Don't let people OWN you!

A speaker reflects on staying authentic in interviews and media without compromising personal values to please guests or audiences. Growing a platform means being genuine rather than conforming to others' expectations.
Chapters
You know how you got a certain guest that you want to interview? Okay. And you have your list of guests you want to interview, okay? So what do you do? These guests you want to have, you have to protect them. You can't say bad things about them. So you have to almost match the values they got, because if you don't, they may not come on your show and all this other stuff, and then, you know, maybe this happens. Maybe that happens. Maybe this happens. But what are you doing? It's not a real show. Then they own you. I don't want to be owned. I want to be fair. I want to tell you how I live. This is what I stand for, bro. If you don't like it, totally understand. Sometimes I don't like myself. I don't blame you. But at the same time, if you want to have a real conversation with a guy that's not going to fake it and just going to talk to you like a brother, and he's still going to give you love, and he's going to give you opinions that maybe you disagree with, let's sit down and have the conversation. If that's not what you like, I'm not your cup of tea. And I'm okay, by the way. The day I made that decision to know. I don't care if I interviewed those guests, we blew up. Really? I swear to God. Wow. We blew up. I'm like, you know what? I don't care. I'm good. Yeah, I'm good. And you may never get those guests, but you'll have other great things, too, by the way. I will end up getting all of them. You know why? Because in the market, when. When you're the biggest in a market, if you're able to prove that you can have real conversations and then that one person who doesn't want to come, 75 people around them say, you have to go there. Then that guy's being pressured by the people that love him to say, you got to go there. Right? That would be the way. By the way, this doesn't mean they're going to be here. But the point is, this kind of a position gets the market to say what they're going to say. You got to at least respect. Like, yeah, look at Howard Stern. You think Howard Stern did easy interviews? Like, what do you think Howard does? Eventually, everybody went to Howard, so. And he's caving now a little bit. He's playing a different game now, but he's obviously got all the money. He's playing a different life. But for me when that happened to me, when I no longer cared. I raised tens of millions of dollars. Business blew up. I let everybody around me better. I interviewed better. I got better guests. I got better opportunities. I got everything changed. But you can't be. You can't be a jerk. You can't be arrogant. As long as you're not having that, you'll be forgiven eventually for the values you believe in.
More from Lewis

Secret Service Agent: Your Neutral Face Is Making People Distrust You (Here's How to Fix It)









