Founder Authenticity: Use with Caution

Welcome back to the episode of the Startup Therapy Podcast. This is Ryan Rutan, joined as always by my friend, the founder, and CEO of startups.com. Will Schroeder will, authenticity is a fuel unfiltered. Authenticity is kind of like spraying that fuel through a flame thrower. Um, so today I think it'd be fun to talk about when speaking your truth helps and when it might just be nuking your team, your brand, your runway, your relationships. If you had to put a number on it.

About what percentage of the time do you feel like being your authentic self is a great idea? I think if we really ran the numbers, and I feel like maybe I have, I think just be yourself is wonderful advice 6% of the time. I might be generous on that. Do you feel like that's true for everyone or are you giving yourself a very specific score? Is that just general? That number would be, everyone needs to adhere to this number. That number would be way lower. I'd be like, just be yourself.

It never will. Just never, ever, ever. And you know, I always say this thing, right?

And I say like, when I come home and I talk to my wife about my day and stuff like that, she's like, well, why didn't you say that when you're at work? I'm like, baby, I, I can't. Right. Like the There is and, and 'cause we have an HR department. Oh yeah. Like, it just, it would be, it would be wonderful. Right. Yeah. And not that I'm holding so many things back or I'm so pent up course, but like there's a level of diplomacy that comes with this job.

Yes. That if you don't understand, and Ryan, we see a lot of people.

Don't understand that level of diplomacy, and especially, and I gotta say this, I think generationally, folks that have come up through social media where it's all about expressing yourself all the time. Yeah. And then they get into the work world. How about this? When people get into the work world and they don't realize their employers are gonna Google them. Right. As the first thing that they do.

And see all of the dumb shit that they've been posting for their entire lives and like doesn't even occur to them that you weren't supposed to do that. I was living my authentic self. Yeah. Well now your authentic self isn't very employable. Yeah. I think we have to recognize that authenticity's a tool shouldn't be a a, a reflex and that look like we're not asking anybody to hide themselves. But you should edit a little bit, right?

Like, like most of my best work, it requires a little editing, right? You gotta edit a little. So, you know, I always, I was say to my wife, I was like, yes, there's things that I feel right, but I don't get to express them because there's a consequence to it, right? Like, yes, theoretically, any of us, you know, you, me and any, our leadership team should be able to say whatever they want. Yep. But you can't. Right, right. And that's the part that I think it takes people a minute to understand.

Is that what you say has so much consequence?

Stick on that for a second because I think that's an important piece of this, which is you and I are always talking from the founder perspective, right? So Right. In this case, your title amplifies your, your tone. Even a whisper from us can sound like a verdict to the team. And, and so I think it's super, super important. I, I couldn't important that we, we hammer this point home, uh, with, with what's the biggest hammer you got in the workshop?

Will I, A lot of them, but in early in my career, I didn't get that. And I was, you know, I was very young and I would be in the office, I would make offhanded comments and things like that. Sure. And I didn't appreciate the gravity to which they were received. And I remember there was at some point, like figure, like I'm in my like early to mid twenties at the time and I'm like, you know, five or six years on the job.

And I noticed that when we, uh, go out to lunch or go out to drinks, and mind you, all my coworkers were my same age. So there's nobody above 30 years old at the time. Right, right. I noticed I was. Kind of getting invited out less and less and, and I couldn't quite figure out why. Yep. And again, at the time I was learning this all for the first time, so I had no context. Yeah, you were really, none of us would known being I why I knew this was happening, bounce of wisdom at that age.

But what I started to realize was no one wants to hang out with their boss because there's also consequence the other direction. When they say something like, I hate something. It's like, and you're sitting right there, you have an opportunity to be able to say, oh, well, maybe you shouldn't be working here. Right, right. You know, I mean, something crazy like that. Or if I say something, you know, we're out having drinks or whatever, we're all hanging out.

We're we're, we're being kinda loose lipped, if you will. And I say, man, I really, I've really been struggling to come to work every. Right. Needle off the record. Right, right. Like, wait, what? Right. The, the guy who signed her paychecks, uh, doesn't wanna come to work. Okay. Let me update my LinkedIn profile. This might be, I mean, we're, we're all in agreement then, sir, but how does this end, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's like. But I'm sitting there going, yeah.

