Robert Ringer’s Three Type Theory 🐢 (Winning Through Intimidation)

Brian breaks down Robert Ringer’s “Three Types of people you’ll meet in the business world,” from his classic book, Winning Through Intimidation.

Transcription

Robert Ringer’s three type theory.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

One of my favorite business books out there, Winning Through Intimidation. And it’s not a book about how to intimidate people, but how to get around kind of the rules of intimidation, so to speak, that are already exist within human interaction.

And great book, it came out in the 70s. It’s still a fabulous book today.

Robert Ringer is still with us, and he continues to produce articles on regular basis on his website. I believe it’s RobertRinger.com.

And I want to talk a little bit about his three types theory because it’s interesting.

But first, I wanted to remind you about my own book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. If you haven’t read it yet, go get yourself a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com.

Grab it while you still can free copy AmazonProofBook.com.

So let’s talk about Robert Ringer, shall we it this is from let’s see, this is from chapter four. He calls it the my three unforgettable professors at Screw U.

And his three type theory comes down to there’s there are only three types of people in business world with the one exception noted above.

Okay, the one exception noted above, he’s he’s talking about. I’ll get to that in a second.

Let me talk about the three that he mentions here though, type number one, okay.

This is the type of person so no matter what type of interaction you’re getting with people, these are the type of people you deal with.

Number One: “Who let you know that from the outset, either through his words, his actions, or both, that he’s out to get your chips. He then follows through by attempting to do just that.”

That’s type number one.

Type number Two: “Who goes to great lengths to assure you that he would never dream of pilfering your chips, often trying to throw you off guard by assuring you that he really wants to see you get everything that’s coming to you.

Then like type number one, and without hesitation, he goes about trying to grab your chips anyways. “

Here’s Type number Three: “Who like type number two assures you that he’s not interested in your chips.

Unlike type number two, however, he sincerely means what he says. But that’s where the difference ends. Due to any one of a number of reasons ranging from his own bungling, to his amoral standards for rationalizing what’s right and wrong.

He, like type number one, and two, still ends up trying to grab your chips. Which means that his suppose that good intentions are irrelevant to the final outcome.

In summation, no matter how someone posits himself, you would be wise to assume that he will, in the final analysis, attempt to grab your chips.”

So what’s this have to do with anything, right?

It has to do with the basic concept that people are people. And no matter how a person holds themselves, in the end, everybody tends to look out for themselves in the end, or their families, they tend to look out for their own interest.

And it’s a very natural thing.

It’s not anything to be scared about, or to think that a person’s naturally immoral just because they’re out for themselves.

That’s just, it’s a survival mechanism.

If nothing else, people have to be able to look out for themselves.

I deal a lot with the self reliance field. I run the podcast called, the Off The Grid Biz Podcast. Which is all about the self reliance industry, meaning people and products that are encouraging people to become more self reliant in some way. Okay.

And the interesting thing is, it’s built into that concept of self reliance that people have an interest in being self reliant to begin with, that it’s just a natural thing one way or the other.

Yeah, in the short run, people are going to help each other and do everything they can to help each other. In the long, it’s in the short run. In the long run, though, it when the going gets tough, people tend to defend themselves. And that’s just the way it is.

There are some people, let me see here, there’s an example here. There are some people who put themselves out in order to help other people, but they tend to not be good business people in the long run.

And they tend to do it out of the wrong motivation, even though it seems good on the outside. Oftentimes hey’ve got another psychological issue they’re dealing with, and that they feel like they have to sacrifice themselves to other people in a sense, and that that’s a person to be careful about, too.

But the three main ones that you’re dealing with, once again, it’s the person that’s going to be honest about the fact that they’re out for themselves, the person who is dishonest, and knows they’re being dishonest, and the person who honestly would like to not be out for themselves, but in the end will be anyways.

And so there’s three types of people you got to be careful of, I’m not sure if I agree with it across the board. But yeah, I think it’s a safe philosophy to go with, it’s safe to expect that the other person is going to bash you over in a sense.

And it creates honest brokering, when you’re dealing with that concept.

And if you have a situation where everything turns out great for all parties, all the better.

But it only happens when everybody’s looking out for their own interest. And they’re honest about the fact that they are. It’s a weird dichotomy.

I’d love to hear what you think, go check out this book, Winning Through Intimidation, Robert Ringer, I talk about it all the time.

But this three type theories is a very interesting, it’s very touchy, because we all expect the best out of people. And we think that being said self interested in any way is a bad thing, and I don’t necessarily think that’s the case.

And I think he made some good case for that, in this book, how to be the victor, not the victim in business and in life.

Very good piece, especially on the psychology, the things that are going on in our heads when we’re dealing with other people in business.

Hopefully that’s helpful to you.

We’ll be back here tomorrow night.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.