The Value of Honesty

Today, I had a conversation with a friend after a long time.

After we exchanged our initial pleasantries, I told him why I had called. I was looking for his help to get me introduced to a couple of prospective clients he knew well. I also wanted his perspective on growing a young business; something he had done years ago before turning into a serial entrepreneur.

So, he asked me what I was offering, why, how it was different etc. The usual questions one would ask when you have to refer someone. Once he was comfortable with what he heard, he was happy to help in any way he could.

From there, he went to share some of his experiences as an entrepreneur. The early ambitions, the strong, but occasionally misdirected passion, the failed experiments, the difficult yet necessary tradeoffs and finally the unexpected successes. It was years of experience distilled into a spontaneous, freewheeling conversation. So, here’s a fistful of what he shared.

• Be clear about what you want to accomplish and why you think that’s possible. Don’t dream about becoming a large enterprise, if your offering is centered around you.

• Be willing to accept that what you can’t scale will come with strings attached – economic tradeoffs.

• Focus on your market and solving problems for them, AND have a pipeline of alternatives. Your buyers can always surprise you.

• Be willing to accept that your work will not be valued by your customers fairly. Have a clear position about price and stick to it.

• Know when its time to pull the plug on a product that’s only doing free pilots. Your most passionate projects may not have a market and that has nothing to do with how good your product is.

• Nothing ever goes to waste. An idea that didn't work in one space can get repurposed effectively in another space. Keep your mind open.

• Build your personal brand. What you have is easily fungible and people will work with people they trust, especially when things go wrong.

While all of these were great insights, it was the way he ended the conversation that left the most impact on me.

He asked me if he sounded too negative or blunt with any of his observations. I told him he hadn’t. It was refreshing to hear someone speak honestly with a genuine intent to help.

That’s when he pointed out that he’s now made it his mission to be honest with people as very few people are willing to go there.

He was right.

Quite often, we are approached by someone who wants our opinion on something important to them. Our response to them can swing between two extremes.

Let’s start with the really bad response—dumping random criticism without making an effort to understand or improve anything. This comes from trying to prove how smart we are all the time. It doesn’t do anything useful and definitely doesn’t make us look smart.

The other response is to be really nice and sweet.

We notice some obvious shortcomings but hesitate going there because it can get messy. Why stir up something when the conversation is close to completion? So, we say nice things, wish them luck and move on.

You may think there’s nothing wrong with that and you’re probably right. Yet, when we do this, we are implicitly believing two things:

1. Someone else will give them the bad news

2. It’s so obvious they will see it themselves

When we get off the phone call, we don’t consider the possibility that the person may never get to hear what they absolutely must know. And yet, it happens quite a lot and we don’t recognize it.

When you are passionately behind something and it’s not giving you the results you expected, deciding to ‘pull the plug’ on it can be the hardest thing to do. That’s why we need to hear what may already be obvious to us from someone else. It can save a lot of sunk costs and heartbreak.

Knowing what we need to know is also important to build the resilience we need for a fresh start. It gives us the confidence in our own ability to read the signs and adapt better when we come to the same threshold again, with another project.

I’m glad I called my friend today because he showed me what it really means to encourage someone.

So, if someone you care about comes to you with something they care about, the best thing you can do is to be honest with them. Chances are, you may be the only one doing that.