Diane Gardner explains immutable laws, the core values you never break. She shares her personal rule: no dick allowed, meaning no tolerating rudeness or disrespect. When she made a crass joke about her wealth manager Ron Greenberg, the discomfort she felt made her apologize immediately, proving the law actually matters.
In one of my books, I think it was in The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, I talk about immutable laws. Now immutable laws and corporate values are synonymous. The only reason I used immutable laws is I wanted to point out that these are ever constant. They're non-changing. One of my immutable laws personally is no dick allowed is the term I use. And what that means is I'm not going to deal with people who are dickish, rude, take advantage and so forth. And I won't accept that for myself. I've done some dumb things in my life and I've fessed up and apologized. Yeah, that was a dick move. In fact, recently, Ron Greenberg, he's our wealth manager. Yeah. I made a joke to him and this in front of some other guys about Ron, and it wasn't funny, and it was almost like a little bit on the dickish side. The next morning I text him and said, "That's not my value." And I was trying to be funny, and as I reread this, it was kind of like meanish. So I'm like, "I'm really sorry, and I hope that this doesn't compromise our friendship." He's like, "Are you kidding me?" He's like, "That's like what we do." I love that. But I compromised an immutable law of my own. So lesson one here is a value that's so important to you that when you even violate yourself, you start kicking yourself over it, that's a value, an immutable law.
