I should only ask people to do things I will do myself. If I’m asking someone to do something that I won’t do myself, then I am a hypocrite. Plain and simple.

The Golden Rule by Hammurabi says: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

The Egyptian, the Indian, the Greek, the Romans, and the Persian; they all share a version of this Golden Rule.

The inverse, “If you don’t want “X” done to you, don’t do “X” to someone else”, is the Silver Rule*: “Do not treat others the way you would not like them to treat you.”

The Silver Rule translates well in business: Never ask someone to do something you won’t do yourself. Never do to others what you don’t want them to do to you. Do to others what you want them to do to you.

This served me well; especially working in small startups early in my career. I should only ask people to do things I will do myself. If I’m asking someone to do something that I won’t do myself, then I am a hypocrite. Plain and simple.

When I started my first two startups, we were bootstrapped and we were resource scarce. The team was a small team of fresh grad across the board: engineers or (a) marketer. That’s what we could afford. They were juniors who had great potential. None of the engineers has worked with proper cloud provider before (like AWS) for instance (10 years ago)

What made this team a killer is the attitude. We launched our first full webapp and a full working backend in 3 months. We all showed our skin in the game. We were all hungry to learn and none was a BSer.

I’m still extra proud of working with such a team. I was completely engrossed with the work with everyone in the company. I wasn’t a CEO or a CTO or a CFO or a CMO. I was all of these. I worked with everyone side by side. I had skin in the game and I showed it.

I did everything. I programmed the first backend service. I designed our app and the website UI. I fixed bugs myself. I created, designed and posted IG posts just like any marketer. I answered customers emails and I reached out to influencers. I (cold) emailed school heads just like any sales person.

I did everything I would ask a designer, an engineer, a marketer, or a sales rep to do. I showed them that I’m there for them. And they showed me their best.

It wasn’t all rosy. I made every managerial mistake in the book. I got angry, I put someone down on public, I was impatient when I should’ve and patient when I shouldn’t have.

Though, the good thing that I did was that I told them I’m wrong when I’m wrong. I had regular 1:1s and reverse 1:1 weekly with all of them. I kept everything open and everyone can speak out his mind.

I simply learned management on the spot. By practice. Bottom up. Not leading from the front nor from behind. But side by side.

To teach is to do. And no one would’ve trusted me in hard times if I didn’t do that.

And hard times we had – just like any startup: limited runway, wrong targeting and a pivot within 1 year.

In a 3-year period we lost none on the team. And I believe this is because we trusted each other in bad times the same as in the good times.

People need to trust us for them to work with us. If we show them that we understand their pains, they would understand that we’re real colleagues – authentic and trustworthy.

These two traits are rare,

extremely rare, nowadays.

No one likes to work with someone they don’t trust. No one. If you’re a manager who can’t code, none of the engineers can trust you. If you’re a head designer who can’t design literally everything (as Massimo Vignelli would say: “To Design is to Design Everything”), none of the designers will trust you. If you’re a founder who’s undecided, no employee will trust you.

Skin in the game that is. And in the game; skin, sweat, tears and blood will be spilled. And the people we work with will reward us for seeing us sweat with them.

Salam, peace.

* Skin in the Game, Nassim Taleb.