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Ravens Guide To Leading With Ruthless Integrity - PART 1
This is my guide to leading with ruthless integrity, or at least trying to persuade you to do so. Integrity is a lost art in business and not many founders today actually practice ruthless integrity. The word ruthless is used here on purpose and it's uncommon to see these two words beside each other. I'm here to tell you that you can be ruthless towards taking action and still have total integrity. It means doing whatever it takes to make things right when you inevitably mess up. It means setting aside your ego when the going gets tough.Why do we have to ask for trustworthy mechanics or plumbers?
I’ve always found this to be a weird notion, that an individual or business performing a service may not be completely honest, truthful, or properly skilled in their area of labor. This dishonesty in business is so common, that almost everyone in need of a home service, first asks their network of friends and family “Who can I trust to do this job? Who do you recommend?”. Why the hell do we have to ask if a mechanic is trustworthy? Why is it so common for tradesmen to be conmen? Why as a society do we put up with such low integrity businesses pervading our communities?I’m going to answer these questions with my theories on integrity in business, and tell you what it takes to run a business with ruthless integrity, the direct opposite of no integrity.
What is INTEGRITY?
Before we continue our conversation about how to have integrity in business, we need to define integrity. The widely accepted answer to our question was written by C.S Lewis and he says: “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.”While I think this is a fantastic definition, integrity goes deeper than just doing the right thing, and I think that Brené Brown has a much better definition: “Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; choosing what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy; and choosing to practice our values rather than simply professing them.”
The key thing here that I want to highlight because it’s important to business is “choosing to practice our values rather than simply professing them.” If you want to win in business, it is not enough to just say that you are a business of integrity and trustworthiness. You need to practice your values through solid action instead of just professing to your customers that you have those values.
Low integrity doesn’t just affect small town service businesses, it often graces the front pages of huge publications. Lets take a look at some major cases of low integrity:
Sam Bankman-Fried scamming people in the crypto space, and Elizabeth Holmes scamming investors with a blood testing product that never worked.
You know what these 2 have in common? They’re probably both pieces of shit, and they’re both in prison. There’s a running joke that if you look at the forbes 30 under 30 list you have a pretty good idea of who the nation's largest scammers are. Lets get into the meat of Integrity.
The Integrity Paradox
The chart above gives is a glimpse into the paradox of having no integrity vs having ruthless integrity. On the Y axis (vertical), we have our infinite money earning potential. On the X-axis (horizontal), we have our amount of integrity plotted between 0% and 100%.
Between 0% and 5% integrity, you can make an infinite amount of money, which sounds amazing! This typically encompasses illicit drugs, corporate fraud, enslaving people, payday loans, insurance companies and more. There is absolutely no limit to the amount of money you can make, all while being a piece of shit. Exciting!
Between 10% and 50% integrity you fall into what I call the trough of mediocrity. This is where you find your scammy supplements, bargain bin mass-produced products, shady mechanics, and individuals pushing MLM protein shakes. These aren’t the absolute worst people on earth, but most consumers can generally cut through the bullshit. I want to note that the scale of the Y axis for the sake of our chart is around $10 billion dollars in earnings potential. So within the trough of mediocrity, you can probably make tens of millions of dollars due to the ceiling on your earnings potential.
Between about 75% and 90% integrity you see a massive increase in earnings potential, where the final 10% of our remaining integrity plateaus at about $10 billion. I think that with ruthless integrity, we have an earnings cap of about $10 billion as an individual. This is where the paradox lies, with no integrity, you can make more money than someone with ruthless integrity. In this section of the integrity chart, I don’t have a solid list of industries that have integrity to pull from, but I have a few company examples: Products with lifetime warranties that actually live up to the hype, heavily recommended service businesses by your friends and family, restaurants that have higher than 4 star ratings.
You’ll notice that in the factors that influence products and services section, customer integrity plays a role as well. If you want to have good customers you need to sell products full of integrity, be it in quality or truthful representation of your service claims. By dealing with products of lower value you will ultimately run into more customers with similar levels of low integrity.
"Yeah, well Raven, you’re telling me I don’t have to worry about integrity and can make tens of millions of dollars no matter what I’m doing? Hell, I can make INFINITE money by having no integrity at all! Why would I even need your integrity? It sounds like I’d be limiting myself to have it. I need more than $10 billion dollars!! My dreams are bigger than that!!"
Well, in that case I have to at least inform you of your “ROP”.
