"People Don't Act Like Themselves Around Me"

0:00He was like, "You're uh very hard to be friends with." I was like, "Okay." He's like, "Not for me cuz I have learned." He's like, "But I can understand why you would be hard to be friends with for many people." [music] And he kind of like broke it down. He was like, "You always ask people like what's new, what's going on." And he's like, "Often times people don't have anything new or going on." He's like, "So then what you do is you say, 'Well, here are the things that I have going on that are new.' And then people then perceive that as you being self-absorbed or whatever when it's really I just want to talk about anything that's new. Like or like interesting." And so if someone's like, "Oh, I've got this split test going on my page." I'm like, "Cool, let's talk about that." He was talking me through that. He's like, "And a lot of people basically it's it's punishing to to to have you feel inadequate." Not He's like, "Not cuz you're trying to, but like" And so I it made me more aware of that. But at the same time cuz I was talking to him, um he's like, "And you also don't want to talk to people who don't have new things going on because so it's self-enforcing cuz I also am not I don't know. If someone who never does it has has anything new not taking any action on stuff gets offended by me, I don't lose much. And so in some ways I have continued that behavior because it has allowed me to continue doing what I want to do.

1:14And so anyway, it was just like a fun interesting side. He's like, "I have learned business so that we can be friends." Which was like incredibly endearing. He's like, "I just I I I learned about the stuff that you wanted to talk about so we could talk about it." I I tweeted about it. I was like, "I hope everyone in the world has a friend like Trevor." >> Like that's that's a different level, brother. >> I know. He's a homie. But I was I was talking to him. I was like, "I'm much better about it now." But people avoided me way earlier on in my career. Like literally my team would avoid me because I was a I was a doler of punishment. Fun of you know, fun of like I would just tell them what they were doing wrong.

1:44And again, it was like I didn't know as much. And so I was just like, "Hey, next time you answer the phone, do this, this, and this different." And so all they heard was like, "You suck." Which is and I just didn't know. You know what I mean? Like you learn. But I I feel like some of that ethos is carried to like today. And so he clarified he's like, "I don't think you are punishing as much anymore. He's like, but I think you are threatening." He's like, "Huh, interesting." He's like, "Obviously there's the physical component of it. He's like, but just the space you occupy in terms of the organization, like you you hold someone's like their livelihood in your hand to a degree like that's real, right? And then you have physical presence which is another element depending on who you're you know with.

2:24And then there's also like the mental element which is like you can probably deal some pretty serious damage if you want to. And so even the the risk of punishment changes people's behavior around you. That's why I was saying like I have decided that I'm actually not a super good I have not been very good at judging people's uh intent because people don't act like themselves around me. Which has been really interesting for me and also humbling because I've seen so many of my decisions about people be wrong. Layla's different than me.

2:56She's a jekyl people have their cards in front of Layla. And so then she gets to see a little bit more of how they act. I don't. So what happens is people get bad news from an employee, associate the bad news with the employee, punish the employee for for the bad thing they feel. When really they'll be like, "Thank you for telling me. Thank you for being so accurate with the facts that you're sharing. Understood." And then it's like, "I can still improve these two traits. They still always want to come to me because it's a skittle.

3:25And it's a skittle. Now maybe it's two skittles if it's good news, but I still reinforce these behaviors." Now it's like, "Well then how do you give someone negative feedback?" I think the easiest way I've seen Layla do it is just say, "How do you think that went?" Or hey, why don't you watch that call? Tell me what you think happened. And then honestly, most people because they are pretty hard on themselves, actually actually come up with the things and then you say, "Awesome observation."

3:53Skittle. Great job. Seeing that. Really good. And then the next time they fix it, Skittle. >> This requires a lot of patience. >> And skill. It's harder. Punishment's much easier. It's faster. So, the easiest equivalent is who reads more books? Someone who reads 600 words a minute and reads two books and then burns out on reading or someone who reads 100 words a minute and reads for a year?

4:28The second one. Now, my argument would be that you can get that person with enough reward above 600 words a minute. Um but they might start at 50. And the other one might start at 600. The other one might get to 1,200. It just takes longer. If you like this video and you're a business owner who wants to break through your current revenue ceiling, I distilled every lesson from scaling 10 businesses past 10 million and three businesses past 100 million into a completely free scaling roadmap that I've used to go from zero to one, zero to 10, and zero to 100 plus. And so you can click here and you can check it out. Again, absolutely free. And since you're a business owner, I appreciate you and enjoy.