Honesty: A New Paradigm

Speaking at CEO was a success and a lot of fun! Probably 25% of the students had started a business before and most of the rest were extremely interested in starting one. Having conversations with others afterwards was EXTREMELY exciting. I really enjoy talking about passions with other people.

At the conference I had the opportunity to co-present two workshops with John Hughes. John is a 78-year-old, serial entrepreneur and arguably the single largest individual funder of youth entrepreneurship in the world. In 1991, he sold a business for $100 million that he owned 25% of. I respect him the most for his honesty. He has so much money that he doesn't care at all about pleasing other people or being "politically correct". It is very refreshing to hear him talk even if I disagree with some of his points. His candor has played a large role in the development of my style over the past three years.

I tested two different models for the two workshops on the same topic. The first one focused on the successeses. The second one touched on the successes, but was also very forthright about the mistakes and the feelings about them. While both presentations went great, I think the second one went much better as probably 4 times as many people came up to me afterwards. Somebody even tracked me down to say that he had spoken with some other students and they thought I was too hard on myself.

Although it was very challenging to talk about credit card debt or scraping together food or painful mistakes I had made, I think that honesty really disarms people and builds trust. It is amazing how effective this technique is for improving communication.