CEO Confessions: What It Really Means to Be a Hard Ass

In this episode of The Un-Traditional Entrepreneur, host Juming Delmas takes on a leadership label that is often treated like an insult: being a “hard ass.”

Juming argues that demanding people are not always cruel, unreasonable, or impossible to work with. In many high-performance environments, the person who refuses to lower the standard may be the same person pushing a team, athlete, employee, or entrepreneur toward a level they would not have reached on their own.

The conversation explores what a healthy hard ass actually looks like. According to Juming, strong leaders hold the line when excuses, discomfort, and temporary emotions threaten the bigger goal. They care enough to correct people, expect follow-through, and remain willing to be disliked in the moment when the long-term result is growth.

But the episode also draws a necessary line between demanding leadership and toxic behavior. A healthy hard ass pushes people because they believe in their potential and care about the outcome. A toxic hard ass uses pressure to control, embarrass, dominate, or break people down. Juming makes it clear that being demanding does not require constant yelling, public humiliation, disrespect, or emotional coldness.

Using Kobe Bryant and the “Mamba Mentality” as a central example, Juming examines how elite standards can sharpen the people around a high performer. Bryant’s intensity forced teammates to confront whether they were truly committed to the goal or simply attracted to the idea of success. His approach was not comfortable, but comfort was never the standard.

The episode also looks at what people can gain from learning to function under demanding leadership. Those who can receive correction without collapsing often develop thicker skin, greater discipline, better emotional control, and the ability to perform when pressure is high. In that sense, hard leaders naturally separate people who are serious about growth from those who only want encouragement without accountability.

For leaders, the final lesson is not to become softer or abandon high standards. It is to sharpen the way those standards are communicated. Strong leadership should challenge people without degrading them, build resilience without destroying confidence, and create better performers rather than frightened followers.

This episode is for entrepreneurs, coaches, managers, athletes, and anyone trying to understand the difference between accountability and control. It asks a hard but important question: are demanding people holding you back, or are they refusing to let you remain below your potential?

