A short spoken piece contrasting building genuine relationship capital with using manipulation to gain advantage. The speaker reflects on their past tendency to form transactional relationships, criticizes the use of celebrity appearances and pay-to-play speaking engagements as manipulative, and expresses a preference for featuring hardworking, value-adding people instead of famous influencers.
I was thinking about relationship capital versus manipulation capital. I used to be this guy. Once in a while there's a manipulation relationship. I was what can I do for them so I can get something from them? But some people, they're doing events and they're going to have a celebrity up here. You guys are going to get excited. So just because it's a celebrity and they have 12 million followers on whatever they're like, they must be doing something that I'm not doing. I must be missing out. They must be smarter. No, they just ask for 100 grand to speak on stage so they can be cooler and get more followers and do these things. That's a manipulation play. I don't want to bring people that are famous. I don't want to bring people that you guys would know. I want to bring good, hard working people. We need to grow what we're trying to grow.