Risk of Punishment (”ROP”)
Overlayed on the same earnings potential chart we just saw is the line for your risk of punishment. The Y axis in this case is weighted between 0 - 100%. For the sake of brevity, I’ve bundled all punishment types into your freedoms simply being taken away. This may be your freedom of location (prison). Your freedom of time (death). Your freedom of money (financial forfeiture).
Operating between 0% and 30% integrity gives you a 100% chance of punishment. You will either go to prison, be killed, or all of your money will be taken away from you. It may not happen today, or next year, but it will eventually catch up to you and you are just biding time. Between 30% and 75% your ROP drops down to to about a 30% chance of punishment. This is where you are more likely to enter the zone of pure financial punishment. From time to time though, you still risk going to prison.
From 75% to 100% your chances of punishment drop from 30% to near zero. I say near zero because even if you do every single thing right, the IRS still has a way of inflicting financial punishment on you and that’s just the name of the game. As our ROP line crosses into the shaded blue line area, this is the safe zone. You’re probably not going to have any severe life changing punishments in this area, and any punishments received are generally felt throughout the course of doing good business to the best of your knowledge.
"Yeah but Raven, I’m still pretty set on having as little integrity as possible. Being a good person doesn’t really jive with me and I just want money, no matter the cost. My life sucks right now and having integrity is hard and I just want to live like Dan Bilzerian!", who's also probably going to prison soon.
Hold your horses, I hear you. I haven’t introduced you to the last principle at play: your “COS” - Chance of Success.
Chance of Success ("COS")
Overlayed on our same earnings potential chart is a white line denoting our Chance of Success. Having more integrity significantly increases the chance of you having a homerun business. By having near zero integrity you can peak at about a 15% chance of success. I’ve factored in a chance so small because most people operating at integrity levels this low generally get caught within a few years. You may eventually reach kingpin status in whatever your industry is, but those cards eventually topple. Congrats, you were in the 15% that succeeded! The odds of losing your freedoms are stacked against you.
Between 15% and 65% integrity you’re sitting at a measly 3-5% chance of success. Scammy supplements and courses are a dime a dozen and very few make it through the noise to stratospheric levels of success. Have fun in the drudging through the trough of mediocrity, the very thing you were trying to escape this whole time.
Finally at about 80% - 95% integrity, your COS exponentially increases and begins to go off of the charts. At 95% and above, you will have the absolute best chances of succeeding in your business, creating immense value, and not having to worry about your freedoms being taken away.
It is my belief that if you offer a product or service that is truly needed, and you offer it backed by ironclad integrity, you will succeed. Success may not come within your first few tries, but I assure you it will come with consistent effort and action.
Pillars of Integrity
Personal pillars of integrity: Honesty, Boundaries, Confrontation, and Values.
These are the four core values I think you need to have as a person of ruthless integrity. You need to own up to your mistakes immediately, or tell someone if you're at your limit, which is Honesty. You need to be strong enough to set your Boundaries. When your boundaries are broken you need to have enough personal integrity to confront the person or thing that crossed your boundaries. You then need to uphold your Values and act with the correct response.
Pillars of business integrity: Upholding company values. True employee satisfaction. True customer satisfaction. Ego Displacement.
These are the 4 core values I think you need to be in the business of ruthless integrity. If you profess your values you need to act on them every single day. Your employees need to be truly satisfied with their work, listen to their complaints and fix the root cause of their issues. Pay them good, treat them well! You're going to need true customer satisfaction to have any real traction. The echoes of a productocracy only start happening when your customers start telling their friends about your business. Finally, you need to displace your ego. Sometimes customers or vendors can really piss you off. In times like these it is critical to act in a manner that aligns with your core values as a company. Sometimes you want to smash your competitors and slander them, don't fall for the trap. I myself have a problem with this from time to time and I get so angry that I can't function. Channel that anger into positive customer experiences and your business will flourish.
If I could pin my integrity on the charts, I'd put myself between 90-92%. It's extremely hard to have full integrity all the time because we're human. To make up for the mistakes, you can look at the 4 pillars and take action to fix the things you have done or said. Bad acts can be cancelled out or negotiated. You'll have greater chances of success winning a customer back if you've shown integrity in the past and so it's important to lead with as much integrity as possible in your business.
In part 2 I'm going to go over a case study of one of my favorite brands in the US. It's a story of pure integrity and treating people right. They are so good that they have a lifetime warranty on a consumable product and make many millions of dollars. I'll also go over the real world stats from my business that show just how having integrity can positively affect your business financials. I'll go over strategies you can employ to have more integrity and warn you of the 3 things that cause you to stray away from integrity.
I hope you've enjoyed part 1.
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