In this segment of the My First Million podcast, Sam Parr and a guest discuss the gray area of business ethics, especially around pre‑selling products that don’t yet exist and handling refunds. Parr argues that while many consider such tactics unethical, he views them as permissible as long as the seller does not steal money and ultimately refunds customers. The conversation highlights the lack of universal ethical standards, noting that judgments are often subjective and depend on personal moral lines. Parr emphasizes an intent‑based framework: if the seller’s intentions are genuinely to help and provide value, aggressive persuasion is acceptable; if the motive is to scam or exploit, it is not. This principle is illustrated through an anecdote about a charismatic entrepreneur named Billy, who, despite an ostentatious presentation, shares a rule that “good intent makes any persuasive technique fair game.” The dialogue also touches on personal ethical checks, such as asking whether one would recommend a product to family members, reinforcing the idea that ethical decisions should pass a “mom test.” The segment blends conversational storytelling with practical ethical guidelines for entrepreneurs.
Chapters
He's probably the most charismatic guy I've ever met in my whole life. I was like, 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?
I think that we have a looser, um, attitude, yes. But by the way, I think it's, 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, improve 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.
Right, yeah, I think we definitely have a looser definition than the average person, I would say, the average, maybe the average business person even. But there is, you know, I think the problem here is there's no standards, right? There's no definition for what's ethical, what's not. It's completely subjective and judgmental. And so 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 think we have a safe margin of buffer where we're in the right, but for other people, their line might be in a different spot.
Yeah, but that's because most people aren't aggressive. But anything that I do, 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 if I told them about what I'm doing, would I like, do I wanna hide this?
Right.
And I don't, I'm, Anything that I do, I'm not afraid to tell.
So I met this guy once. This guy had reached out to me about— we're building this product called Blab, and Blab was getting popular. This guy reached out, he said, hey, my name is Billy, I'm from, uh, you know, I forgot where he's from, like Santiago or the term Mexico or some— somewhere in Latin. And he was like, I'm coming up to California, I'm coming to San Francisco, I want to meet you and I want to talk to you about this company. I was like, okay, I don't know, I don't know about that. Like most of the people that are users of a product are not usually people I wanna 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. I own all these different music festivals, and he sounded like super legit, but his email was written with blue text font and different sizes of text, and so I was like, oh God.
Oh, copy and paste.
Yeah, so I was, well, no, no, no, not like that. He had chose, like, no, I'm gonna, my emails are blue, and not the copy-paste little purple thing. It was like, this was just his style, so I was like, I don't know if this guy's a joker or not. 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 in a suit and tie, he looks legit. We sit down at the table, he orders the omakase, which is basically chef's choice, $200 each sushi dinner, and he's like, I got this, don't worry. And I'm like, okay, I'm starting to believe, but could still be someone who's faking it. And he starts telling me a story, and this guy's completely legit, and he's probably the most charismatic guy I've ever met in my whole life. I was like, if I swung that way, I'd be in love right now. This guy is amazing. So at the end of the dinner, I asked him a question. I said, hey, you're a very persuasive guy. You clearly are good at this, right? 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, but I always sort of had this hesitation of like, you know, should I use my powers for good or evil type of thing? Like, where do you draw the line on using this?
But this guy's legit? He was a real per—
Completely legit. Yes. And so he really was wealthy, very successful, very smart, very charming, all that good stuff. And so 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, all that 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. You shouldn't be using all these powers of persuasion. But if you think you are genuinely going to help people, if you think you are generally in the right, if you think you're generally 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 incredible lesson.
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— 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. Right, because you can easily use this for bad.