Listen to The Un-Traditional Entrepreneur on all major podcast platforms or visit utodcast.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Wax on, wax off. You know, Mr. Miyagi teaching Danielson, right washing cars and shit, cleaning and shit. Man, look, man, I ain't I ain't come here to wash no damn cars and clean up your buildings. When people call me a hard ass, I take it as a compliment. And you know, hard ass is almost the same as being called an asshole, you know, just whatever. It's the same shit, just depending on how, you know, people are feeling that day. That's why people who quit fucking jobs. I had an intern or one of my teammates quit because they said the job was too hard. It's too much, it was too demanding. Good. Get out of here. Goodbye. Thank you. I appreciate it. Don't call me no more. That's absolutely crazy. Welcome to the other side of motivation. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. So listen, some people hear the phrase hard ass and immediately take it as an insult. But what of being a hard ass is actually one of the reasons certain people actually win. In this episode of The Untraditional Entrepreneur, I will be breaking down what it really means to be a hard ass, not a bully, not an abuser, not someone who talks down to people, but someone who has standards, demands excellence, refuses excuses, and pushes people toward a version of themselves they keep avoiding. This episode explores the benefits of being a hard ass in business, sports, leadership, parenting, creativity, and personal growth. We'll be using examples like, you know, my main man, Kobe Bryant, and other high-performing black figures. We look at how discipline, pressure, and high expectations can shape greatness. Because here's the truth, right? It's real simple. Everybody wants the rewards of greatness, but in reality, they they they can't be in the environment that creates it. Let's dive in. All right, everybody, welcome back. So, yeah, so being a hard ass, you know, this is a very important topic to me because I have been called a hard ass in business. You know, like I've been called a hard ass from team members, I've been called a hard ass from friends and family and things like that. And to be fair, I am unapologetically careless of being a hard ass because it's not that I don't care. It's just that there's certain things in people that I see that I feel like they could be better than, you know, and I really do believe that, you know, God put people, we all are different, right? God made a world full of hard asses, and he made a world full of people who do not know how to push themselves, and that's what hard asses are there for. Um, people who don't necessarily, you know, take a traditional route and the the motivation and and things like that. They they look at it from a different angle, right? So in this episode, I want to talk about what it means to be a hard ass. Real quick, you know, let's look up, let's look up the definition of hard ass, you know. Let's let's look up what that actually means, right? So, all right, so according to the dictionary, uh being a hard uh being a hard ass means you care enough to hold the line, right? It means you do not lower the standard just because someone is uncomfortable. It means you would rather be misunderstood in the moment than watch someone waste their potential long term. A real hard ass says, I see more in you than you're giving me right now. Um that is different from being mean, just for clarity, right? That is also different from being controlling. Um, that is also different from being toxic. All right, the healthy hard ass is demanding because they believe in results. The toxic hard ass is demanding because they believe in control. Which one are you? Right? Like we, you know, when I think about control, just to kind of differentiate the two, right? When I think about a hard ass that is controlling, I think a hard ass who is a boss. We talked about that in an episode with one of my guests, uh Tommy D or something like that. So we talked about like individuals who are bosses, or it's just it people in general. There's people in generals outside of entrepreneurship. There are natural hard asses. And to be fair, like certain black families are hard asses for no reason because they like the ideal of controlling um sometimes their children. Being real, like I people talk about racism and people talk about classism. I don't know if this is a word, but I believe there's a thing of ageism. You know, I know I might have butchered the shit out of that word, but like I believe that there are certain older people who feel like just because they're older, they know better, they know more, they are wisdom. So therefore, they look down upon younger people like you should listen to me, right? And so for me, they give off hard ass personality or characteristics because they're in, they want to be in control of something um because of their experience, right? I to me, that's not a hard ass, that's what controlling is to me. I feel like a hard ass is exactly what the definition is. Like, truly a hard ass is somebody who wants greater for you, right? Um here, let's read further about what hard ass actually means. Okay, it says being a hard ass means you value standards over feelings and moments where performance matters. You believe excuses are expensive, you understand that comfort can become a trap. You know that discipline creates freedom. You are willing to be disliked temporarily if it helps someone to become better permanently. You do not celebrate bare minimum efforts. You expect people to do what they say they're going to do, holding them accountable to their word. You push people past the story they keep telling themselves, and this is why hard asses are often misunderstood. They are usually not trying to hurt people, they are trying to pull greatness out of people who are still negotiating with average. Look, man, um I that was a good definition, right? Kudos. Clap it up, clap it up, clap it up. You know, when people call me a hard ass, I take it as a compliment. And, you know, hard ass is almost the same as being called an asshole, you know, just whatever. It's the same shit, just depending on how, you know, people are feeling that day. Um, there's nothing wrong with being a hard ass. And you know, it's funny because the people who call you a hard ass are the people who naturally don't strive for greatness. Everybody talks shit about striving for greatness. Everybody talk crazy mad shit about I wanna be this, I wanna be this, I want to follow your dreams. And then when you come in here and tell them that shit ain't gonna happen. Like it ain't gonna happen. Now you look like one of the motherfucking