FBC – 31 – Intellectual Integrity…& I had a very bad day

Today we are going to explore how to make sure to keep your Intellectual integrity in everything you do. Integrity is a key factor in building a tribe of like-minded who trust you…

I wanted to talk to you about integrity. So what do I mean by integrity?

I wanted to tell you about intellectual integrity. So I think I will tell you a story more than giving you like some like facts or something. Then you’ll understand what I mean by integrity.

So I never told you guys this but I was working in a very specialized environment at some point OK. And there were maybe like 50 people on the planet at the time when I started, that were doing that full time and I knew exactly what we were talking about. OK. So I was working in e-mail marketing companies and we were taking care of huge brands e-mails campaigns.

So my job was to make sure that when people send e-mails, then the e-mails are delivered and it's called deliverability. I was in there you know back in the days. It was like two thousand and six or something. So when I joined the first company, I was told “yeah tell people that affiliation is the devil. We don't work with affiliates and affiliation you kills people or something out there, like if you're an affiliate then they will you know take you seriously”.

And so when I got there I was brand new in the business right. And I had no idea why. So I asked them why. And people's typical response was “Yeah well that's how it is in a lot of companies”. So I had to tell my clients that affiliation is bad. So I did. Right. I didn't know why but I did.

But I have this like integrity in me of you know of advising people to do something. I need to give them educated advice, right? It's not solely based on what other people said. I need to know the ins and outs and inform my own opinion on it before I can advise people on something.  And at that point I was like “You know what. I've been telling people for like a year or something that this is bad but I've never actually tried. I don't even know what it is”.

So I decided to test it for myself to understand why it was that bad and how bad it was. Just so I could tell my clients. And I started looking into affiliation and the more I looked into it the better it looked!

So that is the intellectual integrity is this is you what I advise you to do is whatever your business is your product or your service you need to. You need your own experience of the product or service before you try to sell it to someone or advise anybody to use it. So in the beginning I was guilty of not doing this. I was just repeating what someone told me the affiliations were the devil and I had never tested it.

And you don't want to do that because otherwise you have to pretend and you basically have to lie. You have no idea of the ins and outs of things. And if you're asked the question then you're unable to answer it. You know where as after you've done it yourself, you've lived it and you've studied it then you can answer any question and this is like genuine feedback that you're giving people. It’s life experience of that product or service.

Intellectual Integrity

And there is one other thing that I have that I learned is that when you lie you know the problem with lying is that you will have to remember what you said 20 years from now. And trust me it's a big problem. So I decided to go with the truth because the truth is going to stay the same. Try to always have this integrity of talking about something you have tested so that you can actually provide value to your audience. All right. And so yeah so the two main lessons that I think you should take out of this podcast is:

Only give advice to people on something you have tested and you have experienced yourself.

Don't disregard something just for spite or just because of what someone told you. Go form your own opinion.