Don’t Sell Your Entrepreneurial Soul for Any Price

26, Feb 2024

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Don’t Sell Your Entrepreneurial Soul for Any Price

The Amplified Impact Podcast
February 27th, 2023

Let’s talk integrity in entrepreneurship.

Marketers often push boundaries, but there’s a fine line between exaggeration and lying. Compromising integrity for short-term gains can cost more than you think.

Trust is currency, and playing fast and loose can tarnish your reputation.

Remember, if you compromise on the small stuff, what’s stopping you elsewhere? Stay true to yourself.

In the entrepreneurial journey, you’ll be tested. Choose honor over shortcuts.

 

TWEETABLE QUOTE:

“Though the world will not know what you did or didn’t do, you will. And that is the only opinion that matters. So act accordingly.”

– Anthony Vicino

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Episode Transcript:

There’s a phrase that people like to say, which is marketers ruin everything. And it’s true. It’s true. I think so much of why business and entrepreneurship gets a bad rap is because of marketers. And the other day I read something, I think it was Alex Ramosi who wrote this, and it was very, very well said. He said, sometimes salesmen struggle to know the difference between exaggeration and lying, but the truth is, it’s all lying. There’s a lot of truth to that. Anytime that you’re exaggerating, you’re trying to work up the features, the benefits of your product or service.

Anthony Vicino00:00:39 – 00:01:37

It’s very easy to trend away from the truth and trend towards the thing that will get attention and get the clicks and potentially convert a customer. It can be very, very tempting as the marketer to indulge in those types of games. But I was thinking about this because I came across this piece of content on Instagram and it really ruffled my feathers. It really ruffled my feathers because it was this gentleman speaking on a stage, sharing this marketing tactic that he had discovered. And everybody in the comments was like, this is genius. This is brilliant. This is so good. And I seemed to be the only one who was upset by the fact that what he was describing, while maybe not illegal, it violated the terms and the service of another company that you would have to use to pull off this trick.

Anthony Vicino00:01:38 – 00:02:17
And it really bothered me that one, there’s somebody out there who’s just like standing on the stage and saying, you should do this thing that is very clearly not, this isn’t like a black and white, this isn’t even a gray area. This is just like, that’s just wrong. You’re violating the terms and conditions of that program and you’re using it incorrectly from what they intended. And then everybody is like jumping on the bandwagon and saying, that’s so great. That’s so amazing. It’s like, no, it’s really not. It’s really not great to compromise your integrity and compromise your ethics so that you can get ahead, so that you can build your business, so that you can succeed and make a little bit more money. I think that’s why marketers get such a bad rap.
Anthony Vicino00:02:17 – 00:03:07
Why business owners can get such a bad rap is because we get so motivated sometimes by the profit and the money that we lose sight of the fact that the ends don’t justify the means. How you make the money matters just as much as how much you made of the money. And the thing about this, that really annoys me is that it’s really easy to look in that situation and say, oh, it’s not a big deal. You’re not technically breaking a law, nobody’s getting hurt, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you know, what you’re doing is wrong. And when you do things that you know are wrong, you are compromising your integrity. And I believe self esteem is the reputation you have with yourself. There’s no opinion of you that matters more than the one that you have of yourself.
Anthony Vicino00:03:07 – 00:03:42
And I’m sorry, I find it hard to believe that anybody can knowingly violate the rules and play outside the chalked field and not suffer as a result of it. Internally, existentially. It’s not worth it. Anything that costs you your peace of mind and your reputation with yourself is too expensive and you shouldn’t do it. And this is a very small situation. This is very small. Nobody’s getting hurt. And in the grand scheme of things, like, it annoys me that it annoyed me so much because it doesn’t matter.
Anthony Vicino00:03:43 – 00:04:32
But he who can be entrusted with the small thing can be entrusted with the big things. And when I see somebody proposing a way of doing something that violates ethics, even if it is in a small, meaningless way, the assumption that I have then is, well, that’s just what he’s willing to tell us. What else is he willing to compromise on? What else is he doing that we don’t know about? That is much worse. That’d be much more problematic. And as soon as you start opening that door for people to question you, you’ve lost. You’ve lost at the game of having the moral high road, that’s for damn sure. We had a saying at escape climbing, which was be above reproach. That’s what integrity was for us.
Anthony Vicino00:04:32 – 00:05:20
Be above reproach. And so if anybody ever had an opportunity to come back and reproach you and say, what about this? What are you doing here? This isn’t consistent. You’re being hypocritical. That was a question of our integrity, and you can’t be above reproach about some things and not the other things. If you’re not above reproach on everything, then everything is called in the question. And what was particularly frustrating about this marketing example, this man on the stage, is that he raises capital from investors, an industry that is born off the back of trust. And to start that relationship knowing that you have violated some trust, I find to be deeply unsettling. And so marketers ruin everything.
Anthony Vicino00:05:21 – 00:06:27
But I share this with you because you might be tempted to follow these paths in life towards things that you know aren’t right, but because everybody else is doing it, you can justify it sometimes that it’s okay, but you will know that it’s not right. And I don’t think it’s worth getting ahead in this one domain if it’s going to cost you something so dear in another domain. In another domain, which is the most important domain, which I believe is how you feel about yourself, because you’re going to have to live with that for the entirety of your life. And maybe you listen to this and you go, nah, you’re making a big thing out of nothing. I don’t care about any of that. Cool, that’s fine. But there will become periods of time in your entrepreneurial journey where you will be tested to walk into the gray. You’ll walk more onto the gray side, more towards the.
Anthony Vicino00:06:27 – 00:06:57

More towards the black side. And if you’re not careful, it’s a slippery slope from just doing this one thing. Nobody gets hurt, it’s not a big deal. To the next thing, the next thing, and next thing, and next thing you know, you have a multi billion dollar ponzi scheme. Nobody sets off to be the bad guy and be the villain. The guy is going to jail for insider trading and Ponzi schemes and all these things. They didn’t start off wanting to be the bad guy. They got there with the best of intentions.

Anthony Vicino00:06:58 – 00:07:44

I wrote about this a while back, that the most dangerous thing in the world is good intentions coupled with bad incentives. So be really careful because you are incentivized as an entrepreneur to sometimes cut closer to the line than you should, so that you can maximize short term profits and gains. And sometimes it might even mean that the survival of your very business. It doesn’t mean it’s right. And there are better things in life. There are worse things in life, rather than having failed, as long as you have failed honorably. So wanted to share this with you because it’s been eating at me. And you will be tried at some point in your entrepreneurial career.

Anthony Vicino00:07:44 – 00:08:04

I guarantee that. And so keep these words in mind, is that though the world will not know what you did or didn’t do, you will. And that is the only opinion that matters. So act accordingly. That’s going to do it for me, guys. We’ll catch you in the next episode.

 

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