memes on social media about the people who say you couldn't make it because X, Y, and Z. No, the reality is everybody is not gonna succeed. Everybody is not going to be, everybody's not gonna do what they want to do in life. And that's just the reality of it. I'm certain that a lot of people passed away without doing everything they wanted to do. Hell, even Michael Jackson passed away without fully doing everything he wanted to do. He wanted to do this major tour before his passing. He was practicing for it uh for months on end and ended up dying, right? Even Michael Jackson did not fully complete what he wanted to do, and that's okay. You know, we look at it like you know, the question is, have you done enough? You know, and when people come to me about their dreams and shit, and I I can look at somebody and say, hell no. Because the thing about hard asses is they have a vision that the average person don't have. Hard asses is a hard ass in business, hard ass is a person in relationship. I'm both. I'm hard ass in both aspects, and like that's why I keep my circle small. Because people don't really fuck with hard asses because they don't understand the nature of a hard ass. Everybody wants to be away from the hard ass. And to be fair, we prefer that. We prefer for you to get your ass away from her because we don't necessarily want to be around people who are ordinary. You know, I look at it like you talk about excellence, right? I did something excellent to a hard ass, that's the minimum. Excellence is the minimum. We need you to go beyond that. I need you to do more than that. Um, there's a reason why uh hard asses have a small circle because being a hard ass requires a lot of goddamn energy. It requires a lot of energy, and it and we only give that energy to people we care for. We only give that energy to people we're like, oh, I see what this person can do, they can't see it, right? And and they take that, and a hard ass doesn't necessarily tell you, I'm gonna be a hard ass to you because I believe in you. No, we just naturally are hard ass because if we tell you that we're gonna be a hard ass to you, then in your mind, you're knowing why we're doing this, and oftentimes you're gonna act on knowing why. So it's just for an example, like somebody's like, you know, I'm not gonna act a certain type of way because I know that if I continue to do this, then I'll get what I want out of this. The best rewards to me is gaining something without knowing that you were gaining that experience. And the best example I can give to that is like the karate kid, right? Wax on, wax off, you know, Mr. Miyagi teaching Danielson white washing cars and shit, cleaning and shit. He teaching him the basics of cleaning, and and you know, and Danielson sitting there like, Man, look, man, I ain't I ain't come here to wash no damn cars and clean up your buildings. I came here to learn karate. And and and then Danielson got to a breaking point where he was like, All right, I'm done with this. This is over. I'm I'm done. And he was leaving, and that's when the hard ass of Mr. Miyagi came out. And he said, Danielson, he wasn't playing with the boy. He wasn't playing. He had him come over and he he stood up to him and he said, Wax on. And you know, Danielson still wasn't connecting. He was like, I'm not doing this anymore. He thought I was talking, he he thought Mr. Miyagi was talking about going wax on the car. No, Mr. Miyagi said he said, No, wax on. And then when Danielson went to wax on, he grabbed him by the arm, the fence. He was teaching him. That's what hard asses do. Hard asses don't want you to know what they're doing. They will show you once they feel like you've gotten to a point where now you will understand that all the work that you were doing is how we got you here. And sometimes, most times, most times, people are not Danielson. Most times people act like Danielson or think they could be Danielson. Most sometimes people walk clear away. But see, Mr. Miyagi didn't train a class of people to do karate. He saw something in Danielson. He saw that Danielson had a heart. He saw that Danielson would not use karate to necessarily harm or kill, even though his original purpose of learning karate was to learn to kick ass and defend himself when people was beating them up. But in reality, Mr. Miyagi saw deeper than that. He saw that this individual, Danielson, can learn life skills, life lessons, what it means to love using the art of karate. And he wanted Danielson to learn the results of it and what karate actually is, and not what people try to make karate seem. And I think that that's what a lot of hard asses teach. A lot of hard asses teach those kinds of lessons. It seems rough and dirty and tough in the beginning, but it's not your damn business to know that right now. Your job is to learn in that experience. And I tell you what, I tell you what, if you can work or be around a hard ass, there's so many benefits that you're gonna get from being around a hard ass. And I promise you, there are more benefits of being around a hard hard ass than there are cons. Because a hard ass knows what you need to know, they just don't want to tell you. They just rather teach it to you. Man, I had these interns come into my company. Um, and I tell you, I try to scare the shit out of people when they come to my brand. When people try to come in my business, I'm like, they want to work for me, they want to do this. You, my objective is to scare them. I'm the Mr. Miyagi, right? I'm coming in here trying to scare them. Like, hey, we don't play the radio. I don't accept excuses from people. I hate that. I hate excuses. I absolutely hate it. And even when I go to make an excuse to someone, I say, wait, bo, bo, bo, back up. I'm about to make an excuse. I try to pull excuses out of my vocabulary. I don't even surround myself around people who make excuses for something. Because individuals who make excuses for something are your ordinary people. But if you want to be extraordinary, you don't make excuses, you find ways. And hard asses don't take excuses very lightly. Here, let's look at um what being a hard ass does not mean, right? All right, so being a hard ass does not mean being disrespectful, right? That's not a hard ass. It does not mean yelling all the time. It didn't say yelling at all, it's yelling all the time. So people who I hear be like, Jamie, you be fussing. I do be fussing because, you know, I care, it's passion. But uh being a hard ass does not mean yelling all the time. Keyword all. It does not mean embarrassing people, it does not mean never apologizing, it does not mean treating people like machines, it does not mean being emotionally unavailable, and it does not mean