Mastering the Art of Success: Understanding Personality Ethic vs. Character Ethic

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One of my all time favorite books is Stephen Covey's, the Seven

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Habits of Highly Effective People.

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I think I've gifted that book more than any other book.

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I've read and reread it more often than I can count, and what's cool

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about it is it reads really well from start to finish, it's also pretty

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referential once you understand it or understand the, fundamentals.

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it's like reading.

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the entire lexicon of human success literature summarized into one book,

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which is more or less kind of his pitch.

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He said that he read all the success literature he could get his hands

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on going back hundreds of years.

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And, you can't say that he condensed it all, but he did a really good job

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distilling some of what was Hierarchically speaking the most effective information,

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and then he put it inside of a framework.

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I'm obsessed.

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You'll hear me say this a lot.

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By the way, I'm obsessed with frameworks and I especially love his framework.

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You know, is he you from a dependence to independence to interdependence.

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And he has the kinda the private victories and the public victories and none of that

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makes sense if you haven't read the book.

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But just allows you to see how certain habits interact with certain

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areas and facets of your life.

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then the sequencing to those habits, how they interact with each other.

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It's really, really cool.

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the book rests upon.

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An assertion that Covey makes about a significant change that he identified in

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in the US success literature, specifically around the turn of the 20th century.

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So the book is written in 1989 and Covey said around I think it's

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around World War ii he noticed that.

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In his research, what he saw was a significant shift from what he terms

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as character ethic to personality ethic, and character ethic is all

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the stuff your mom taught you or your pastor or your rabbi like.

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It's Do good for goodness sake.

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And personality ethic is the stuff that you learn from the clickbait magazines.

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and I don't think Covey could be placed in the camp of, curmudgeony old men who

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are lamenting the declining fabric of.

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Declining moral fabric of society.

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I don't think that's what he was doing.

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was just commenting on, you know what?

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I think a lot of it is just the propensity for clickbait.

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Right around that time we started producing much more in the way of media

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you know, as something of a new age.

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And it's the personality ethic that appeals, , that'll probably

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get you to open up an article.

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Fact, not probably.

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It definitely will, and we know that because that's the direction

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that personality ethic heads in.

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so to delineate between the two.

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Personality ethic is what you're taught to focus on by people who are results.

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Short-term results focus.

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So it's like surface level improvements, temporary fixes, quick fixes.

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This is where you're like, you're polishing the leaves, not

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paying attention to the roots.

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This is like taking a pill to lose weight.

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or if you've seen those, electronic things that you can hook onto yourself

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and they'll like stimulate your muscles and apparently help you build more,

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like that's personality, ethic thinking.

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then the character ethic is, that's what you're told To focus

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on by like philosophers and authentic religious leaders.

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It's like the foundational improvements, the long-term growth-minded.

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This is the roots and the soil.

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this is actual self-improvement.

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Personality ethic, character ethic.

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you think to yourself like, yeah, dude, I got it.

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Why do I need a video on this?

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Well, maybe you don't, but what I've noticed, and this is me too, by the

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way, Is we very often default to the personality ethic, especially when we're

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trying to diagnose problems or plan ahead.

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So for example, the personality ethic asks, how do I get people

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to buy my product or service?

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at first that seems like a really harmless question, but then if you dig

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into it, it's a little manipulative.

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It's like, well, you don't get people convinced Khan Cajole sell.

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Right.

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Instead, the character ethic would ask, how do I create a product or service

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that will truly serve my customer?

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Like, how do I create a product or service that they, they

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just couldn't live without?

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That would be so valuable that the exchange would be an absolute no brainer.

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I learned very recently from a member of my mastermind, I absolutely love this.

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It was one of the best lessons I've been taught in the last decade.

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We were talking about the fear of selling and I'm trying to remember who said it.

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Mark said, you need to be so confident in what you're selling, that it's like

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you're on the dock watching people board rickety boats, and you have life jackets.

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You are afraid for them.

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You know the risks and you realize this thing that I've got

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is of supreme importance given your current life situation.

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And if you're not that confident, then maybe what you're selling isn't that good.

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Right?

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And that's obviously, it's hyperbolic, so it's taken to the extreme.

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But you wanna be offering something to somebody that really impacts

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them, really moves the needle, really delivers on the promise.

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That's the character ethic.

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The personality ethic is like, oh, how do I get you to do this thing?

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You know, maybe if I change the button from red to blue, the

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character ethic is where's the value?

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How do I increase the value?

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How do we improve the value?

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Personality ethic asks, how do I make the most amount of money

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with the least amount of output?

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This is, employers do this very often.

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It's like, man, how do I get the best person for the least amount of money,

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And y'all, I'm not better than anybody.

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I tried that game for a long time that's how we're taught.

