A man's word is his bond.
Gentlemen, you've heard that before, right?
How many times have you broken your word?
Think about it. Be honest.
I look back when I first started my company, and there were times I was getting so many deals, so many offers thrown my way. People that wanted to do partnerships.
Not necessarily something that would make me money, but something that
“Oh, you've got a great website.
Can you talk about my business here?
I'm sure it'll help bring you traffic. It's not going to bring any money to your business, but let me send you a free bag or let me send you a free product sample.”
I would say “Yes. Sure. I can write up something about this.”
Guys, I would get this product, and guess what would happen? I have to meet payroll. I realized, wow, I need to work and focus in on this. All of a sudden, two weeks would go by. I haven't talked about that product.
The owner – the guy who made the product – sometimes, some of these things were handmade. They would send me an email. “Antonio, what's going on? Any luck getting this out?”
I would try to say “Oh, I'm going to try to get to it as soon as I can” or “I'll get to it next week”. Two months later, I still would not. In one case, it was a full year.
Guys, it felt horrible. I felt like there was this stone. The thing is I'm working 70 hours a week, 80 hours a week, trying to get my businesses up off the ground. I know many of you guys have been in that situation in which you have said “Yes” to too many things. All of a sudden, you've given your word, but you cannot get out from under this stuff.
Guys, this is for you, because you want to be able to keep your word. It's very important. They did a study, and they said “Okay, what's more important for you?”
A hundred percent of the time, to just keep your word, at the bare minimum. We're talking doing the bare minimum amount of work. Or, 75% of the time, actually keep your word, but go way above and beyond. Over-deliver.
Studies, again and again, found, no, people want reliability. The 100% of the time, even though it was the bare minimum, would beat out. Reliability is above generosity. It's above quality of work. It's above speed.
All of those things, they do matter, but reliability is number one. If you can become a reliable person, it's just something that is going to be part of who you are and you want to be known for. But it's hard. I'm going to give you four tips here in this video that you can use to make sure you are a reliable person. If you're like me, if you have fallen down, these four tips can help you get back on path and be the man you know yourself to be.
Tip number one is to make “No” your default answer. Stop making promises that honestly you can't keep. You've got to ask yourself, is this really important? I've got the priority matrix right over here. You can go check it out. I help you break things out into what is important and what is not. But the point being, gentlemen, is not everything is important. Not everything, you should be doing. You need to make “No” your default answer.
You want to say no to sometimes good opportunities so that you can say “Yes” to amazing opportunities. I know that this is going to be hard for a lot of you guys. You've been saying yes. But think about it. You're being penalized for being dependable. More and more keeps coming your way. You know who you are. Let me know in the comments if this has happened to you. You're so dependable, you're so good at what you do, that all of a sudden, you get double the amount of work stacked on you. All of a sudden, your quality goes down.
The number one thing you can do to ensure you keep your word is be very careful when you give it. When you give it, let's go to number two: take action immediately.
Don't wait for tomorrow. If you can fulfill this promise, if you can stay up with your word and you can do it immediately, then do it. When you get off the phone with someone and you said you were going to send them something, send it immediately. Taking action immediately just is such a quick one for most people to be able to get ahead and to be do something.
 What happens when you put it off? All of a sudden, a fire pops up. Something happens. One of your kids gets sick. You get sick. Life happens. If you just would take action as soon as you could, you'd be ahead of the game.
Number three: be very clear about the expectations. I'm a big fan. If it's going to be a larger product, this is more than just something simple that you get it in writing. What I love to do is actually throw the ball back in their court, especially if I'm doing something for somebody. I'm the one doing the favor.
Then let me ask you “Okay, everything we just talked about, can you please put it into a 100- or 200-word email, break it out by points, and if you could, send that to me today. I'll make sure to get back to you.”
What that does is I've put it in their court. Two things happen there. One, I usually get very clear instructions of what exactly they expect so that there is no miscommunication. I may have said something. They thought they maybe heard something. It's right there in the email.
Number two: if it's not important enough for them to actually write out a 200-word email to give me explicit instructions, then it's honestly not worth my time. It's kind of a way of vetting people out. Also, pay attention to language. Being married to a woman who English is her third language, I can tell you that language barriers are real.
If you're working with someone that speaks another language, make sure to get it in writing. Get all the details.
Point number four is to keep the communication lanes wide open. You want to over-communicate. If you are going to be late, even if it's by a minute, you let them know. As you're moving through the project, especially if it's a long project, you want to be letting them know where you're at in the project, letting them know if you're running into problems.
People understand this. Sometimes, a project becomes – it starts to cost more. There are extra expenses. But what you don't want to get is at the end of a one-month project to say “Oh, this doubled in price.” Instead, two or three days into the project, you need to come back and say “Okay, we found these problems. This is going to increase the price by 10%. By an additional 20%.”
You let them know at the beginning. You've still got the rest of the month to figure it out or possibly abandon the project, but you go not want to have that huge communication breakdown right there, and then people are going to be – it's just not going to be a good situation.
All right, guys. That is it. Hopefully, you found that useful. I've talked about this before, but always look to go the extra mile. This is a bonus tip. I did talk about the study. People do like it, though, when you go beyond.
It's great if you can be a man of your word, but if you become a man who not only keeps his word but goes above and beyond, guys, it's a very powerful combination, and something that's going to set you apart from everyone out there.
All right, guys. Let me know what you think in the comments down below. Don't forget, you can go check out the article right here which has all of this summarized and goes into more detail.
Gentlemen, that's it. See you in the next video.
This post is based on the video – A Man's Word Is His Bond? | 4 Tips To Keep Your Promises | How To Be A Man Of Your Word