my way or nothing in every situation. I had an intern, I was telling you guys, who came in to enter. I'm talking this intern in the interview, spoke a heavy game, heavy, and I believed it. And what's crazy is I was excited about this intern, and I was like, okay, I'm feeling good about this. And sometimes hard asses can be wrong, and there's nothing more disappointing to a hard ass than when we're wrong about somebody we thought had potential. That shit hurt like hell. So when you meet somebody and they give you this, oh, I can do this, I can be this, I can be that, I could be this great thing, and then you put that shit to the test and you find out, okay, you ain't all that, you know, and it's really hard, right? So as hard asses, we look for individuals who are obsessed. The only people who can handle hard asses is people who are obsessed with what they're doing. Everybody claimed to be obsessed, but in reality, most of them are not. Most of them are not. Um, let's give some examples, right? Of some celebrities who were hard asses and the benefits of them being a hard ass. I'm gonna read a case study here. Um, you guys already know I'm starting with Kobe. Uh Kobe was my man. You know, I'm not a basketball person at all. I've never been to a game, I've never watched a full basketball game. But I love Kobe. I love his mentality. All right, so the article here reads Kobe is probably one of the clearest examples. His Mamba mentality became connected to relentless preparation process and trusting the work when the moment came. Kobe won five NBA championships, was an 18-time all-star, and spent his entire 20-year NBA career with the Lakers. I want to stop right there for a second. Kobe spent his entire years with the Lakers, not switching up or anything like that, right? And I I look at that like life, right? A lot of people who claim to be obsessed with uh craft, or a lot of people who claim to be hard asses, they're always looking for the next easiest things. And Kobe wasn't looking for the next easiest thing, he dealt with the positive, the mids, and the uglies of the Lakers and stayed committed the entire time, didn't go nowhere for 20 years and gave 110. Hard ass, true hard asses are heavy on loyalty, and Kobe Bryant was heavy on loyalty to the Lakers. That's why he was a hard ass to his team, because in his mind, this is this is our family. The Lakers is our family, and if you want to be a Laker, you're gonna have to know how to play the game. You got to come here to win. And I think that that's naturally how hard asses are. It's not winning to the degree where you got to bring other people down, it's winning to the degree where you push yourself beyond the limits you didn't think you can do. Anyways, let me finish reading. All right, so Kobe was not known as easy, he was known as demanding. Some people love that, and some people could not handle it. But the ones who could handle that level of expectation often became sharper because they were around someone who did not let them hide behind excuses. Kobe was a hard ass because winning required a standard most people only like to talk about. Kobe did not make people comfortable, right? Kobe made people confront whether they were serious about what they say they are serious about. And everybody comes in here talking crazy crap about how they think they're so serious in their career, because talking it is easier. But if you're really serious about your career, you need to find a hard ass somewhere in your circle who's going to push you even when you don't want to be pushed. If you're the type of person that's like, I don't need a hard ass in my circle, I need things to be simple and easy. You are not going to succeed. I don't give a fuck what nobody says about this show right now. I don't care what you have to say about the comments. You need a level of hard ass in your life who's going to push you. Most people call them, most people call it like um, or they say the term, I don't want a yes man. So it's good to have yes men too. Most people, all they want to be filled with is yes men. Fuck that. I want to be filled with hard asses. I want to be filled with that because I need to push myself beyond what I can go. Um, you need it. I mean, when You think about most movies and televisions or cartoons, there's always a hard ass somewhere who's pushing people beyond their limits. You know, even when you think about relationships, right? In the relationship, uh a romantic relationship, somebody in that romantic relationship has to be the hard ass. And the question is, who? Who's gonna be the hard ass? Um, and the hard ass is the person that makes one of the hard decisions, but also to push the other person to be better. To be fair, there should be a level of hard ass from both sides because both sides of that relationship, people should be pushing themselves to be better. Most people want relationships that are easygoing and like, hey, let's move on with that. Whatever the case is, most people, most people are wanting easy, easy job, easy career, easy money, easy life. And in reality, that's just not how life operates. There has to be some hearts, and hard asses challenge you to be greater. I promise you, man. I feel like hard asses have the most purest hearts on the planet. Hard asses have the most purest hearts on the planet. When you think about hard asses in the black community and entertainment, we just named Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan was a hard ass, uh Serena Williams was a hard ass, Tyler Perry was a hard ass. People even said Beyonce was a hard ass, right? And it's because being a hard ass is necessary to get people to the level they need to be at. Not everybody can be a hard ass. Not everybody can be a hard ass, but some people can deal with a hard ass. And if you can deal with a hard ass, I feel like people who can deal with a hard ass become greater than the hard ass, right? And that's that's a lovely feeling. But people who can't deal with a hard ass will always be looking for the easy way out of things, you know what I mean? So let's talk about what people become when they handle a hard ass. Since we're talking about this, there's some studies that we found. So it says that people who can handle a healthy hard ass often becomes better in the long run because they are forced to grow up in areas where they used to being comfortable. So to be uh, so sorry, let me redo this here. Let me redo this, Russia. All right, so let's talk about what people become when they can handle a hard ass, because we just talked about that, right? So people who can handle a healthy hard ass often become better in the long run because they are forced to grow up in areas where they are used