Transcript
Speaker: When most people think about business and entrepreneurship, they think of Scrooge McDuck jumping into a vile of gold that he never lets anyone else even touch.
Speaker: However, in life, this attitude of taking first before giving doesn't really take you very far.
Speaker: This age old adage of always treat others like you would like to be treated and be kind, all of these things, they run very deep in our society.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: Let's speak in the language that everyone understands.
Speaker: And let's just consider why is it actually beneficial to us, both in our personal life and in our business, to give first and to think about what we can give before we think about what we can take.
Speaker: So Sebi, why don't you tell us first a bit about how does this principle manifest in one's personal life?
Speaker: Why is it important to think when we're speaking with our friends, with our family, with the people around us that we care about deeply, to think about what we can give instead of immediately what we can take?
Speaker: Yeah, so as you kind of alluded to by pointing to the golden rule of, you know, treat others as you want to be treated yourself, I think that we actually do have a moral duty to do so.
Speaker: But without really getting deep into like ethics and stuff like that, I think it makes more sense to just talk about it in terms of outcomes, right?
Speaker: Because when we engage with other people, we have certain intentions.
Speaker: And usually it's like, I want to make friends.
Speaker: I want this person to like me.
Speaker: I want to be set in this group.
Speaker: So this is like in your personal life.
Speaker: We'll talk about business a bit later.
Speaker: But if we think about it in terms of outcomes, actually reframing the way in which you go about social interactions,
Speaker: reframing it in such a way that you focus on giving as opposed to taking actually helps you achieve these outcomes better.
Speaker: So I like to think about it in terms of, am I going to a situation thinking, okay,
Speaker: I'm not going to necessarily in this situation to just achieve this outcome, right?
Speaker: I'm going to focus instead of how can I bring as much value to this situation, right?
Speaker: To give an example, say I, you know, there's a group of new people.
Speaker: I want to meet them.
Speaker: I want them to be friends.
Speaker: I want to, you know, social media and stuff like that.
Speaker: That's the outcome that I achieve.
Speaker: But I think the mistake that a lot of people make is focusing solely on that outcome.
Speaker: I think it's very good to be clear about your intentions, clear about your goals.
Speaker: But I think the way in which you frame your mindset, the way in which you get, the way in which you frame things when you're going into them is quite important.
Speaker: So a different way which you would want to frame things to better be able to achieve this outcome is thinking, okay, right?
Speaker: This is my outcome, sure.
Speaker: But what I'm going to focus on is bringing in as much value as I can to this specific situation.
Speaker: What it would be, for example, just being a good person, making sure you listen to others, that you engage and just respect their basic human dignity.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: And the reason why this actually better leads you to achieve certain outcomes in a specific social setting is because if you're not focusing on this outcome, you're just focusing purely on giving, bringing value.
Speaker: You're going to be bringing so much more value.
Speaker: You're just going to be a nice person who's quite easy to talk to, who's quite companionable, a nice person to be with.
Speaker: And that naturally makes other people more likely to like you, to respect you.
Speaker: which in turn helps you achieve that goal, that outcome of being included within the social group.
Speaker: Yeah, you go in to give, but it ends up just being more fruitful for you as well.
Speaker: And well, by giving, you may also make it more fruitful for others.
Speaker: So ultimately, you're just making the interaction end up with a more positive outcome for everyone.
Speaker: You're bringing value to your environment and the environment naturally reflects that value back to you.
Speaker: And this actually, I think, connects to like the Taoist principle almost of living your life as if you were sailing a sailboat.
Speaker: Because a sailboat, you cannot...
Speaker: Well, I guess you can a very tiny bit.
Speaker: And yeah, you can also get some things by taking, but you cannot really just get in the water and start flapping your legs as hard as you can, trying to take the distance for yourself.
Speaker: No, you need to listen to the direction of the winds and you need to go with it.
Speaker: You need to adjust yourself in exactly the right way.
Speaker: And in the same way, in the same way as if you're sailing a boat, you need to actually go with the winds and listen to the wind and play together with it, flowing with it in order to get to your destination.
Speaker: In the same way,
Speaker: You need to listen to your environment and what your environment is telling you and what your environment is giving you instead of fighting with it.
Speaker: And really giving to the people around you, I feel like is this act of listening to the environment and what the environment wants, because that's also what we do as entrepreneurs and as business people.
Speaker: And when we're providing any sort of service, we're trying to listen to what the world around us needs and then to give it to them.