But I was being my authentic self. Right, right. I I, I was speaking my truth. Yeah, you were. That's the problem. You were right. I was just being myself and it's, that's the problem's still

important to consider all the time. I, I never miss a chance to quote my dad. Right. You know, this, that one nugget of his that I love, I don't know where he got it from, but communication is the burden of the sender, right? Yeah. Meaning we have to consider how we're saying it. Why we're saying it, should we be saying it? All these things that go into it. But we have to consider how it's gonna be received and we have to think through what's the person on the side of this gonna gonna think?

And it's funny, like, as you were saying that about like the, you know, the, the team dropping things that you react to. It took me a while, if I'm honest, to see comments like. TGIF in our team Slack and be like, so great about being Friday. Like it we're. We, we need more days of work, like we're not done with shit. Like I, I've seen what you put out this week. You shouldn't be glad this Friday. Yeah, it's Wednesday, right?

It took me a long time to get over that and like that was, it was my problem. It wasn't their problem. They were just happy it's Friday, why wouldn't you be happy it's Friday. They'd worked hard all week. Right. They're ready for a weekend. But that wasn't my mentality. It wasn't the way I received it. I'm just like, you just don't wanna be working right now. And people pick up on that. You know what, whether you verbalize it or not.

And that's, that's kind of, you know, what this all comes, comes back to. I always think it in terms of, um, honesty being a privilege. Uh, being able to just say exactly how you feel and not have to be consequential in what

happens. Hold on, stick on that for a second because I wanna tie this all the way back to something else you said in a previous episode because I think this is sort of one of the same, which we said, taking risk is a luxury, right? Being able to take risk is a luxury to some degree, depending on how honest you get, you are definitely pushing the risk factor there, right? And so I think that those, those two concepts do directly tie together.

Right. And, and I used to think about it in terms like when I was young and, you know, poor, I used to think I'm not allowed to be honest, because if I'm being honest, there's a consequence to that that could actually affect me in a very, you know, negative way. Yeah. And then I looked at Rich kids and I looked how, how Effortly effortlessly honest they could.

And I admired that because I'm like, man, you know, you can say some crazy shit and the person on the other side has to take it because you have money to give them. Right? It's the equivalent of like somebody's at a hotel. The maer dee, or you know, or the, the, the concierge isn't treating them well and they just lay into 'em. Right? Yeah. Because they know they have this power and this lack of consequence. And all I could think to myself was like, I can't even believe I'm at this hotel.

Like the idea of complaining, it makes me think I'm gonna get kicked out. Right? Yeah. Um, just totally different mentality. And so when I see, uh, young founders. Like myself back then, go into the, into this job, you know, into the CEO job. And again, you see 'em on social media right. Saying like, just whatever they want. Right? And I'm like, dude, like you can't do that. Yeah. Or saying stuff to their staff, you know, they'll come to me like, I'm having a problem with my staff member.

Here's what I want to say to 'em. Like, whoa, you cannot say that. Right? Like, you'll be in a lawsuit. Right. Like, or worse. Right. I think for a lot of founders, um, they struggle with this. They struggle with this idea that if I'm not saying exactly what's in my head, you know my truth so to speak, that that's a problem. And I'm saying, no, that's a solution. Do a lot of things. You know, he's a real straight shooter.

We also don't allow firearms in here, so we're not sure how this is gonna work out.

It's funny, but you, you do have to pick between being real and I think being responsible again, because the communication can have so many outcomes that are unintended. Um, most of the time I would say, I think I, if you, if you have something that you honestly do need to share and you know, it might cause harm, but you have to, anyways. That happens. Right? That happens too. Yep. Because I, I a hundred percent know what you're not, what not saying is sweep shit under the rug. Right.

Just, just look the other way. Just don't say what needs to be said. What you're saying is. Put a pretty heavy filter in front of that before you decide, right? Because we can't just, everything that occurs to us fall out of our mountains. Well, we, we can, it tends to not happen. We, that's the problem. And here's the thing, like I don't have a great filter. Like my, my filter over the years, over the decades has not been my strongest suit, even though I'm aware of why that filter.

