These Are Skills Needed To Earn Respect | Q&A with Tom Bilyeu

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Impact Theory Q&A. Today I'm going to be covering the topic of commanding respect. This is going to be an interesting one. I take your guys' questions and I give you feedback here in real-time. So, without further ado, let's learn how to command some respect. Question number one. When dealing with older family members who raised you, how do you go about commanding respect when they have been your parental figure but still don't take you seriously no matter the effort you put into your goals. No matter how much you have achieved, no matter how many times you've proven yourself competent and capable, they still see you as the kid that cannot possibly understand the grown-up world and treat you as an incompetent child no matter your accomplishments. How can you personally move past that and break the older person's identity of you? Is it possible and how? All right, I love this question because it gets to the heart of commanding respect. I actually think the idea of commanding respect is probably the wrong way to think about it. You're really going to be earning respect. You're going to be getting so good at something that you can't be denied. And this is one of those things that I say without judgment. I'm not saying that you're not talented. I'm not saying that you haven't demonstrated competence, but I am saying that if you can be ignored, the only way out of that is to continue to get better, get to the point, show it so many times that it is just self-evident. Now, I'm going to set aside insecurities for a second cuz it's entirely possible that what you're dealing with is their insecurity. But I never want to give up my power and say, "Oh, this is just on them." And if you find yourself doing that, I will say hit the brakes right now because first and foremost, you always want to look at what you could be doing. So, there's two things you could be doing. Upping your game, no matter how good you think you are, you're still being ignored. And so, if we talk about getting so good that they can't ignore you, then we know that we haven't achieved that yet. And then the second thing you can do is move on. And while I know that is brutally difficult to hear, if we're dealing with insecurities, then that may be the only solution. So, first I want to focus the most of our attention on this idea that you really can get so good that they that you can't be ignored. And I think a great example of this is Gary Vaynerchuk. Now, if you guys don't know his story, it's such a cool story of somebody who came up working for their father. Their dad, I'm sure in many ways thought of them the same way that, you know, he was just the kid. And it got to the point where Gary saw an opportunity for him to do something in a completely different part of the business where he could establish himself. So, now it was about an area that his father didn't understand. His father didn't have a expertise, and Gary could show with results point-blank that he was able to do something that his father wasn't. He took their liquor store business from something like $6 million in revenue to, I think, almost $70 million in revenue. I mean, it was extraordinary in a relatively short period of time, just a a few years, if I'm not mistaken. So, that's the kind of thing there's no way, no matter how insecure the other person is, no matter how they may have their own problems emotionally soothing or staying centered or getting their ego out of the way, whatever the things are that they're dealing with. There's no way to look at those numbers and not say, "All right, clearly what he was doing is working." And to me, that is where you have to get. You've got to get to the point where it it would just be absurd to anybody looking at that situation to think that you weren't killing it. And what I've always done in my own life is say, "Hey, I might be outperforming somebody, but if I'm not absolutely, positively dunking on them, burying them with results, leaving them so far behind, 10x, 20x better than the next person, then I need to keep going. I need to focus on me, building my skill set, and really burying people with results time and time again, day in and day out, weeks, months, years of performance." Now, that begs the question. Am I I'm back to part two now. Am I investing this insane amount of energy, which is what it is going to require, a level of energy that other people think is crazy, obsession, mental illness, whatever it is that they think about it. You need to make sure that you're applying that level of energy to the place where it makes sense to apply that energy. Now, I don't know your parents. I don't know if this is a family business. I don't know all of the dynamics at work. And it's impossible for me to say with certainty whether this is a you need to do something or they need to do something. But if you recognize that this is not the area that you want to be putting your energies into, and you have the confidence in your own abilities, then don't be afraid to strike out on your own. And I think that's very important for everybody to have in their back pocket is a memory that in the end, if