One of the best thing about my business is that it gave me the opportunity to travel all over the world and meet some great people. And no matter how nice, many that get to know me eventually say something that pisses me off to no end:
“Vlad, How can you get along with $X, s/he is such a prick / dick / asshole / jerkoff”
(for the sake of brevity, let’s just call this person Bob)
The short answer to the above is that most people are really, really nice to me.
The slightly longer answer is that my definition of “nice” is probably slightly different than bullshit and butterflies fake personality people often project in business.
The even more elaborate answer is that any person that has become even moderately successful in business has had to put up with a ton of assholes, deal with a lot of “nice” people disappointing them, has heard the same excuses for failure a million times that they don’t even acknowledge the rerun sob story when they hear it, etc. So you could say that on a level I see eye to eye with my asshole brotherin’. But there is more.
On Likeness In Business
These are overwhelming generalizations. I apologize. Not really, but take it with a grain of salt. Deep breath:
Saints: Lot’s of really outwardly nice people, even to the point that they consider scripture their daily hobby, have actually turned out to be the biggest pieces of shit I have ever encountered.
Politician: Lot’s of people that say little or are rarely available are obsessed with managing their personal brand. You know em – never more than one drink at the party but live on LinkedIn.
Online BFFs: Never form your opinion of someone as you see them act on Facebook. The guy that’s always there commenting when you’re visiting his place but you never see or never see pick up a friggin check? He looks great on FB but people in real life are much less accomodating – I’ve driven people across the state, helped bail folks out, I’ve had people take a day off work to take me / my kid to a zoo 2 hours away from town or pick me up from an airport and treat me for a three day tour of Yorkshire. Appearances are deceiving and the more someone comes off managed the less genuine they actually are.
What really gets me is how quickly people form opinions and likeness based on really superficial and limited information. And as usual, it’s the scumbags that are leveraging it to their advantage. But what does the likeness get you?
Personally, it’s better to be Bob. Bobby is an asshole – great. Nobody is calling him for help installing Exchange service packs a decade after it came out. Nobody is calling him for a loan. Nobody is wardialing at 2AM to cry about how mean people are to them online.
The choice is yours: You can either become obsessed with building up a buddy personality online and hope nobody sees through it (in my experience: they do; quickly; to the point that they have to disappear) until you make it.. but then, really, life is much better when people are afraid that you’re going to write a blog post about their shit. is it better to be fake nice or fake Bobby? Make your choice wisely.
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