I mean, we're literally doing an episode specifically about the filter. And so I, I'm the last person to say that I'm great at it, but I'm well aware of it. I, I'm well aware of, you know, where and how. That can kind of work against you. And again, we're going back to all the different places where this starts to manifest. One of the places, uh, that we see is, we talked about a moment ago is, you know, founders on social media, right?

Like, ah, you know, I, I wanna post everything and put everything on. Okay? But dude, like, you're not just a person on social media anymore. You are a CEO of a company Now. A leader at a company and everything that you post has a whole other consequence to it. 'cause the people that are seeing are the people that work with you. They're the people that may work with you someday. You know, so they're seeing what you post.

They're your customers, they're your investors, they're your, the media, et cetera. You have to start thinking about all of those different outlets. Whereas before it was just what your friends thought and you know, what, what likes and comments you got. Yeah. Now it's like that's the least of your concerns. And I think it takes people a minute to process that. I think that one of the things that gets lost is that intention is private, right? My intent is locked up within me, right?

You may hear 10 words come outta my mouth. There were probably a thousand thoughts behind that, right? And so there was probably a whole lot of intention that's not gonna get carried in the way that I intended it to in those 10 words. But the thing we have to remember is the intention's private, but the impact is super public. Depending on where this gets said, which it's becoming harder and harder to find a corner in which you can say things where that it doesn't come to light.

Um, and again, not that that founders are just out there, you know, m fing everybody, and, and like just having nothing bad things to say. But there are a lot of truths to being a founder that can't just be shared unvarnished. Right. Right. In the same way we expect our wine to be aged and our vodka to be distilled. We like our communication to come through that way too. Well, so, so, uh, play on that.

Now when I'm communicating within the company, right, again, I'm thinking, uh, everybody needs to be, be honest and transparent, et cetera. And I understand what those words mean, and I understand what, what value those words have. That doesn't mean they're right, right? Yes, transparency sounds great, but there is a time and a place for transparency. Okay? Sure. It's the way I think about being a parent. Yep. Kid comes to me and says, Hey, do you think I could be president?

You, you have two different answers, right? One is honesty and transparency, and one is filtered. Okay? The honesty and transparency is there's a 99.999% chance that will never happen, right? So yes, give it up right now. That's honest, like statistically. It's only happened to, is it 47 people in the history of America? Right? And so it, it's statistically it ain't gonna happen, right? So you could say that and you could dim the spirits of this child and in all these things.

Or you could just filter and say, that's a hard job to get. In order to do it, you're gonna have to work really hard and actually have a positive outcome. Now, the cynical person could say, well, you're not being honest with that child. Yeah, you're right. I'm not being right straight up. I'm not, but if I am, the consequence of that is negative, right. I'm, I'm, I buy nothing and it costs a lot. And I think that's the, the filter that folks need to start to apply. Absolutely.

Yeah. I, I think that we have to go back to that, you know, the fact there's a, the very different power dynamic when we're talking founder to like rest of the team, founder to clients, founder to market. There's always an imbalance there and, yep. And so founder words are heavy. Your employees can't unhear them. Your, your investors can't unhear them and they won't. And so, you know where we might have meant empathy? Employees heard evaluation, right?

The, you know, you look, you look a little tired. LANs is, you look replaceable, right? So we have to remind ourselves that we can't just export raw emotion. We have to expert consider direction. Intention and man, the, the startup world does punish venting. Right? It yeah. Rewards composed clarity. Right. It does like, right. We like honesty again, clarity. That is a great way to put it. Yeah. Package that shit a little bit before you throw it at us.

If I could Marty McFly back to my 1990 self and, you know, go back to that version of that CEO and kind of, you know, uh, try to, uh, convince him differently. Yeah. Here's what I would've said. I would've said, how you're acting is fine. When you're not at work, right. Be a, an idiot, 27-year-old doing idiot things. Yeah. Not at work. When, when you leave the office, right. And, and you're in your own private domain, be the idiot that you want to be. Yeah. Right. And you, you've earned that.