you really are as good as you think, then you should be able to go and build something new using those same skill set. And if you're afraid to do that, that may be a sign that you're not quite as good as you think. And that's the best news ever, because it means that you're still in control. All right. Question two. How do I command respect from people who are higher up the career ladder than I am, who are patronizing, refuse to acknowledge my achievements? I don't take their negativity on board. I certainly don't need their validation, and and sleep at night, but I would love to turn this around. Previous attempts have made me appear everything from pathetic to arrogant, but it's a challenge I want to win and I'm intrigued as to how this would be answered. Okay, this is my life. This is the exact thing that I went through. So, in the beginning of my business career, first of all, I knew nothing. So, people were right to question me why I was there, what the value I was offering. And I remember in the beginning, this was back at a technology company, uh when I first started, I was hired as a copywriter with by the guys who would later become my partners, but at the time I was just an employee. And people were asking, "Who's the kid in the server room?" I was the youngest person in the company. Nobody took me seriously. I was working in an office where everybody had floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the Pacific Ocean. It was absolutely stunning, except for me. And I was put in the server room, which is the sort of business equivalent of Harry Potter living under the stairs. I didn't have any windows. I remember being so embarrassed bringing my wife to the office because there were no windows. I didn't even have like a proper desk. I just sat in a room full of the servers that were running the technology that we were building. And I thought, "Okay, nobody takes me seriously." I remember one guy, we ended up letting him go, and he was so pissed that I was in the room uh during his termination. And so, there was a lot of sort of pressure against me. People thought that um rightly so, by the way, in the beginning, that I didn't know what I was doing. And it took so much time and energy to grow and get to the point where I was adding enough value that I couldn't be denied. And that took me years. But I put in that work. I picked the things that I wanted to get good at. I put in an inhuman amount of effort. I'm talking working to the point where my wife only had to pull me aside and say, "You're now damaging the marriage. You are working so much." So, I recognized that what this was was a game of skill set. And if a normal person was going to be convinced of my skills, um you know, say at point C, these guys weren't going to be impressed by my skills until point Q, fine. I'm aiming for point Z. And I'm going to go that hard. I'm not going to ask permission. I'm going to really try to add value. I'm not going to see this as antagonistic. I'm not going to take anything on. I'm not going to see like, you know, [ __ ] them and I'm just trying to beat and crush them. What I wanted to do was get so good that I could deliver so much results, tangible results for the company that people would want me on their team and that more and more people would covet to have me help them, that I would reach out to people and try to add value to them, even if it wasn't my job, and just see what are the things that I can do to help. And by adopting that attitude, knowing that as I was helping people, I was getting better. I was becoming more valuable. I was taking things on myself. I was trying to look beyond my job description. I was just trying to get so freakishly good that one, I could go anywhere if I wanted to. I didn't have to stay in that company. Two, if I'm honest, at that point what I was trying to do was earn equity in the company. So, for 5 years I didn't ask for a raise. I just put my head down and all I wanted to do was become a partner. And I was just learning and learning and learning and learning. And if somebody made fun of me, dunked on me, um, yelled at me, whatever, I just [ __ ] self-soothed. That was the big thing was I realized one of my superpowers was I could self-soothe faster than anybody else. I could focus on skill acquisition and I tied my identity entirely, my entire ego, all of my pride was around getting better. And by focusing relentlessly on skills, not worrying about other people, in fact trying to help them, take on way more than my job description, put time in nights, weekends to learn a skill set that I knew would be valuable to the company, and I wasn't even asking for anything in exchange. I just wanted to prove that I could get so good that they were better off offering me a piece of the company than losing me to somebody else. And that like that's that thing it's become so frowned on in this culture to work more than you're being compensated for. And I'm telling you right now, if you really want an extraordinary life, trying to optimize for your dollars in the short term is a losing proposition. You want to over-deliver consistently at a freakish level. And then, when you've done that, then you can make real demands, demands that will change