to being comfortable. They become more disciplined when they're able to deal with a hard ass. They become more reliable, um, they become more accountable, they stop needing to be babysat. Um, people who can deal with a hard ass learn how to take correction without collapsing. People who can deal with a hard ass learn that feedback is not rejection. People who can deal with a hard ass develop thicker skin. People who can deal with a hard ass become people who can perform under pressure. People who can deal with a hard ass become leaders because they were once held to a standard that felt uncomfortable. That's a person who can handle a hard ass. That's what you become from a hard ass. Hard ass teach you things. Some people don't want that, they walk away because they want easy. Cut that piece. Alright, so with that, um, I want to leave you guys with a few things. So another article here speaks about you build people who can survive pressure, right? That's what hard asses do. They build people who can survive pressure. A lot of people can't. That's why I have a lot of people quit my company. And I be thanking God, because I would rather find out now who can survive pressure than to find out in five years who can't. I would rather not, right? People who are never challenged often fall apart when life gets real. A hard ass prepares people for reality, not fantasy, not comfort, reality. Uh, bills do not care about your feelings, clients do not care about your excuses. Competition does not care about your your well-being. A hard ass teaches people how to execute even when they do not feel like it, right? That's that's what a hard ass does. You know, it says, you know, separate serious people from casual people. That's what hard asses do. This is one of the biggest benefits to being a hard ass. They separate serious people from people who are casual. That's why people who quit fucking jobs, because the job was hard. I had an intern or one of my teammates quit a while ago because they said the job was too hard. It's too much, it was too demanding. Good. Get out of here. Goodbye. Thank you. I appreciate it. Don't call me no more. That's crazy. That's absolutely crazy, right? That people quit because it's too hard. Instead of saying, how can I make this work? I need this, and that's the saddest part. People quit on things they actually need because it's too hard. And then you know what they do? They pivot, they pivot in the wrong way. They pivot to something a little bit easier because they feel like, okay, wait a minute, this wasn't working. I can't do this. Instead of saying, This is what I wanted to do, this has always been my dream. I knew that there was gonna be some uglies to this. What do I need to do? Ain't nobody gonna do that. Only a small percentage of people will do that. When things get hard, people run. Hard asses, figure it out. That's what we do as hard asses. We don't run from it, we figure it out. In relationships, shit get hard, we figure it out. You know, unless the other person just really ain't there and ain't doing their part. And the one thing about a hard ass in a relationship is you know, we can see when there's no progress being made in a relationship, in a business, in anything. You do something as a hard ass, and you're constantly doing this same thing over and over again, and you're not getting any different results, just the same thing. You get to a point as a hard ass where it doesn't even become a point of, and this is this is a trap. And as a hard ass, when a hard ass is dealing with somebody in a relationship and you see that the person is not making any changes in that relationship, the hard ass becomes consumed by making those changes to a point where it's no longer even about what it was originally about. Now it becomes, I need to prove that I can make this happen. I'm challenging myself. And that's not that's not always a good thing. You gotta realize that you can't change everybody. And hard asses have to have an eye for people in the beginning that says, nah, I'm not gonna give this kind of energy to this person. I'm gonna give this, but I'm not gonna push this beyond that. We gotta know where you stand. Hard asses gotta know the deal. You know, like I told you earlier, hard asses separate serious people from casual people. A hard ass naturally filters people, hard ass naturally sh are able to identify that. The casual ones call you difficult as a hard ass. That's what casual people say. Um they call you difficult when you're a hard ass. That's a casual mindset. The serious ones call hard asses necessary. The people who want comfort will leave, the people who want growth will stay to get better when dealing with a hard ass. Listen, that's all I have for you today, right? I hope that this episode has opened up some mindset to what it means to be a hard ass. You know, I don't think all hard asses are bad. I think people will mask a hard ass and try and make it seem like their intentions are good, but in reality it's not. Genuinely, like hard asses have a really good heart. And if you're a hard ass and you know that your intentions for somebody is to grow and push them to the next level. Um, because you want to see that, you want to see them do good, genuinely want to see them. That's what hard asses are really about. Think about some of the greatest movies, like Remember the Titans with Denzel Washington, hard ass, lean on me, what was it? Joe Clark, hard ass. That's how he changed the school. Grid Iron Game, the movie, hard ass. Like people need hard asses to go to the next level. Hell, even Dragon Ball Z, Vegeta's the hard ass of everybody. He's the reason why Goku, nice ass, always leveling up. He knows that Vegeta challenges him. And that's what it really takes, right? At the end of the day, being a hard ass is not something you need to be ashamed of if it comes from the right place. If your standards are rooted in excellence, discipline, care, purpose, and growth, stand on that. But also check yourself. Make sure your hard ass energy is building people, not breaking them. Make sure you're demanding without being degrading. Make sure you are holding people accountable without forgetting they are still human. Because the world needs people with standards. The world needs people who will say, no, that is not good enough. The world needs people who will push others past comfort into capability. So if you're a hard ass, maybe the goal is not to soften who you are. Maybe the goal is to sharpen how you lead. Thank you guys for tuning in. You guys want to find us at on all major platforms? You can also find us at uh UTE Podcast.com. I'm your host, Jameen Delmas. And until then, I'll see you guys on the next episode. Talk soon.