Speaker: And the value, whether it be in terms of money or whether it be in terms of some sort of social validation, it comes rather naturally when you create enough value yourself, because the world will want to reflect your value.
Speaker: Obviously, if you do it extremely, extremely stupid and never, never try to monetize it at all in business, for example, it's not going to work.
Speaker: But even then,
Speaker: if you give enough value, people will basically force themselves into giving money back to you, you know, just because there is this principle of reciprocity that works, the strong psychological principle.
Speaker: And yeah, in both your personal life and your business, if you give first, then you will be able to, the value will come back to you instead of you having to fight for it.
Speaker: And that's just a much better way to do it.
Speaker: And in business specifically,
Speaker: So many people, especially when starting out with stuff like building their agencies or trying to sell their freelancing services, for example, creating a website for someone, it's so easy to go to people and say, hey, for 5,000 euros, I will build you a cool website.
Speaker: okay, but why should I believe you?
Speaker: The thing is people buy based on a prediction of future value.
Speaker: They pay you money because they think and they believe that you are able to bring them value in exchange for that money.
Speaker: What is the absolute best way to make someone believe that you can bring them value?
Speaker: It's simply by giving them value upfront.
Speaker: It's by going up to them with some sort of thing that they already, it demonstrates one, that you have the skill that you're trying to make them pay you for.
Speaker: And two, that you are actually capable of bringing value because just having one skill alone is usually not enough to create value for someone.
Speaker: So in business, it just makes sense to give because when you give, you show people that you can give and then you can tell them, hey,
Speaker: I can give you even more, but I'm going to need some value in return for that because that's the market economy that we live in.
Speaker: So if in personal life, as you said, it simply makes sense because people react to you better and it's just easier for you to have social interactions and so on.
Speaker: In business, it just makes sense because it will make you more money.
Speaker: You will think about it in this way.
Speaker: If you have 20 people and you go up to each of the 20 people and say, or let's say, if you have 100 people and you go up to each of the 100 people and say, hey, do you want to buy my thing for 1000 euros?
Speaker: Maybe one of the 100 people will say yes, if you're lucky.
Speaker: Maybe no one will, but it certainly won't be a lot.
Speaker: But if you go to the same 100 people,
Speaker: and you give them something for free that is like maybe solves one of their concrete problems, but then creates this problem that you're then selling the solution to as a natural progression from that.
Speaker: If you go up to 100 people and you give them this free thing first, then
Speaker: they are much more likely to think that now when you go and ask them to buy your thing for 1000 euros, that first of all, they like you more because you gave them something for free.
Speaker: And two, they believe that you can provide value.
Speaker: So they're more likely to buy.
Speaker: So more people will buy from you.
Speaker: And I mean, in business, you got to do the math and stuff.
Speaker: But the core principle is that if you give that free thing first, more people will then want to buy from you after.
Speaker: And in the same way, in personal life, if you go and you give first, then more people will buy
Speaker: comply with whatever your ask may be implied or explicit later on.
Speaker: But that's the very practical side of it in terms of just what you will get more if you give first.
Speaker: But Sebi, why are we so focused on taking from people in the first place?
Speaker: Yeah, so I think it just stems from
Speaker: The fact that we have a basic need to survive, and that means that we're almost, everyone has to, to some degree, seek basic outcomes like, oh, let me have access to money, access to wealth, access to social validation, because that leads to the other things which helps me survive.
Speaker: That means I can access food, shelter, and the like.
Speaker: And because we are almost forced into pursuing these outcomes, there's no way in which we can't pursue them.
Speaker: it leads to a natural focus on them.
Speaker: And the thing is, and especially in societies like ours, which are very much focused on money, the pursuit of wealth from a very young age, such a pursuit of wealth of these outcomes are very much glorified.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It becomes very much ingrained within our lives.
Speaker: And I think it is a matter of focus, but the danger is if you're focusing solely on taking it can lead to, I think the biggest harm of excessive greed.
Speaker: And so excessive greed is when.
Speaker: you take this outcome, you take these outcomes, right, of wealth and everything that obviously they lead to, you know, having access to like a nice house, nice venue, nice this, that, the other.
Speaker: And then it involves you pursuing these outcomes
Speaker: but trying to maximize your attaining of these outcomes without taking into account the impact that your actions will have on other people.
Speaker: It's basically pursuing these outcomes without regarding the costs that it would impose on other people, right?