your net worth forever. That's commanding respect. All right. Question three. I have practiced many times my body language and the things I want to say as well as the manner I should have. However, when the moment comes and I'm confronted by the person I need to have the conversation with, my facade kind of fades and I slip back into my normal self and eventually I completely lose the respect instead of getting it. Are there any tricks or tips for keeping it together specifically when the anticipated moment of demanding respect by a specific person who did you wrong in the past arrives? Oh my god. Okay. This is fire. First of all, thank you for being vulnerable and sharing that. I think that's incredibly powerful. Now, in your question, you're revealing the problem that is haunting you. So, respect comes from competence. Whether it's your own self, respecting yourself, doing something you think is worthy, getting good at something that is valuable, that's how you get somebody else's respect. You don't get respect by saying, "You should treat me this way." And respect cannot be given, it must be earned. And I remember hearing that at the beginning of my career and thinking, "Fuck, man. Like I can't just go to somebody and say, 'Hey, don't be a dick. Like you need to treat me better.'" And that got me nowhere. It makes you look weak. Like you said, I mean, you literally put in the question where uh my facade kind of fades and I slip back into my normal self and eventually I completely lose the respect instead of getting it. Okay? This is a game of confidence. To be confident, you must actually be good at something. I'm sure you've heard the phrase that confidence comes from competence, okay? The same with respect. If you want to get that respect, you actually have to get good at something. If you want to get that respect, you actually have to respect yourself. You want Oh, god, there's a great story. So, I interviewed um Matthew McConaughey. Watch the episode. First of all, it's fire. That dude's amazing. But he, in his book Greenlights, he talks about how he came to Hollywood and first he was discovered in Texas. Now, why was he discovered in Texas? Because he had swagger. He had that it factor. He didn't give a [ __ ] He didn't want people's approval. He wasn't asking for anything. He wasn't coming to the world with his hand out. This is so critical. This was a turning point in my life. Don't come to the world with your hand out. Don't act like the world owes you anything. The people that are disrespecting you don't owe you [ __ ] and you shouldn't want anything from them. You shouldn't be thinking about them. You should be thinking about becoming a beast that cannot be stopped because you have a set of skills that lets you do something other people can't do. My favorite one of my favorite quotes all time, certainly my favorite Kobe Bryant quote, "Boos don't block dunks." If you get so good at something that people can't stop you. They can't stop you. Think about being on a basketball court. The other team, they are paying their players millions of dollars to stop somebody from putting a ball into the hoop. But you can actually get so good that they cannot stop you from doing it no matter how hard they try. Life is like that. You actually, okay, remember skills have utility. So you can actually get so good at something. Your skill set is so superior to other people, your competitors, the other people in your work environment, whoever, that even though they want to stop you, they can't. Because you've just gotten that much better than they are. Now, back to Matthew McConaughey. Goes to Hollywood. They picked him out of obscurity because he had swagger. He goes there and all of a sudden he loses that swagger. And before his agent, I guess, would let him go to his first audition, he said, "No, no, no. I can I can see that you've got your hand out now, that you want something from this town." So he sent him on like a two-month motorcycle journey across Europe or some crazy [ __ ] like that. And he said, "When you're ready and you no longer want anything from this town and you can just walk in, be you, totally unapologetically, then we'll start sending you out on auditions." He did it, he comes back, he's got his swagger, he sends him in and obviously the rest is history. Man, that that [ __ ] is hard. And I know that people want an easier path forward, but the reality is you have to get so good you can dunk on even the people trying to stop you. That's just the truth. And when you do that and you're no longer wanting other people's respect, you don't care about that, all you're doing is investing in skill set, then it will pay off. All of a sudden people will respect you. And by the way, be kind to people. Extend that respect to those that have earned it, of course, but don't be cold or cruel even when people are being that way to you. I just can't can't tell you how much that will pay off in the end. All right. That's the key. Get that swagger. This video was brought to you by our very own Impact Theory University. For more information, be sure to check out the description below. Question four. Hello. I would like to know what kind of things one should do in order to command respect. How