that people mix these things together. The goal is never to be liked when it comes to the context of being respected and respectable. The goal is never to be liked. It’s never been.
Fuck! I screenshot the behind-the-scenes people in our behind-the-scenes group. I screenshot shit all the time of how much hate I get. Some people say well that might be negative programming always taking screenshots and putting them in folders. I love it. I have reprogrammed my brain. If you give me online bro, I live off it. Because you’re typing shit to me while I’m working. There’s nothing else I need to say. I’m working on my dreams. You’re probably typing that stuff at a corporate slave job. So who’s winning?
Fuck! There’s so many people that don’t like me. But I don’t care! I’m doing this because I love it. I’m doing this because I want to give. I’m doing this because I know that this has a long tail goal that none of y’all motherfuckers know about. It’s great! I enjoy that and do that with integrity and I can do it with excellence.
You know people might not like it. They might not like you and that’s okay. But you know what, they’ll respect your hustle. They’ll respect that you won’t quit. They might not like it when you hold them accountable when you say the tough things, when you ask the tough questions. They might not like it. They might not like you when you hold them accountable and you ask them the tough questions. But they’re gonna respect that you’re willing to talk about it and that you have empathy and sympathy for their situation. They’re gonna respect that.
You know people might not like? They might not like your disciplines, but they’ll respect for you for your consistency and grind and your mental toughness to not quit. People might not like your disciplines, your behaviors sometimes, but they can’t knock the grind. That’s like my life! I’ve never been liked by people. I don’t say masses. Maybe that’s true. That’s not important to me. It’s not important for me to be liked. But you can’t knock my hustle guys. I show up every day for fucking work.
You know what people might not like you and they might not agree or be in line with your beliefs. You know what they might not like you or your beliefs or agree with your beliefs, but you know what? They’ll respect you if you are able to communicate your beliefs in a humble way. Is that fair? Let me repeat those three.
The goal is not to be for people to fucking like you. They might not like that you hold them accountable and ask them to tough things, but they will respect your willingness to engage. They might not like your disciplines or some of your behaviors, but they’ll respect you for the consistency and the grind and the mental toughness that you have. They might not agree or might not like your beliefs, but they’ll respect the fact that you’re willing to engage and communicate them in a humble manner.
The ways to earn respect are sustained and consistent behaviors, taking responsibility and having an integrity of character and your ability to do the shit necessary to fucking win. The goal is never to be liked. It’s never to be liked. The goal is to achieve your own goals. You know what the ultimate win is? You get to achieve your own goals regardless of being liked or respected. You want to earn respect worthy? What are some of the behaviors that you need to be changing today?
This is Peter, the Bitcoin Lambo. If you appreciated this episode, then smash that like button, stay a while, subscribe. You know would be really cool? If you send this to one person on your network. That’s always cool. If you want to comment, let the brother know. Have a great one.