Episode Transcript

What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m guys. Welcome back to five minute rants.

Well, guys, today I actually want to talk about something that’s very hard to build and then something that can be gone or erased in a moment, before we get there. Let me tell you a story.

So my nephew and this was about two years ago, around Christmas time, he loves Legos. He loves to build Legos. He loves to create things. And he is super smart and super brilliant, but around this time in his life, he had started lying, and he had started not always telling the truth about things, and it’s part of the story of life, in my opinion. And anyways, that’s not the point. The point is, this is his mom was teaching him, really, about reputation and about character. And the point of all of this was trustworthiness.

And so during Christmas time, I was part of that, and having conversations with him. And one day, he had made this huge, massive Lego boat, and he walked into his room and he dropped it, and all this hard work that he had done over the course of a couple days was instantly erased, because the boat completely shattered. There’s Legos all over the floor, and he just stood there, stunned, shocked, like I can’t believe I just dropped that.

And that opened up the opportunity and opened up the door to say, hey, when you choose to lie or when you choose not to tell the truth. This is what happens to your reputation. It takes a long time for you to build up a reputation and earn and develop trust, to be trustworthy, and it just takes one moment to destroy everything. And this is a life lesson that’s so important to learn.

Andrew and I, we actually had a conversation a couple days ago about, how do we measure trustworthiness in the company? And here’s why, if team members don’t trust each other to work with each other, they can’t be a team. Everything in this life operates on the currency of trust, right? You think about how homes work. You think, if you’ve ever been to a third world country outside of, you know, Europe, you go somewhere else, pretty much, go down South America, somewhere. There’s bars on Windows. Why? Trustworthiness. There’s not trust in society. There’s not trust in the culture. In order to actually say, Hey, we’re going to keep each other safe, we’re not going to rob, we’re not going to steal, we’re not going to do these things, right? It’s radically different coming here.

Now, I’m not saying, like in America, everything’s perfect. There’s no bars. But what I’m saying is there is much more of a widespread reliance on culture in a position placed on, hey, we be trustworthy. We be trustworthy. It’s my good English coming out. But be trustworthy. Be honorable. Have these things in your life in this way. So all that being said is this, it is so important to actually build your character and have a reputation of honesty, even when everything has gone south, and honesty is probably going to get you fired, or honesty is going to cost you the relationship, or honesty is going to cost you something that you don’t want to lose. It is worth being honest about, and here’s why, the worst person to get hurt from you ruining your reputation or violating that currency of trust, is you. The worst person to get hurt of all the situation, not what you’re going to lose.

That’s not, that’s not the worst part of it, but the worst person is you, because you’re now marring your character, and at what cost, to maybe gain something, to maybe hold on to somebody to maybe keep a friend right, versus, let me start on a fresh slate, and then you give the friend the opportunity to walk away. And then, not only that, now you have a reputation to wear cool. You may have done something really scummy, but your friend has a chance to work through it with you, and they at least know that you’re not lying to them.

And the point of all this is this your character, your trustworthiness. What is it really worth to you in these things? What is it worth to you in order to actually be honest? How much are you willing to sacrifice to either ruin it or keep it and build it and the credibility you have in life is everything. There’s a proverb that says a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches. And that is so true. It’s really true. And if you gotta tell the truth, man, tell the truth. And telling the truth is hard, because once you start purposely and tell the truth, you realize how much you fudge things and how much you actually say things that you shouldn’t and things like that, or like, hey, lying even comes across the way of, I’m just not going to tell you that’s a lie too, by omission.

And so saying all of that, and you think about all that, and it’s like, what cost to your character, what cost your reputation? Is it worth it or how much is it worth it to really build that and become an honorable person of who has a great reputation, and is known by that.

Anyways, guys, something to think about and just remember this. The world runs off of trust. It really does.

Catch you later. Peace.