should one handle situations to receive people's respect? What body language commands respect? Can respect and kindness go together? If so, how to find a good balance? I have noticed that when I'm too nice, I don't receive respect. However, when a mean side comes out, people show respect. Oh my god. I need to shout out Patty. Patty, you pick fire questions. These are amazing. All right, I want to um zoom in on a part of this question. So, it is absolute [ __ ] that being nice causes people not to respect you and that being mean gets you respect. What being mean will do is get you a change in behavior and you can display dominance by being aggressive or by being mean and I'm not saying there's not a time to um display dominance. There is. That's a whole We'll do a whole episode on dominance, Patty. But, kindness is how you build teams, connection, wanting other people to win, celebrating other people, lifting them up. I can think of few ways to get people's It's not respect. I can think of few ways to get people to want you on their team that are more effective than helping, celebrating, cheering for them, being kind. This sounds stupid, but I have yet to find a better way to say this, filling your heart with love. Like you go into a situation and you just want the people around you to win. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't show up every day like the hardest core [ __ ] there is, playing to win, being ultra intense, setting a standard, and expecting people that want to draft on you to play at that same level, but you should be able to have maybe even more kindness for the person that's struggling to do that. The person that is maybe paralyzed or overwhelmed, that even as you're going that hardcore, that people can see that you actually care about humans, that it isn't just who's got something that they can do for me, who's going to be able to lift me up and help my project, but you're looking for ways to help other people. You're going out of your way to be kind to people. That stuff is worth its weight in gold, but you're never going to get people's respect until you're actually good. So, now imagine being the best on the team and being kind to the worst player. That's probably not the right way to think about it. I'm going to tease two ideas out. I think you do need to hold the worst player accountable. But, John Wooden, one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time, said that he would judge people when he was scouting a high school player, that there were times where he would intentionally have like um the janitor or the water boy or something spill water around a player he was recruiting, cuz he wanted to see how they would react. And if they were a jerk to that person, he wouldn't bring them on the team, because he knew it's not just about finding the best players, it's about finding people that can work together, finding ways to create harmony. Let's talk about Michael Jordan. Phil Jackson said that until he helped Michael become a leader, they didn't win championships, cuz Michael was so antagonistic. And look, Michael was hard on people his whole career, don't get me wrong. But he said he had to help Michael understand that he had to play as a team. That this couldn't be just about Jordan. And now if you look at the things that Jordan talks about, he always credits the team, the team, the team. I was a part of a winning team. And he'll rattle off the players by name. And if you read 11 Rings by Phil Jackson, he talks about that transition that Jordan went through. And that to me is extraordinarily telling of greatness. That you get yourself good, extraordinary, to the point where people can rely on you. You're you're really pursuing greatness. You're pushing other people to achieve greatness. But you're not doing it at the expense of kindness. And so when I'm being aggressive, and there is no question. I think my team will be the first to tell you that I can be very aggressive. My aggression always comes out in two forms. One, what's our goal and are we actually doing the things we need to do to achieve it? And then two, we have a culture. And the culture at Impact Theory is designed to help us achieve our goals. You can't work at Impact Theory unless you buy into the culture. And I would expect people to hold me accountable to that culture as quickly as I hold them accountable. But let me tell you, I show up every day leading because I'm the right person to lead, not because I'm the CEO. And because I approach it like that, because I'm trying to outwork everybody. Because I'm trying to have in my area a deeper skill set than anybody. And then I'm showing kindness, generosity of spirit. It just it creates camaraderie and it allows you to create momentum. Momentum is definitely a whole 'nother um episode unto itself. But that's the thing you want to bring together. I always tell people I'm looking for three things. Grand ambition, the drive to see that ambition through, and compassion. Normally you see drive and ambition paired up with competitiveness, but I actually want people that can elevate other people. And I think that's a huge part of this. All right. Question five. How do you command respect from people who have either seen