A short talk (YouTube transcript) in which Simon Sinek argues that humility and honesty—admitting strengths and weaknesses—build trust in consultants and companies. He contrasts boastful self-promotion with candid admissions of limitations and continuous improvement, showing honesty attracts clients and fosters stronger partnerships.
Chapters
Let's play a little game, right? Let's go back to an individual, right? Let's say there's one person who started their own little business, little consultancy, right? Got my shingle out, I'm a consultant, right? And everywhere they go they keep telling you that they're better than everyone else. They keep telling you they're smarter than everyone else. They keep telling you that, you know, the big, the problem with the big companies is they don't have the flexibility. It actually gets to the point of being annoying, to the point that we don't want to actually work with them because we don't believe them, right? Because.
Now let's change the, change the scenario. You meet that same person and they introduce themselves. Look, there's a lot of good consultants out there. Some of them are a lot better than me. But I wake up every single day to be a better version of what I do today than I did yesterday. And I can tell you that the advice I give today is even better than it was yesterday. And the advice I'm going to give tomorrow is even better. Because for me it's an education. And that's why I love working with open minded, wonderful clients who are partners. Because what we end up doing is growing together. Right now that's one person. Think about how appealing that person is. They've actually told you that you may actually get as good or better advice somewhere else. But it's who they are and who they're being in the disposition that they bring that makes them way more trustworthy and us wanting to work with them. And it's the same for big companies. It's got nothing to do with the size of the company, which is, it's called humility and honesty. I remember young in my career, I experienced this myself when I, when I went off and hung my shingle out and I was a little, I had a little marketing company, a little marketing consultancy. I remember going into meetings and the client would say, we want you to do all of this for us. And I'd say I'm really good at that. Pretty good at that, okay at that. Really bad at that. I highly recommend you hire somebody else to do that. And I'm happily partner with them for them to do that. And the clients wanted to work with me more. Not even though I just told them I can't do that, only because I was the only one who was honest. Everybody else they talked to, big or small, told them that they were great at everything, which is just not true. Nobody's great at everything. And so it's amazing when you take the risk, to be honest, it pays dividends in the trust that you build.
