Why Ego Is the Most Expensive Thing You Own
Most people think the biggest threat to their business is the market, the competition, or the economy. It usually is not. The most expensive thing a leader owns is the one thing they refuse to put down. Their ego.
Mike Kirby has spent more than four decades building Performance Financial and watching other people build, and sometimes wreck, their own companies. His view is blunt. Ego does not just bruise relationships. It destroys businesses, lifestyles, and families. And it almost always does its damage quietly, long before anyone notices the bill.
The Definition That Changes Everything
Ask most people to define ego and you get something vague about confidence or arrogance. Mike uses a sharper definition.
“The best definition I have ever heard of it is edging God out.”
Whether or not faith is central to your life, the mechanic underneath that phrase is worth sitting with. Ego is what happens when you push everything else out of the center and put yourself there instead. The team that got you here. The mentor who opened the door. The spouse who carried the home while you built. Ego edits all of them out of the story and leaves one name on the marquee.
That is why it is so expensive. The moment you become the center, everyone else becomes supporting cast. And people do not stay supporting cast for long.
Where Ego Actually Comes From
Here is the part most people get wrong. Ego does not come from strength. It comes from insecurity.
Mike traces it back to what he calls an inferiority complex. Think about the gifted kid in sports. Genetically ahead of everyone, told their whole life that they are the best, moved up from little league to high school to college always hearing the same message. By the time they reach the top, you can spot them instantly.
They are fragile. They are hurt by words. They are hurt when anyone suggests they could be better. They will not let people critique or coach them, because their whole identity is built on already being the best. That is not confidence. That is a person protecting a wound.
This matters for business owners because the same pattern shows up in the corner office. The leader who cannot take feedback is not strong. They are scared.
The Victim Mentality That Follows
Once ego takes hold, a second cost shows up. The victim mentality.
When you are the center of your own universe, nothing that goes wrong can be your fault. The deal fell through because of them. The hire did not work out because of them. The market turned because of bad luck. Every failure gets outsourced to someone else.
Mike is direct about why this is fatal in business. The ultimate job of a leader is to attract and keep good people, and the goal is to put other people first. The bigger your ego, the harder both of those become. You cannot build a team while keeping all the credit and none of the blame.
A One Word Test You Can Run Today
If you want a practical gut check, Mike offers one that takes about thirty seconds.
Write down something you are proud of. Use the word I. I built this. I closed that. I made this happen. Now go back and change every I to we. We built this. We closed that. We made this happen.
Watch what happens to the sentence. It becomes inclusive. It lets other people feel part of the success. The story gets bigger instead of smaller.
A person running on ego physically struggles to do this, because sharing the success feels like losing it. That resistance you feel when you swap I for we is the most honest ego audit you will ever run.
The Cliff Nobody Sees Coming
Mike has a picture for how this ends. Imagine climbing a cliff. In business you climb it the hard way, one difficult thing after another, until you reach what you think is the pinnacle. You look back, and you decide that nobody helped you get there.
That belief is the last step before the fall. You drop like a rock, and then you get humbled. The only people who recover are the ones honest enough to look back and finally use the first person pronoun the right way. It was my fault. I did not put other people first. How could I have done this better?
The same word that wrecks you on the way up can rebuild you on the way down. The difference is whether you use I to take credit or to take responsibility.
Build the Taproot, Not the Ego
So what do you build instead of ego? Mike answers with a tree.
A tree starts with a seed that falls and sends down a taproot. For a person, that taproot is study, faith, commitment, and goals. The deeper it goes, the higher and wider the tree can grow. Business works exactly the same way. You need a real skill someone will pay for, and a root that keeps going deeper as you grow.
When people fall short, Mike says, it is usually because the taproot is too shallow. They never put in enough time to build real self confidence, so they fake it with ego instead.
And here is the line worth taping to your monitor. Self confidence is different than ego. Self confidence wrapped in humility sounds like this. I have more to do. I have more to learn. If I am the smartest person in the room, I am in the wrong room. That person listens more than they talk, and they almost never fall off the cliff.
The Real Cost, and the Way Down
Ego does not send you an invoice. It just quietly raises the price of everything. Your team trusts you less. Your family feels edited out. Your blind spots grow because nobody is allowed to point at them.
The way out is not more confidence. It is deeper roots and a little humility. Put other people first, swap your I for we, and let someone coach you. That is not weakness. That is the most durable competitive advantage you can build.
If this hit something for you, that is usually a sign there is a real conversation worth having. The team at Performance Financial helps business owners build a financial life with deep roots, not a tall ego. Book a time to talk and let’s get into the specifics of your situation.
Transcript
Sean: Today we’re going to talk about how ego is expensive, not only in life and family, but in business. The one big idea is that ego destroys businesses, lifestyles, and families. One of the things I always have to remind myself, especially in today’s world, is that in this comparison internet age it is so easy to get caught up in yourself, where the whole world becomes defined by you and what you have.
That’s the opposite of one of the things we talked about last episode, which was putting people first. So, Dad, I want you to tell us some stories and give a little background about how you’ve seen this play out, because you’ve seen a lot more than I have.
Mike: Well, I think you first have to start with what ego actually is. The best definition I have ever heard of it is edging God out. You can take that all the way back to Genesis and original sin, when the serpent came to Adam and Eve and said, if you’ll just eat from this tree of knowledge, you will be just like God. That’s why he doesn’t want you to do this.