But the moment you walk through this door, you have to be a different person. Right. Uh, because that person, while you know you wanna make jokes and you want to engage with everybody, you wanna be everybody's friend, is absolutely inappropriate in this office. And so what's interesting is I don't think, at the time, again, I didn't have the maturity yet. I didn't understand that two people could exist. And it felt inauthentic, if I'm being honest.

But now when I look back and I look at a lot of the people that I've worked with over the years that were older and certainly more mature than me, that's exactly what they did. And they did it to great effect. Yeah. They, they, they, they, they put on their, um, their work uniform, so to speak, and did work stuff. And then when they were done, they took it off and did whatever the hell they do otherwise. I wish I understood that better back then. Yeah. And it's funny to me that like.

We do have a hard time seeing that, especially in the beginning because it becomes so apparent in other parts of life. Like the way I act with my spouse is very different than the way I act with my kids, than the way I act with my soccer teammates than the way I act with my my parents, right? And so like we have these different versions of our persona that we utilize on a regular basis.

I think that we need to recognize more that like the one that probably needs the most cultivation one that's gonna come to us least naturally because we're not gonna have had other examples of it just floating around us for our entire lives. Um, and that maybe we don't have the same feedback loops and mechanisms is that as a founder right? To we have to be careful and it's, it's not inauthentic to act differently at work. That's what we used to call. Being professional.

Right. Which I know, I was gonna say the same thing going out the window, probably in an office that nobody goes to anymore. That window might even be there anymore for all I know. But, but isn't it amazing though that like, um, it it, we've gotten to a point where it doesn't even occur to us that, that we may need another version of ourselves, right? Yeah. Again, we, we've, we've pounded this narrative into ourselves so heavily that I have to be true and authentic, et cetera.

With that, with that narrative, we've lost the concept that there is a consequence to that. Like, that's not free. You don't get just to say whatever you want and have no consequence or worse get angry. Yeah. When someone, you know, when things don't go your way because you were being honest, your coworker comes to you or something that your employee, let's say, comes to you and said, I'm really struggling with how things are going.

I'm really unhappy with, with my role, you know, whatever their concern is. Okay. And you've got a couple different ways you can go with it, right? One is you can say, you know, honestly, you should probably be looking for another job. You could just be dead honest and, and I'm sure there's folks that would do that and, and I bet the folks that are doing that go home and tell their spouse that's exactly what they needed to hear. Probably not by the way.

You know, I think that's one of the, I think that's one of the easy traps too, which is that there's this sense that by saying that, like, oh, I got that off my chest. Right. I handled that as cleanly as I could have. Yep. For you.

However, person on the other side, it's, I think we, we always have to be careful and this maybe this is simple and easy litmus test as you're thinking about how it's gonna be received, if your honesty is gonna make you feel lighter. Your team, your investors, whoever, whoever the, the recipient's gonna be. Feel heavier. It's probably not great leadership. Probably not what was needed at the moment.

You know, something that's really funny about everything we talk about here is that none of it is new. Everything you're dealing with right now has been done a thousand times before you, which means the answer already exists. You may just not know it. But that's okay. That's kind of what we're here to do. We talk about this stuff on the show, but we actually solve these problems all dayLong@groups.startups.com.

So if any of this sounds familiar, stop guessing about what to do, let us just give you the answers to the test and be done with it.

Brian, I don't think a lot of people, just as humans really understand that balance or, or that transaction, right? So, for example, I see a lot of this. I see, well, I said what was honest, I said how I felt, but they responded poorly. And I'm like, well, hold on a second. Um, you're pretending as if your honesty was gonna have no impact, right? To your point, it made you feel better.

It made you feel better, but you're pretending like that there was gonna be no consequence to what you just said. Yeah, and I see this all the time. I see this like in, you know, marriages and stuff where, where I, I see people going back and forth and they're like, well, you know, he or she doesn't understand, doesn't understand me. I was like, it's because you haven't listened to them whatsoever. Or you've just been shitty.

And, and I always think about, and I ask people, I say, if you were them, how would you be processing that situation? Time and time again, they're like, I have no idea. Yeah. I'm like, I like boom. Probably you exercise zero. Empathy. I'm the opposite. Like, I process every situation by how the other person processes it. Like that's, that is my first instinct on everything. And, and that's not always the right way to approach either. My, my wife will tell me, I'll, I'll come home and she's like.