Speaker: And it can really be any sort of...
Speaker: people, people you don't know.
Speaker: So if you're, say, a business owner and you having to cut wages to your workers, you don't physically know these people, but they're cutting wages, you decrease their living standards.
Speaker: But it also could be something that perhaps goes quite
Speaker: which often goes overlooked, right?
Speaker: It could just be the people around you, right?
Speaker: So if you're solely focused on pursuing wealth, pursuing all of these things, you don't spend time with people around them, right?
Speaker: You disregard them, you make them feel worse, right?
Speaker: And so this is what excessive greed looks like.
Speaker: And being focused on taking leads to it because I think
Speaker: When you're focused on taking in your social interactions, you're constantly thinking, okay, what can I get from this person?
Speaker: What can they do for me?
Speaker: The focus is on the outcome and its orientation towards yourself.
Speaker: And if you constantly are thinking in these terms, naturally it's going to lead to a blindness.
Speaker: Eventually it becomes less and less obvious to you that
Speaker: other people are affected by your action and that you should therefore perhaps take, you know, perhaps think about, don't think about the cause you're imposing on them.
Speaker: And so this is why I think that focusing solely on what we're taking is so dangerous because it actually does lead to, you know, bad outcomes of very much focusing on yourself and, you know,
Speaker: excessive greed.
Speaker: And greed, it's bad because if you have all this money, if you have all this success, you'll get to a point where you're living in a nice house, you have lots of money, you have access to my food, but you have no one to share all of your success with, right?
Speaker: You'll just be sitting there in your big house quite alone, right?
Speaker: And because we're all...
Speaker: Because at the end of the day, we're social creatures.
Speaker: We feel rather empty.
Speaker: We feel like something is missing.
Speaker: If we have all this money, we have all of these things, and yet we have no one to share it.
Speaker: We have no one to spend our time with.
Speaker: And so flipping the way in which we see things by focusing on giving is important because it can break that.
Speaker: But I think on a deeper level, what framing things in terms of what you can get as opposed to what others can, what you can get from others is important because
Speaker: It upholds the principle of the dichotomy of control.
Speaker: So it's a principle that's very much the parallel within Stoic philosophy.
Speaker: It's an ancient Greek philosophy for us to be interested.
Speaker: And the whole idea of it is that in life, there are things which are within our control and which are without our control, which, you know, outside of it.
Speaker: And the outcomes, thinking of what can that person get for me, that's focusing on what they can do.
Speaker: Whereas thinking about how can I bring them value is focused on what you can do.
Speaker: And naturally you have so much more control over your actions.
Speaker: So if you're focusing on what you can do, likely it's more likely this greater focus means you're more likely to do the right things to achieve the outcomes because you're focusing on what you can do and actually the best path to success.
Speaker: Yeah, and ultimately you can get the same or better results by doing this, by simply reframing things in terms of what can I give instead of what can I take.
Speaker: We can take multiple examples from business and personal life, both.
Speaker: For example, networking.
Speaker: If you go into a social situation thinking, okay, I want these people to be my friends now.
Speaker: I want to take their friendship.
Speaker: If you do that,
Speaker: you can achieve some results, but the whole time you will be feeling the sub disconnect with the reality of the situation.
Speaker: And I would even argue that you won't feel completely present simply because instead of you being there, socializing with people, enjoying and living in that moment, you are in your mind, breaking yourself into this second piece of your ego almost that is thinking about how can I now make that other piece of me act in such a way to get what I truly want from those people.
Speaker: And just thinking constantly about taking naturally leads to the split of your ego, where you have one side that's trying to control the other side so that, oh, I'm going to make myself act in exactly the way so that other people give stuff to me.
Speaker: But the way that you need to act in order for other people to give stuff to you is to give stuff to them, is to be kind, is to not be selfish.
Speaker: So all that you're achieving by being selfish is
Speaker: and sort of breaking yourself into two and thinking, hey, I'm going to make the other part of me now act in such a way to get stuff.
Speaker: All that you're achieving with it is that you're forcing yourself into the same behavior that you could fall into naturally if you just followed the kindness instincts that exist within each one of us.
Speaker: And I'm saying this from a purely practical standpoint.
Speaker: I'm not saying this in a sort of wishy-washy sense, just be nice because we should be nice.