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That's actually how employers, new employers especially, that's

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how you are taught to find hire.

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Train and maintain people is just keep 'em up to , the smallest

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drip you possibly can afford.

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And where the character ethic says, how do I provide the maximum amount of value?

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And that's how you get.

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That's how you get peak performers, and this is true everything.

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You know, it's not just in employment, it's with your customers too.

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It's like, I don't wanna maximize my input and minimize my output.

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Well, do you though?

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You know, like, is that really the life you wanna live?

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What a parasite you'd be Instead, it's like, how do I

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give as much as I possibly can?

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Build a business so that that giving is sustainable.

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And if you look at the businesses it's almost not even a moral question.

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it's a question of.

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The capability to scale.

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for instance, I wouldn't consider Jeff Bezos to be an exceptionally moral human.

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I don't think he's immoral, but he doesn't have like, Bill Gates has

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all those stories about him running around Kieran Polio and giving shots

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and helping with environmental causes.

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And regardless of how you feel about the stances he's taken on things you could

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make a really cogent make and defend a really cogent argument about him doing

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things for reasons other than himself maybe Bezos, outside of, I know he gave

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$500 million to Montessori schools.

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Outside of that, I think dudes just making money, and I'm not trying to bash

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him by the way, or say anything about like the not just for profit model.

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I some, I think that that philanthropy should be kept with philanthropy and

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business should be kept with business.

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And if you can do bus good business, great.

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This is what I'm saying I'm trying to deflate the idea that morality is involved

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in this particular example and say you get way more value out of Amazon than you've

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given it by, I can't tell you how many multiples, and if you don't think that's

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true, I'd ask you to go look back, think back on what life was like pre-Amazon.

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If you're in a major metro, y'all.

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I've ordered something at like seven in the morning and had it by nine faster than

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I would've been able to go get it myself.

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Like, unbelievable.

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It's, and when Covid landed, Amazon saved the world, the modern world.

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You know, you can get anything you want at the absolute cheapest

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prices in the shortest amount of time, and you can get it shipped

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effectively for free if you're a prime.

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Subscriber.

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and that's character ethic thinking it's the maximum amount of value.

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I'm pretty sure it was Bezos that said, your margin is my opportunity.

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I'm not trying to make a moral statement here.

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It's, it's a functional statement.

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of course there's morality applied to it and we shouldn't

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apologize for that either.

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Personality ethic asks, how do I get my customers to.

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Say, act, think this way.

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Character ethic says, asks, what is it that my customers say, act or think that

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I can tap into in order to serve them?

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So the personality ethic tries to change the customer.

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The character ethic tries to align with the customer.

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Now, that doesn't mean you do everything they say they're gonna do.

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Right, like, you know, everybody's favorite example is Steve Jobs.

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He didn't give anybody anything they wanted.

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Nobody knew they wanted a smartphone.

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He created that, but He created it with an understanding, maybe

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a supreme understanding of human behavior and psychology jobs

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understood better than any other

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provider at the time that simplicity and reliability were paramount.

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None of the Apple products were, were better from a

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functional perspective, right?

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They couldn't do as much, they didn't have as many apps.

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They didn't have as many features.

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They didn't have as many functions.

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But gosh, did they work?

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Just tried and true.

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what's so funny is the perception became the opposite.

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The perception became that like if you were cutting edge, you were on an Apple

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computer and it's like that thing couldn't do 80% of what the other computers

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could do, but those ones broke all the damn time and that one always worked.

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Character ethic focusing on the character ethic in business and in life.

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If you wanna go there it puts you in a position to grow from

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a strong and stable foundation.

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It also makes you defensible if you do, if you operate from the character ethic.

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If everything you do, if, if the content you create, the social posts that you

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put up the policies that you enact, the way you treat your customers and

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your employees and yourself, if it all stems from the character ethic,

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even when you make an a mistake, you find yourself in a, in a position.

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you're in a fortress.

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It's a lot like always telling the truth, which , I think those two are inly tied.

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it protects you on a cosmic scale.

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Anyway, I think the character ethic and personality ethic conversation

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is a really important one.

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it's something that we should return to regularly as marketers.

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'cause y'all, I do this all the time.

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My video titles are very personality ethic.

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I'm like, I wonder what I can do to get you to click.

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but my characteristic titles don't.

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They just don't perform as well.

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I'll prove that with this title.

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Actually.

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We'll see.

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Check out Steven's book though.

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It's amazing.

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Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

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And I'd love to know what you think of videos like this.

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I know I'm going far a field from the Google Ads stuff.

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We do so much Google Ads training.

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I'm honestly running outta Google ads, things to talk about.

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So here I am talking about entrepreneurship business.

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I don't know what this was.

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Psychology, philosophy.

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I don't know.

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I shoot a video every day.