You should have said something different. Right? I was like, ah, I would, I'd hurt their feelings or whatever. And she's like, yeah, but you didn't get your point across. I'm like, yeah, that's fair.

Yeah. But again, that's, that's the, I think we've gotten so used to self-edit editing. Mm-hmm. Um, again, it's that, that 96% of the time, or 94% of the time where, you know, we are, we are not saying exactly what's on our mind, and we are, we're constantly considering the audience, and we've talked about this in a number of different ways, but I, I keep seeing it come back to the forefront, which is that, especially early on.

Founders are constantly in pitch mode that it's easy to lose sight of the, the fact that we are kind of constantly editing, constantly worrying about the reactions to things, and it can go, it can go way too far, right? Like if you, if you're a hundred percent edited all the time, probably an ingredient we forgot to list into our recipe for epic burnout a couple weeks ago. But it's definitely, yeah, it can go the other direction too.

For a lot of people, it's hard to express how they feel or, or you know, they don't have the confidence to express, like I have the confidence to express it, but I also have the filter to be able to say, what is the cost of that expression? Yeah, right. Somebody's behind on a deadline, I'm just making some up. Somebody's behind on a deadline and I just run the calculus. I say, is my reaction proportionate to how this will affect the outcome?

Right. In other words, if I blow up, but we've already missed the deadline, what am I really achieving? Yeah. What's happening, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like, I'll feel better, but like, I haven't fixed the problem. And a lot of people don't have, don't even have that, that calculus. Right? They're just like, I'll feel better. That's, that's, that's it. Yeah. So I think that's, that's important.

Right? I think if we, if we zoom out a little bit, what, what you just said, if I pair it back to you, it's something like, these are kinda like the, the filter checks a against the 6% time, right? Should I be honest? It would be something like what are the stakes, right? Is this a values or a character moment, right? Is there enough on the line that honesty really, really matters here, right? Who's the audience? Can they carry the weight of the honesty? 'cause we have to consider that too.

And then finally, the outcome, right? And will, we'll, saying this with honesty to this particular audience actually have a measurable positive impact or will blowing up just dishearten them even more. Knowing that we still have to go fix whatever we screwed up, right? Right. We missed the deadline. Now I'm gonna completely demotivate my team by, by harping about it and the deadline's gonna stretch even further. Right?

So I think this is one of those things where like having a little bit of a framework, even just a quick mental model where you can jump through that and say like, is it time? Is this, is this a 6% moment? And the answer's 94% of the time? No. But I think you do need some way of measuring it.

I think you'll appreciate this as a child of the eighties, every single time this moment comes up. I revert back to Arnold Schwartzenegger in Terminator. There's this scene where he, I, you know, you know what it is, right? And, and people are listening. They, they've gotta know what this is. Uh, yep. Where Schwartzenegger, the Terminator is sitting like in this derelict department and like, you know, the, the landlord knocks on the door and he's like, are you coming home?

And the one of the best movie moments, he turns his head and they cut to what the Terminator is seeing. Right? Yes. So they cut the terminator, it's like a terminal view, and it shows like six possible responses. Uhhuh, right? And it's like, yes, no, please come back later. And then the bottom one is, fuck you, asshole. Right? He just cursors down to that one. Right. And goes with that. Yeah. And I always think about that moment.

Yeah. When this kind of situation comes and like all of a sudden my terminal pops up and I have five possible responses. Right. I never get to choose. Fuck you asshole, by the way. Yeah. Look, I think when you're Arnold Schwartzenegger as the Terminator, I think you probably shift to at least like a 64. You can be honest, pretty much most of the time, not all the time, but most of the time, am I returning to an Android from the future? Uh, my, my decision tree will be different.

But I always think about that moment, whereas like, okay, all of these choose your own adventure answers to what just happened. All have like, you know, consequences attached to 'em. And I just basically do a sort and I say, which one has the, the, uh, least likely consequence or the most beneficial consequence? And, and again, and by the way, like there's, uh, actually no, we have some folks that are actual therapists in our audience and they'll say, will you do not wanna do that?

