Why Ego Is the Most Expensive Thing a Business Owner Can Carry
If you run a business, ego is not a personality quirk. It is a line item. It shows up in the truck you financed to look successful, the hire you would not coach, and the partnership that fell apart because nobody put the agreement in writing. On a recent episode of Invest Your Time Wisely, Sean Kirby sat down with his father and business partner, Mike Kirby, to talk about a cost most owners never put on the books. The cost of ego.
What follows is the bigger idea pulled out of that conversation, built for the owner who is succeeding on paper but feels stretched thin everywhere else.
Ego Is Edging God Out
Mike offers a definition that reframes the whole problem. Ego is edging God out. It is the quiet decision to put yourself at the center, to take the credit, to believe you climbed alone.
That belief feels like confidence. It is actually fragility. As Mike puts it, “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.” The math is simple. The more space your ego takes up, the less room there is for the people who actually make the business work.
You can see the early warning sign in the victim mentality. When ego runs the show, nothing is ever your fault. Every missed goal has an external excuse. That posture feels protective in the moment, but it quietly closes the door on the feedback that would have made you better.
The Cliff Nobody Warns You About
Mike describes the trajectory of an ego-driven climb with a picture worth keeping. You scale the cliff in business, one hard thing after another, until you reach what looks like the pinnacle. Then you look back and tell yourself a dangerous story. Nobody helped me get here.
That is the moment the fall begins. When you believe you climbed alone, the next step is straight down, and the landing is humbling. The owners who recover are the ones willing to reflect and ask a better question. How could I have done this differently, and who did I forget to thank along the way?
There is a small linguistic test for this. Write down your wins using the word I, then rewrite them using the word we. The second version is inclusive. It lets the people around you feel part of the success they helped build. Ego struggles to share credit. Leadership insists on it.
Build a Deeper Taproot
So how do you replace ego with something sturdier? Mike reaches for a tree.
A tree grows in two directions at once. First it grows down, sending a taproot into the soil. Only then does it grow up toward the sun. For a person, that taproot is built from study, faith, commitment, and clear goals. The deeper it goes, the higher and wider the visible growth can reach.
Business obeys the same rule. You need a skill someone will pay for, and that skill has to keep deepening as you grow. The trap, Mike says, is a shallow taproot. People want the height without the depth, the rewards without the root. They hit a ceiling and cannot understand why they stopped growing.
Real self-confidence is different from ego because it travels with humility. The mindset is simple. If I am the smartest person in the room, I am in the wrong room. That is why Mike treats “I don’t know” as one of the most valuable phrases he owns. It keeps the taproot growing.
The Contribution and Reward Scale
Here is the financial heart of the conversation, and the part every owner should sit with.
Picture a scale. On one side, contribution. On the other side, rewards. The honest path is to make the contribution first and let the rewards follow. But ego wants to reverse the order. It wants the reward now, on the promise that the work will come later. Mike has a name for whatever fills the gap between the reward you took and the contribution you have not yet made. He writes it in the middle of the scale. Debt.
Make that debt big enough and there are not enough hours in the day to earn your way out of it. You end up working hard and still falling behind, because you already spent the rewards you had not earned.
He learned this watching a culture that prized perception over substance. A colleague once told him the difference between two states. In one, your money is in the bank. In the other, you drive it and wear it. Everybody looked rich. As Mike remembers it, “they had no money. They were strapped.” The perception worked. The balance sheet did not.
When the Purchase Is Worth It
This is not a lecture against ever spending money. Mike draws a clear line between ego purchases and necessary ones. In the business, the rule is this. When it costs you not to have something, you better have it. The extra hire when you are drowning. The equipment that does the job right. Those are investments, not indulgences.
The danger is letting personal ego spending grow until the business cannot fund it. Sean shares his own near miss. He wanted a pool, ran the numbers, and was ready to make it work. His wife pulled out the written goal list and pointed out that the pool was not on it. Two nights later a freak accident settled the question for him. Sometimes the goal list, and life itself, tells you the reward is early.