you in low places and do not respect you, or people who have been free with their disrespect for you in the past? How can you command respect from them in your current reality? All right, I want to talk about being low. I think that's a really interesting part of this. So, one, I can't uh I can't rule out that you may be in a toxic environment. So, let's just say if you're in a toxic environment, that's a real thing. You want to get out of that toxic environment, you want to move on to something else. Like, that just trying to change a whole organization if they are toxic is not interesting to me in the slightest. Now, toxicity comes from insecurity, so if that helps, it actually does help me to know that when people are mean-spirited, when they like to see other people fail, it's all coming from their own insecurities. Um I find tremendous emotional relief in that. Uh Now, I want to talk about being low. In a non-toxic environment, while I don't think anybody races to have others witness them at their worst, we've all been there. We are all deeply flawed emotional creatures. And showing vulnerability should never be frowned on. For you. Forget how people are reacting, right? So, there is wallowing, and that isn't interesting. Shouldn't be interesting to you in yourself or in others, there is wanting sympathy instead of empathy. So, sympathy is feel bad for me. You should never want that. Empathy is understand where I'm at. Being seen is rad. And my wife and I have an agreement. I don't want sympathy from her, no matter how hard my life gets. Empathy desperately. And the way that we've always explained it to each other is, if I'm ever knocked to my knees, I don't want you to get on your knees with me and cry. I want you to extend a hand, tell me how much you love me, pick me back up, brush me off, and remind me of who I can become. That's rad. So, I'm not worried if she sees me low. I'm not worried if my team sees me fail. Um I think all of us, if you're really going for something extraordinary, I think all of us are going to fail at least as much as we succeed, maybe more. And so, fearing the low moments is not the right way to think about it. Recontextualize that failure as a learning opportunity. Earn people's respect, not command it. Earn people's respect by getting back up on your feet. Not asking people to feel bad for you. Focusing on the learning opportunity. Show that you have a growth mindset. Get your ego out of the way. Focus entirely on getting better. And if you rebound quickly with energy and enthusiasm, even if some people take the opportunity to kick you while you're down, in the long run, people will gravitate towards you because they see that you're real. You're not posing. They see that you bounce back, that you don't whine, wallow, complain. You get up, you're focused on improvement and moving forward. And look, the reality is getting great requires you to fail over and over and over. There's a an amazing quote by Winston Churchill and he says, "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm." And you just can't worry about what other people are thinking when you're down. You have to go, "Cool, this is a learning experience. I'm going to get back up." And your response to that shouldn't be orchestrated to command respect, earn respect, to even think about people. It should be you have a goal. And you know to build your skill set to the point where you're so good that you can't be denied, that all the boos in the world can't block your dunk. You have to fail. Because it really it it really is it isn't a saying. Failure is the most information-rich data stream you will ever encounter. In the failure, if you get your ego out of the way and you're not crying about it and you're not, you know, worried about what other people are going to think. You're just thinking, "Okay, cool. I failed and if I can understand why, then I can get better." Now you do that day in and day out, all of a sudden you're going to earn respect as as a consequence of your just consistent improvement. And if I were going to sum up everything that we've talked about today, it's that. It's not focusing on earning people's respect or worrying about what they think. It's about the physics of how the world works. And the physics of how the world works is pretty straightforward. You have a goal. You have an idea of how to reach that goal, right? There's an impediment between where you are and where you want to be. You've got a theory about how to overcome that impediment. You try it. Many of the things you try will fail or they'll be insufficient. You'll assess why it was insufficient, and you'll begin again more intelligently, as Henry Ford said, "Failure is just the ability to begin again more intelligently." And you do that over and over and over and over and over, and it's what I call the physics of progress. It It's just You can't boil it down any more simple than that. All right. So, don't be afraid of your low moments. If you're in a toxic environment, get out. Focus every day on getting better, and the respect will come as a result of that. All right, last question. What suggestions do you have to navigate through cultural expectations or negative perceptions about commanding