Speaker: No, concretely, whatever outcome you think that you're going to achieve by focusing yourself on what you can take, that outcome can be achieved better by focusing on what you can give to the people that you thought that you wanted to take from.
Speaker: For example, let's take the same example of networking, right?
Speaker: If you go and you say, hey, I like, actually, I'm going to share a personal story.
Speaker: So I was at a music event and the person who was playing music at the event, I really liked the way that they were doing music.
Speaker: And me, myself, having been a music producer for over eight years now, I wanted to connect with them.
Speaker: So I think what a lot of people would have done in that situation is they would have gone up to that person and simply like demanded, hey, what's your name?
Speaker: You know, I really like how you play.
Speaker: Do you want to hang out sometime?
Speaker: Now, think about the person in that situation.
Speaker: You're approaching them from at that moment, lower social status because they're the one performing.
Speaker: You're the one just one in the crowd.
Speaker: they are busy with the job.
Speaker: They are trying to make everyone a good night for everyone.
Speaker: They are, you know, yeah, they're busy with what they're doing.
Speaker: Why would they be incentivized to respond in any positive way to your request about wanting to hang out?
Speaker: And if you say, let's hang out, all that that implies to them is, oh, they see me here up on the stage.
Speaker: They want either a part of my fame or my skills, whatever.
Speaker: You go with the intention to take and they feel that you have the intention to take and that gets you no outcome.
Speaker: What I did instead was I started by filming with my phone at the event, a couple of good videos of them.
Speaker: And they saw me doing this and I made sure that they did.
Speaker: But I filmed a couple of good videos of them performing.
Speaker: And then I approached them saying, hey man,
Speaker: I filmed some nice videos of you performing.
Speaker: Where could I send them to you?
Speaker: Do you have an Instagram, anything?
Speaker: And by doing that, I started the conversation in the frame of me wanting to give something to them.
Speaker: So now I'm going after them saying, hey, I did this thing for you.
Speaker: Do you want it?
Speaker: Much easier for them to say yes to.
Speaker: They did.
Speaker: And then after you have already established this connection and you have started the relationship, you can then later on ask to hang with them and achieve the same outcomes that you wanted to in the beginning.
Speaker: Now, this might seem to you like, oh, this is an extra step.
Speaker: Why can't I just go straight for the ask?
Speaker: You know, go straight for the kill.
Speaker: Boom, boom, boom.
Speaker: It's because ultimately on a long time horizon, it's more effort because think of it in terms of conversion rates, right?
Speaker: Your conversion rate of how many people you would have a positive interaction with if you approach them with a taking frame of, I want this from you, is going to be lower than the conversion rates of people when you go with a giving frame of, hey, I want to give this to you first and then later you make the ask.
Speaker: And because that conversion rate is so different and it's larger when you go to give, yes, it may be faster in any one singular instance to go straight for the kill, ask, hey, I want this from you.
Speaker: And maybe they even give it to you in that one singular case.
Speaker: But that's anecdotal evidence.
Speaker: That's not the statistical way of looking at things.
Speaker: We need to look at things on a long time horizon.
Speaker: And on a long time horizon, if more people give you what you want, if you first go and give to them,
Speaker: that it's a big enough difference that it balances out and it's worthy of being in that giving frame first.
Speaker: And so we've discussed how it applies in personal life situations and we've discussed how just in business it makes more sense because people buy based on a prediction of future value.
Speaker: And so if people buy in business based on a prediction of future value,
Speaker: then by you giving them free stuff first, you show to them that you're able to provide value for them.
Speaker: And you also invoke the powerful psychological principle of reciprocity, where they just like you more and they want to give back to you because you gave to them.
Speaker: Because humans ultimately, we're tribal creatures.
Speaker: We're tribal creatures.
Speaker: We like to
Speaker: We like to give back to those who gave to us.
Speaker: And that's what we should leverage in our own lives.
Speaker: Because by being in a giving frame in our business and our personal life, we can give more to others so that they can live their lives their way.
Speaker: And they will give back in return to us so that we can live our lives our way.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: That's it for this week.
Speaker: Thank you very much for listening.
Speaker: Be sure to check out our social media pages and website, links in the description, for more on how you can live your life your way.
Speaker: Also, if you thought that you gained something from this episode, whether it be a small insight or transcendental reality-shaping piece of enlightenment, then feel free to share this episode with your friends, family, whoever it may be, for there is no better gift than that of a good idea.
Speaker: Thank you very much, and I'll see you next week.
