This episode of the My First Million podcast features hosts Sam Parr and Shaan Puri discussing the nuances of business ethics and the fine line between persuasion and manipulation. They share personal anecdotes and a framework for evaluating whether business tactics are ethical based on the user’s underlying intentions.
Topics: Business Ethics, Entrepreneurship, Persuasion, Marketing, Leadership, Integrity
Defining Business Ethics [00:11]
Shaan Puri: I’m curious, um, do you think we are low ethics? Do you think you have a sort of a looser ethical, um, criteria than most people for business?
Sam Parr: I think that we have a looser, um, attitude. Yes, but I think it it it’s significantly above the line of like good. Like, Right. Like, for example, most people are like, “I can’t pre-sell a product that I don’t have.” And I’m like, in my head, I’m like, “Who cares? Just refund the people.” And like, you haven’t, it’s not like I’m not saying steal money. I’m saying advertise something that doesn’t exist so you can get demand and prove demand, and then you refund the money. You don’t, I’m not saying you steal from them, but yeah, you are lying. And so I think that’s ethical.
Shaan Puri: Right. Yeah, I think we definitely have a a looser definition than the average person, I would say, the average, um, maybe the average business person even. Um, but there is, you know, I think the the the problem here is there’s no standard, right? There’s no there’s no definition for what what’s ethical, what’s not. It’s completely subjective and judgmental. Um, and so the the the hard part is, you know, for us, we think there’s a line between right and wrong, and we’re on the right side. We we we think we have a safe margin of of buffer where we’re in the right. Uh, but for other people, their line might be in a different spot.
The “Intent” Framework [01:28]
Sam Parr: Yeah, but that’s because most people aren’t aggressive. But anything that I do, I would I would suggest to my mom that she buy whatever I’m promoting or like it’s like, do I want my family to use this or or if I told them about what I’m doing, would I like, do I want to hide this? And I don’t, I’m I’m I’m anything that I do, I’m not afraid uh to tell everyone.
Shaan Puri: So I met this guy once. Um, this guy had reached out to me about uh we were building this product called Blab, and Blab was getting popular. This guy reached out, he said, “Hey, my name’s Billy. I’m from uh, you know, I forget where he’s from, like Santiago or the term Mexico or some somewhere in in LatAm.” And he was like, “I’m coming up to California, um, coming to San Francisco. I want to meet you and I want to talk to you about this company.” And I was like, “Okay, I don’t know, I don’t know about that.” Like, most of the people who that are users of a product are not usually people I want to like do meetings with necessarily. But he said a bunch of stuff in his email that made him sound amazingly legit. He was like, “My family started the first television station in Mexico. Um, we, you know, I own all these different like uh music festivals.” And he sounded he sounded like super legit. But his email was written with blue text font and like different sizes of text and so I was like, “Oh, copy and paste.” Yeah, so so I was, well, well, no, no, no, not like that. Like it was like like he had chose like, “No, I’m going to my emails are blue and not the like copy-paste little purple thing.” It was like, um, this was just his style. So I was like, “I don’t know if this guy’s a joker or not.”
Meeting the “Legit” Contact [02:51]
Shaan Puri: Anyways, we go out to dinner and I have very low hopes. We go to a sushi place and I walk in and I see probably the most handsome guy I’ve ever seen. And this guy, Billy, was extremely well put together. He’s like in a suit and tie, um, he looks legit. He we sit down at the table, he orders the Omakase, which is basically chef’s choice, like $200 each sushi dinner and he’s like, “I got this, don’t worry.” And um, I’m like, “Okay, I’m starting to believe, but I, you know, could be could still be someone who’s faking it.” And he starts telling me a story and this guy is completely legit and he’s probably the most charismatic guy I’ve ever met my whole life. I was like, you know, if if if I swung that way, I’d be in love right now. Like this guy is amazing.
The Golden Rule of Ethics [03:29]
Shaan Puri: So at the end of the dinner, I asked him a question. I said, “Hey, um, you know, you’re a very persuasive guy. Like this was you clearly are good at this, right? You’re clearly very persuasive, very charming.” I said, “I used to think I’m that way till I met you basically. I used to think I was in the sort of top tier of that.” Um, but I always sort of had this hesitation of like, you know, should I use my my powers for good or evil type of thing? Like, where do you draw the line on using this?
Sam Parr: But this guy’s legit. He was a real person.
Shaan Puri: Completely legit, yes. And and so he really was wealthy, very successful, very smart, very charming, all that good stuff. And so, um, I asked him, I said, “You know, what do you think?” He goes, “My rule is this.” He goes, “If your intentions are good, then it’s all fair game.” And so he was like, he was like, “It all the matters is the intent. If you’re trying to scam people, if you’re trying to con people, if you’re trying to not deliver value, if you’re trying to just get something that’s a good situation for you and not for the other person, then you shouldn’t be doing it. What you shouldn’t be using all these powers of persuasion.” He’s like, “But if you think you are genuinely going to help people, if you think you are genuinely in the right, if you think you’re genuinely working for a good cause, if your mission is pure, if your intent is good, then it’s all fair game. You should use it to the max.” And I was like, “All right, Billy. Thank you very much for this uh incredible lesson.”
Sam Parr: I completely agree with him. And if you study, you know, like persuasion and charm and I use it in the form of copywriting, that’s all uh some people are born better, but it’s a teachable skill. And I always tell people like, what I’m going to tell you, it’s going to sound like evil. Like I’m going to teach you how to manipulate people, but make sure you use it for good.
Shaan Puri: Right. Because you can easily use this for bad.