Be Conscientious

As you know, I am a DJ, and I like to throw parties. About five years ago, my friend DJ Adam Silver and I got the idea to invite David Solomon to play at one of our shows. At the time, David Solomon was number two at Goldman Sachs, and while it wasn’t necessarily a secret that he was a DJ, it wasn’t out in the open, either. There were a few posts about it online, but it didn’t become big news until he was named CEO.

So I cold-emailed him. We guessed his email address, and I told him that I threw these Wall Street parties with other Wall Street DJs at Hotel Chantelle in the Lower East Side, and wouldn’t it be fun if he headlined the show? To my surprise, he replied within a day or two, and he was down. Oh, he was down. I opened, DJ Adam Silver played the middle set, D-Sol closed, and to my surprise, nobody paid much attention to the old guy behind the decks. Like I said, this is before he became CEO.

But one thing struck me about my interactions with David Solomon that will always stick with me—if I texted him, he always replied within ten minutes. Ten minutes! From the President of Goldman Sachs. That’s a big job, and he was a busy guy. Not only did he reply in ten minutes, he was unfailingly polite. I’ll go further and say that all the bad press that he received in 2023 was completely unwarranted. He’s a lovely man, and he treated this sketchy newsletter writer with dignity and respect.

So David Solomon always replied to me in ten minutes. I have a lot of friends who do not reply to me in ten minutes. I have a lot of friends who do not reply to me in an hour, three hours, six hours, a day, three days, a week, or ever. They are not as important as David Solomon. And you know what I think about that? They’re dickheads. All my friends know that if you text me anytime during the day, I will reply within seconds, unless I am in the car. For me, it’s a little easier because I’m typically in front of a Mac, and I have iMessage, so I can just respond on my keyboard. But I’m not making excuses for anyone else. If you get a text, you should respond. Be conscientious. It’s the right thing to do.

This is where we talk about ghosting. Maybe I’m old, like an armadillo, but I think that ghosting someone is a really scummy thing to do. Apparently, it’s very common nowadays amongst the kids. You don’t feel like talking to someone, you just don’t talk to them. Look, I get it. There are some people who have my phone number who I really wish didn’t have my phone number. I get texts from people I don’t particularly like that I don’t particularly want to answer. But I answer them anyway, out of courtesy and respect. Life is about doing the hard things, you know, and not avoiding the painful things. It’s called being an adult. Not that I get ghosted a lot. This frequently comes up in romantic relationships. You’re dating for a while, things are going well, then—wham! Ghosted. Be an adult. If you want to end the relationship, call, don’t text, be a grown-up and explain why you are cutting it off. I think I am the only person who thinks this way. It’s the golden rule, right? Treat people like you would want to be treated.

I’ve found that there is a common phenotype of an un-conscientious person. First, they live in New York. 30s, married, one or two kids, semi-important job like midlevel banker or something like that, important enough to induce self-absorption, but not important enough to really be doing anything of consequence. These are the people who never respond to texts. CEO of Goldman Sachs? Responds to texts. And to be clear: he’s not a CEO who happens to be conscientious, he is CEO because he is conscientious. See what I am after, here? What I’m suggesting is that conscientiousness is a habit of highly effective people, and conscientious people tend to rise to the top of an organization. Yes, we are all busy. I get hundreds of emails a day, and I try to respond to them all. Not everybody does, and those people will hit the ceiling at high six figures and their ID will stop working at age 47.

If you’ve heard of the Big Five personality test, you know that conscientiousness is one of the tested attributes. I score reasonably high on conscientiousness, but I have been known to space and forget a Zoom meeting from time to time. But I have a business that is entirely based on email, and you don’t last very long if you don’t reply to emails. I also generally don’t let calls go to voicemail if I can help it. Though I will admit that I never listen to voicemails, because voicemail is the most inefficient form of communication in the world. I never leave voicemails. The phone tells you who called, you can call back.

For some people, a text going unreturned can be very anxiety-inducing. It used to be for me, but not anymore. If I text someone and they don’t text back, my assumption is that they have some crisis or problem in their life, and I will find out about it later, or maybe I won’t. Either way, it’s not on me, it’s on them. It’s their volleyball. But many people are consumed by the idea of someone not returning a text. They’ll stew on it for days, thinking that the other person doesn’t like them. We’ve had text messages for about twenty years now, and I can tell you that in a career of sending text messages and having them go unreturned, only once it was because the other person didn’t like me, and that wasn’t the worst thing in the world, either. Remember: you are not in control of what other people think of you. In any case, one of the reasons I am so conscientious is because I know other people experience anxiety about this. Again, it’s the right thing to do.

We are all busy. Well, maybe not all of us, but many of us are. It’s hard to respond to every email and every text. But you know what? Some people manage to do it, and they do it because they make it a priority, which is pretty much the definition of being conscientious. Politeness is about putting people’s needs above yours. Years ago, I read How To Win Friends and Influence People. There wasn’t anything about responding to texts and emails, but I’m sure that if it was written today, there would be. Let me appeal to your sense of self-interest. If you do this, you will get pay and promotions. You will make more money. Do I have your attention now? I’m not sure if you’ve ever had this experience where you’re dealing with someone in the service industry, like a doctor’s office or something like that, and you call, and you ask them to do something, and they say, I will do the thing, and then, like clockwork, they call you and tell you they did the thing, and you’re…surprised! You never expected it. You never expected a $40,000-a-year receptionist at a dentist to be so conscientious. This week she’s mopping floors, next week it’s the fries. In my newsletter, I don’t always get the highest marks for my market calls, but I do get the highest marks for customer service, and that’s why I have the highest renewal rate in the industry.

I am never surprised when someone rises to the top. And I am never surprised when someone gets spit out the bottom. These things all have a way of working themselves out.

P.S. There are five days until NO WORRIES is released. Last chance to snag a pre-order.

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P.P.S. If you want to come to one of my parties, I will be having one in May or June. Stay tuned.