Serve First and the Math Takes Care of Itself
The antidote to ego is not a tactic. It is a posture. Serve first.
When you genuinely care more about the people around you than about how you appear, your ego has no room to run. Mike believes the returns are unavoidable. It is impossible to give more than you get, because giving without expectation is the most valuable thing you can offer, and it comes back in ways a balance sheet cannot capture.
That is the whole philosophy of the show in one line. As Mike says it, “if I invest my time wisely in helping enough people get where they want to go, I’ll always be where I want to be.” Humility compounds faster than ego ever could. The owners who understand that build something that lasts.
If this landed for you and you want a real conversation about building a business that serves your life instead of running it, reach out to the Performance Financial team. We would love to find a time to talk.
Transcripts
Mike: I’ve seen egos destroy businesses, lifestyles, families. I had somebody from California tell me, in Iowa your money’s in the bank. In California we drive it and wear it. Everybody was in a Mercedes and a Lexus. I just thought they were rich. So the perception worked, but they had no money. They were strapped. You climb that cliff in business all the way up, and you look back, and you believe that nobody helped you along the way. The next step is complete failure. You’re going to fall like a rock.
Sean: Welcome to the Invest Your Time Wisely podcast. I’m Sean Kirby and I’m joined with my dad, Mr. Mike Kirby. He was on the last episode, and today we’re going to talk about how egos are expensive, not only in life and in family, but in business.
The one big idea is that egos destroy 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, to let the world become defined by you, as opposed to one of the things we talked about last episode, which is putting people first.
So, Dad, I want you to tell 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: I think you first have to start with what ego is, and 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.
If you take 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 thing is probably an inferiority complex. Not one that’s so prevalent that everybody goes, wow, that person really is edging God out. Everything is directing them toward being told, you’re always the best, look at what you’ve succeeded at, you’ve achieved so much.
We watched this in sports when our kids were throwing baseballs and footballs. If a kid’s whole life, genetically he was above everybody, they had a certain skill or talent, and they were always told, you are the best. Now fast forward that from Little League into junior high, then high school, then college, then the pros. You can tell very quickly which individual shows up on the field with an ego.
Generally they’re very fragile people. They are hurt by words. They’re hurt by other people saying, you could always be better. Well, I am the best. They don’t allow people to critique or coach. It’s an attitude as much as anything.
Sean: So from an ego perspective, how does that affect you?
Mike: 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. Well, that didn’t happen because I’m a victim. That didn’t happen, it’s an excuse, it’s always other people’s fault. To me, an ego is one of the most dangerous things we have as human beings.
Now, we all have the ability to go, boy, I did pretty well at that. The difference is being able to differentiate between 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 go, hey, I think this, and I believe this, and I know this, and so forth. Now change the I, the 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’s very difficult for them to share the success. It’s all about me.
And 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. You look back, and you believe that nobody helped you along the way. The next step is complete failure. You’re going to fall like a rock. And then you’re going to be humbled.
If you’re smart enough to realize and reflect, you’re 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?
As long as we stay grounded in God, put Him first, approach Him with humility, with teach me Lord, show me what I should be doing, if I’m headed down the wrong path, then through prayer, through scripture, through study, you’re 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, then my job is to help you be better. Whether you’re an employee, a client, or just a person on the sidewalk, my life is more fulfilled and gratifying than if I went, well, I need to cut in front of you. Whether that’s cutting in front of you at work, or I deserve that promotion, the better question is, what can I do better?
Sometimes the environment you’re 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’s 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. And 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: This last service at Traders, Pastor Aaron talked about 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, work? What’s holding you back, and just surrender that. They gave everybody a pen and a piece of paper and everyone wrote down their insecurity, what they don’t feel like enough at. At the end, you take it up to the altar and you leave it before God, then 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, play, that sort of thing. Where have you seen egos get expensive, going back even to your corporate days? What have you seen where somebody was on the right path and then they were tripping over themselves?