respect? For example, it's not as easy in some cultures to maneuver the commanding of respect from parents, family members, et cetera, without it being perceived as disrespectful, which is much more negative than in the American culture. Hopefully, that makes sense. Thank you. Okay. So, yes, that absolutely makes sense, and it is a very real fact of the world that there's a reason are some cultures are more entrepreneurial minded than other cultures, and this is part of it, right? This sort of know your place, or the tall poppy um syndrome, as they call it down in Australia. That, you know, the it's the tall blade of grass, or the tall poppy that gets cut down first. Okay, there's many cultures that have that concept. And cultures that are more communally minded um tend to have that in the extreme, right? So, that people don't want to see you try to rise above your station. They don't want to see you um do something as if you can be better than other people. So, I just want to acknowledge that is very real. And so, now the question becomes, what are you going to do about it? So, the first thing that I do is I have to divorce myself from what other people think. And once you divorce yourself from what other people think, you realize that they don't have nearly as much power over you as you thought they did. And it's only when you're trying to fit in their system. when you're like for instance, if you need to live in their house, if you are relying on them for money. If you're if they're your only emotional support, okay? Those are ways that you get trapped. So, my parents over my journey, and my parents were amazing. They have pushed me to exceed and excel and all of that. But there's no question that as I was growing and living a life that they had never imagined, that they couldn't imagine for themselves, that they vacillated between being worried for me, thinking I was out of my mind, and constantly telling me that I was pursuing the wrong thing. Not out of malice, out of love, which is oftentimes where this comes from. And I just finally had to flip a switch in my mind and say, "I'm trying to live a life that is radically different from the life that they have lived. And so, what makes me think that the value system through which they're trying to view me is going to leave me lead me to where I want to go?" And so, if you're chafing under the constraints of a value system that doesn't lead where you want to go, as difficult as it is, without stopping loving them, you don't have to cut them out of your life, but you have to say, "Here's what I'm doing. I'm doing it whether you want me to or not. I still love you, but I'm doing it whether you want me to or not." And it's okay if you're scared. It's okay if you don't like it. Um And then give them the chance to get on board over time. And if they're heckling you too hard, you may need to create that distance. You are going to have to build some boundaries. And it's just sort of the way it goes. Um if you guys know Nicole LePera, she would be a great person to um research in terms of somebody that has had to deal with family boundaries, building those boundaries so that she could build the life that she wanted. Uh very powerful advice around that. And ultimately, it's that. It's, you know, recognizing what value system you're going to need to have success in the way that you want, letting them know that you love them, that you hope that they can give you the space to go on your journey, uh and that if they can't, you're going to go on it anyway. And some of that means that you have to make yourself financially and emotionally independent. And I think all of us should strive for that anyway. Um so, you know, you should be in a warm and loving environment because that's where you want to be, not because you need um something. So, yes. I will leave it at that. Guys, these were amazing questions. Thank you so much for submitting them. Hopefully, you see that this isn't about commanding respect. It's not even about setting out to earn respect. It's about getting so good that you can't be denied for your own reasons because that's what your goals demand. And as a consequence of developing that competence, developing that confidence, being able to show kindness even to people that aren't showing kindness to you, and performing at a ridiculously high level day after day, getting better year after year, that the respect will be just an echo of that. If you do that, I promise you, even if the people that you're around currently still are hating on you, you will be able to manifest things in the world through your skill set that other people just can't. And that will take you to be around other people, which you should always be seeking out, the people that you want to be the average of, right? The Jim Rohn quote, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Leverage that improved skill set to get around improved people if that's what it takes, if you're in a toxic environment. All right, everybody. That's respect. I hope that you're able to put that to use in your life. And until next time, my friends. Be legendary. Take care. Thank you guys so much for watching. If you like this video, be sure to smash that like button and let me know.