A story about how I mixed with the dirt of oligarchs

The project developed, and at some point the question arose: what's next? How to grow? That's how I met an oligarch, and we began to develop the project together.

We created a partner program to attract new participants. The first partners were friends of this oligarch. They were all so important, privileged, looking down on you. In general, pretty unpleasant types.

I don’t know what happened to me then, but I started behaving like a complete jerk. And even with them. I could tell them to their face that they were nobody, that my project was way cooler than their capabilities (though, to be honest, that wasn't entirely true). And I said this so confidently and seriously that they simply lost their bearings. They didn't understand how someone could speak to them in such a tone.

And my partner, the oligarch, who was their friend, just laughed and encouraged me:

For some reason, he really enjoyed watching some unknown guy put his friends in their place.

And here’s what’s interesting. I could say a bunch of unpleasant things to a person, tell them that I wasn't going to work with them and that I wouldn’t give them my system. A week would go by, or sometimes even less, and those people would come back. Much more cautiously this time.

And here’s what I still think about. As strange as it sounds, when you behave firmly and show that you don’t need a person, for some reason, they start to be drawn to you even more. An internal dissonance arises in them: why am I not accepted? Why aren't they admiring me like usual? And they want to fix that.

This happens not only in business. It often happens in personal relationships too: a person loves another, even though that person behaves quite poorly.

Paradoxically, but from my experience, I can say that this mechanism works very often. Not with everyone, of course, but with many. It doesn't matter who is in front of you — an oligarch, an ordinary guy, or a girl.

The hardest part is waking up that kind of toughness within yourself.

Now it has somehow disappeared. I have become an ordinary kind person, perhaps even too kind. And sometimes I feel like people take advantage of that.

So that’s the story.

Want respect? Don’t be afraid to be uncomfortable.