You're sacrificing a lot of your own wellbeing, you know, for the situation, et cetera. Welcome to the founder Life, baby. Yeah. Like, I'm kind of willing to, but it's been interesting because when I look back at, you know, just a million moments where I've had that decision tree, I don't look back at a moment or very rarely where I say to myself, I wish I had been more, more authentic. Now when I say that, it's because I was probably too authentic and it bit me in the ass. Right.

Like in other words, like I almost go the other. If you have authentic on one side where you just say whatever the fuck you want, you have diplomatic on the other where you just give like the most party line answer you possibly could. Yeah. I wish in more of those occasions I had gone more diplomatic than authentic, even with that filter, because again, my default is kind of to say what's on my mind, you. Uh, lived with me for a long time.

Yes. You know, that, and, and I kind of wish I'd gone the other way. And over time I'm starting to try to like push my, my dial toward that more diplomatic side and just be like, look what I have to say. Uh, what, what authentic response I have probably isn't the right response. And frankly, no one wants to hear it. That's the thing, man. You start to realize like my, my inside voice, my inner voice needs an NDA, right? Like, it, it, it has to have some filtration.

It's funny, man, I get, I get the comment. I'm sure you get this too, because we, we do deliver a lot of hard truths to founders. Yeah, we do. And once a week-ish, I hear somebody say, you know what I like about you? Just give it to me straight. There's no filter, there's no bullshit. And inside I'm thinking, oh, if only you knew, right? If you turn that filter off, you, you would hang up the phone immediately. Give an unvarnished version of my opinion there. I, I definitely dialed it up a bit.

I put a little grit in the sand, uh, or a little grit, more grit on the sandpaper. But like, that was not as rough as that could have been. But because people don't want it, right? Yes, they want honest feedback, but they don't wanna be punched in the face with it. They don't wanna be made to feel badly because of it. Um, you know, I think somebody said something along the lines of once it was draft in rage, ship in revision. Right. Which I thought was hysterical. Right.

And, and, and it's, it's perfect for me because I do have a temper. Right? I do, I do emotionally react to stuff. Right. It part of what I like about me in a lot of ways, like I'm, because it's, I react. Emotionally happy as well. It's not always just like I'm pissed, right? I, I'm, I'm a very ragey bear and so for me, I, I loved the idea that it's like I don't have to just shut that emotion down. Again, I can be that person, right?

I just can't unfiltered share that version with the person who's gonna receive that communication because it's not gonna land well. Right? Uh, unfiltered for coffee time, not, not for your corporate communications. This happened to me yesterday and I slipped and I said what I actually meant. And it was hilarious how badly it went that I had to recover immediately. Wait, dude, are you talking about when you said nice job on that, Ryan? I'm looking at it right now. In the Slack channel?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, erase. I, I was talking to a founder and we're reviewing a pitch deck and they said, okay, so current version I've got, which they spent a lot of time on, how would you rank it? And I said, well, on a scale of one to 10, I would give it a solid negative 10. Oh, now, now, now that's actually how I felt. Right? You were like, option five. Fuck you asshole. Exactly. Fuck you asshole. Soon as I said it, and I was kidding, but I was honest, right?

Like I like, and I was laughing when I said it. And were they No silent? Yeah. Just went like dead silent. They did not, I was like, whoa, shit. And I said, I'm kidding. It's probably a five. And that, that also wasn't like, that was me recovering. And that also wasn't the number they were looking for the, the, and I thought it was like a seven or eight and I had to spend all the rest of the time trying to explain why I was giving the, the grade that it did.

But it was funny that like I mistakenly was honest, right? Yeah. Like that founder, there was nothing gained by me saying it's a negative 10. And, and again, I was kidding when I said it, but it, it was a negative 10, right? It was a negative 10. As in you have to rewrite the whole goddamn thing. Yeah. There's a lot. There's nothing salvageable here.