If you bring that all the way to the human experience today, there are lots of things that can cause a person’s ego, that edging God out, to become prevalent in their life. To me, the very first one is probably an inferiority complex. Everything around a person directs them toward being told you are always the best. Look at what you have. Look at how much you have succeeded. Look at how much you have achieved.
We watched this in sports when our kids were throwing baseballs and footballs. If a kid’s whole life, genetically, he was above everybody else, if he had a certain skill or talent, he was always told you are the best. Now fast forward that from little league into junior high, then into high school, into college, into the pros. You can tell very quickly which individual shows up on the field with an ego. Generally, they are very fragile people. They are hurt by words. They are hurt by other people saying you could always be better. Well, I am the best. They don’t allow people to critique or coach them. It is an attitude as much as anything.
So from an ego perspective, how does that affect you? If the ultimate job in business is to attract and keep good people, and the goal is to put other people first, then the bigger your ego, the harder that is. And then the victim mentality sets in. That didn’t happen because I’m a victim. That didn’t happen, and it’s always somebody else’s fault. To me, ego is one of the most dangerous things we have as human beings.
Now, we all have the ability to say, boy, I did pretty well at that. But the difference is being able to tell yourself I put the work in. I really worked hard and that happened. That actually worked. Versus, I didn’t have to work, but it still happened, so it must be just because of me.
The challenge I would give everybody is this. What if you were writing a letter to somebody, and you wrote I think this, I believe this, I know this. Now what if you changed the I, that first person pronoun, to we. We did this, we know this, we achieved this. The letter takes on a completely different dynamic. It’s inclusive. It allows people to feel part of the success. When an ego shows up, it is very difficult for that person to share the success. It is all about me.
If you think of a cliff, you climb that cliff in business all the way up. Hard things, hard things, hard things. But you reach what you think is the pinnacle, and you look back and you believe that nobody helped you along the way. The next step is complete failure. You are going to fall like a rock, and then you are going to be humbled. If you are smart enough to realize it and reflect, you are going to look back and say, now is the time to use the first person pronoun. It was my fault. I didn’t put other people first. How could I have done this differently or better?
Each time, in the world that you and I live in, as long as we stay grounded in God, put Him first, approach Him with humility and say teach me Lord, show me what I should be doing, if I’m headed down the wrong path, through prayer, through scripture, through study, He’s going to show me that I’m just doing this wrong. I have found personally that if I put everybody else first in a servant leadership position, where my job is to help you be better, whether you are an employee, a client, or just a person on the sidewalk, then my life is more fulfilled and gratifying than if I said, I need to cut in front of you, I deserve that promotion.
Sometimes the environment you are in is just not going to allow you to be the servant leader you should be, because everybody’s on this ladder trying to be cutthroat. Nobody likes an environment where everybody is trying to backbite. Take a moment, humble yourself, and say, what can I do to help you? You look like you’re having a bad day. How can I help? You’ll change your world. Your attitude will change. All of a sudden people open up to you unlike they ever have, whether it’s a client, an employee, or just somebody on the sidewalk.
Sean: Yeah. This last service at Traders, Pastor Aaron talked about the same idea. His big piece was the not enough. That’s insecurity, right? What’s the thing that’s holding you back from your relationship with God, your relationship with your spouse, your kids, your work? What’s holding you back? Just surrender that. They gave everybody a pen and a piece of paper and had everyone write down their insecurity, the thing they don’t feel like they’re enough at. Then at the end you take it up to the altar and you leave it before God and come back and worship.
One of the statements you’ve always said, and I think it’s the same idea, is leave your ego at the door. Leave your ego at the altar. Leave that insecurity where it needs to be, and surrender yourself to work, to play, to all of it. Where have you seen ego get expensive, going even back to your corporate days? What have you seen where somebody was on the right path and then they tripped over themselves?
Mike: Let’s go back to the word insecurity, because that generally manifests itself in behavior. I’m so insecure that I’ve got to find relief somewhere. Whether that’s an extramarital affair, whether that’s alcohol or drugs, or whether that’s what I would call the petty things, like gossip and things that are conniving.
So if you think about insecurities, how do we remedy those? I want you to think about a tree. A tree grows in two ways. The very first thing that happens is a seed falls from the tree. It sinks into the soil and the taproot starts. If you take that from a human perspective, my taproot has to be based on study, faith, commitment, and goals. That’s my taproot. From there it starts to spread out, and then all of a sudden a sprout comes up.
The deeper my taproot, the more studied I am, the more commitment I have, the more places I put my energy in a positive way toward my goals, the more my tree is going to grow. It’s going to grow as high as it possibly can to reach the sun, and then it’s going to spread out. You think about business, and it works exactly the same way. First of all, I’ve got to have a skill set that somebody wants to pay me for. I have to have an education, or an ability to provide something that people are willing to pay for. That root keeps going deeper and deeper as I grow, and then my business continues to grow higher.
So from an ego perspective, what I see people really falling short on is that their taproot is too shallow. They haven’t spent enough time to have the self confidence. Self confidence is different than ego. If you wrap self confidence with humility, knowing I’ve got more I have to do, I’ve got more I have to learn, if I’m the smartest guy in the room then I’m in the wrong room, then I’m willing to listen more than talk.