Never work with bad people

In 2024, the YouTube channel School of Hard Knocks interviewed a few people in Beverly Hills asking them how they got rich. One of them was Stephen Cloobeck, the founder of Diamond Resorts International in Los Angeles.

A phrase that he said in the interview that stuck with me:

You got to stay out of one zip code, the zip code of bad people. If they’re around in your life, make them go away.

A Bad Person

..is common in ambitious projects. Someone successful, promising, that turns out later to be a pathological liar.

They tend to be charming, capable, but since the beginning your intuition tells you that something’s not right.

The lesson that I’m taking from my interaction with Bad People is that even short alliances with them can be very damaging.

It can be tempting to ignore the intuition, accept the lies temporarily, or hope to outsmart them when they turn against you (and they will).

You can’t win against a Bad Person

As a ‘normal person’ you have a job to do, a business to run, a family to be present in.

They, on the other hand, have all day to do bad things, to lie and destroy.

That’s why they can afford to lie blatantly even when it is embarrassing, when it hurts their cause — and that makes their lies plausible.

What is winning, after all

Bad people are afraid of losing in the honest game. To win in that game, one needs to build and cooperate, like you do. But, remember, they lie and cheat all day, so they don’t have the time and energy to do that.

Instead, they’re betting that you will try to compete with them in being Bad. That’s what they’re doing all day. You, however, can only be a part-time Bad Person.

So the only way to win is not to play that game.

To stay out of that zip code.

Hero photo: Photo by Tasos Mansour on Unsplash