Now, I would normally never say that to a founder, but I'm going back to what you said a moment ago, which is the founder wants me to be, you know, uh, uh, the hard truth get, get. They don't, no one wants that. Right. They wanna believe they're getting the hard truth, but they don't actually want the hard truth. It's you when you walk into an authentic Thai restaurant and you're like, I like spicy food. And they're like, do you really? And you're like, I think I do.

You're like your version of spicy food, right? Yeah. Yeah. So net of it, uh, I had to recover. But again, this is, this is something small and I, I always say that if I had to. Say everything that was on my mind, I took that, you know, five option filter off. Yeah. Yeah. And I could just say exactly how I felt about things. I would have no friends by the end of the week. That's not because I'm repressing these things, or I have all these evil thoughts. Yeah, yeah.

It's because there is a certain diplomacy with delivering any kind of message, right. When someone says, how do I look? And you say, you look like hell, you've actually looked better. You've gained a lot of weight, blah, blah. Like no one wants to hear. That is Yes, that's absolutely true. No one wants to hear that. Right. That's why I don't comment on Facebook. Yeah. I mean, what they wanna hear is that's, that's a great shirt, right? Yeah. Or whatever, right?

Like no one says, how do I look as in please berate me. Yeah. That's, I dunno where that question comes from. Anyway. I think where, where this gets interesting is we all have to look inward, right? We all have to look inward and, and say, how much of my authenticity is a benefit? And I, I think what you're gonna find, Ryan, is not that much, I can't think of a lot of cases where like, I wish that person when they said something shitty was even more shitty. You know what I mean?

Like, I, I don't see it. Yeah. I, I don't either.

Generally speaking, I think there's a, there's another little litmus test that I do around, like the channel I'm using to communicate, right? Yeah. Is it hot, warm, or cold? Oh, good point. Yeah. So hot, like one-on-one. We're live, we're we're sitting in the same room or we're on a video call or something. This is where I can, I can use it, you know, some, a bit of honesty. For, for emotion or, or for correction. Uh, if it's needed, if it's a warm environment. Right. Like team meet.

Like our, our, our biweekly meeting. I think a little honesty there for direction and for context, right? I think people always love a little bit of the, you know, when, when we're making big, sweeping product changes and we give a little bit of the why behind that, it makes people feel like, okay, there, there's some reason for this. Like there's a little bit of more and more audience, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then if it's cold like Slack or email.

There's gonna be very little of that honesty because Yep. Without the context, without that ability to kind of see what's behind, like short of, you know, stacking up some emojis so that people can be very clear exactly what I'm trying to convey there. That can just be so misconstrued. And so I think that for me, I'm always. Really thinking about like, based on the medium where I'm gonna share this information, how open to misinterpretation? Is it the story you were telling?

How quickly can I course correct? Right. How, how can I recover because find if I, you know, etch this into a plaque and then staple it to the front of our, our business, right? Like our, our motto. Yeah. Right. Uh, money first customers will always be there. Right. That's probably not a great thing because I can't change that. I don't get to choose how people react to it. Right. But if I say something in a meeting and I can see someone's reaction.

And I can go, Ooh, that didn't land quite like, like I thought it would. A little too honest. We've got some ability to to recover. So I think that's an important consideration too.

I think the real lesson for a lot of folks, and I think what you and I have learned over time, over decades of kind of trying to practice this diplomacy, is our job isn't to be the real self, authentic self. That's actually not our job. No. That may be who we wanna be as people, but our job has a consequence, a consequence that we have to take very seriously.

And that consequence is what we're managing toward when we show up and, and we're that that person that is the CEO, the founder, the leader or whatever that person has to have. Consequence in mind. And, and with that outcome in mind, every single thing out of your mouth should be what will maximize outcome? What will maximize outcome? My authenticity, my true self comes second to consequence, comes second to outcome.

And at which point you realize that outcome is actually what, what you're moving toward, then that real self probably applies 6% of the time. And that's just fine so long as the outcome is there. Who you are matches perfectly. Overthinking your startup because you're going it alone. You don't have to, and honestly, you shouldn't because instead, you can learn directly from peers who've been in your shoes.

Connect with bootstrap founders and the advisors helping them win in the startups.com community. Check out the startups.com community@www.startups.com to see if it's for you. Could be just the thing you need. I hope to see you inside.