Mike: We’ll go back to the word insecurity, because that generally manifests itself in behavior. Whether that’s, I’m so insecure that I’ve got to find relief somewhere, whether in an extramarital affair, in alcohol, in drugs, or in what I would say the petty things, such as gossip, 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 has two ways it grows. It grows first gravitonically. The very first thing that happens is that seed falls from the tree and sinks into the soil, and the taproot starts. If you take that from a human perspective, my taproot has got 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. That’s what’s called phototonic.
The deeper my taproot, the more study, the more commitment, the more places I put my energy in a positive way toward my goals, the more my tree is going to grow phototonically, as high as it possibly can to reach the sun, and then spread out.
Business works exactly the same way. I’ve got to have, first of all, 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.
From an ego perspective, what I see people really falling short of 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, that I’ve got more I have to do, more I have to learn, if I’m the smartest guy in the room I’m in the wrong room, then I’m willing to listen more than talk. When I do talk, it’s generally going to be a question. Tell me more about that. If they ask me a question, then I’ll give whatever advice or opinion I may have. But my taproot has to continue to go down.
If you figure the average person is going to live maybe 85 years, that’s 744,000 hours. So how are my hours being spent? For the first 10 years of your life, you’re just being fed, watered, and clothed. You’re getting the basics of how to learn. But then from about 10 to 18, you’re involved in things, you’re around other people, you’re starting to socialize. By that age you can already see how the parents are telling those kids to act. Some parents don’t tell them how to act at all. Some parents are guiding them. Some parents are just letting them be feral. You can tell the difference. Ego and victimhood show up even at those early ages.
I’ve got to make sure, even with my new clients, that I’ve listened to them. With my young children, I listened to them, but I guided them along the way. It ain’t all about you. You’ve heard me talk about birthday parties when a hundred people show up for a one-year-old’s birthday party. I get it, they’re all grandkids. But I also go, that kid thinks the world revolves around them. By the time they’re 14, they’re lucky to get a cake on the kitchen table, and they’re going, what happened?
I like the idea of allowing people to grow humility, but get that taproot deep. You’ve got to decide, as a parent, as a business owner, how deep that root needs to go. Constantly study, constantly go to industry seminars, different things that are going to grow you deeper, so that when you’re able to provide services for your clients, they look at you and go, I’m paying because your taproot is deeper than mine.
As far as the corporate world is concerned, it’s anything you can imagine. Individuals with insecurities. Individuals who say, I have more seniority than you, I’m more this than you. But if you reached the ceiling because you didn’t take your taproot any deeper, well, that’s as high as you’re going to grow.
You and I are bird hunters. If you’re out hunting wild birds, a pheasant is going to fly, it’ll fly 50 feet in the air. But if it’s a pen-raised bird, raised in a 10-foot pen, it will never fly over that 10 feet. So it’s all about your environment. If your ego is stuck in an environment because it makes you feel better, but you’re not growing, then you better get out of that environment. The only way you can is to humble yourself.
The one thing an education gives you is the confidence to say, I don’t know. That’s probably my favorite thing to say today, because there is a lot of stuff, especially in technology, I don’t know. Now, there are some things my taproot doesn’t want to know. If somebody asks me how this computer works, I don’t know, and I don’t care to know. What I care about is, does it work? If it doesn’t, I’m either going to get a new computer or somebody’s going to fix it.
Sean: As an employer who preaches leave your ego at the door, talk about some of the things that put people in a bad position when it comes to ego purchases. We work with clients of all sizes and shapes, people new to business and people who’ve been doing it a long time. I’ve seen it, I’ve done it, I’ve done the ego purchases in the past. It’s a lot harder now with the responsibility of four kids to go out and do anything for myself. The first thing I buy is diapers and food and shelter, the main things you offered me when I was 10 years old. I did buy a sauna recently. I’m going to put that as chapter three of the book, health is wealth. I just wanted a better sauna, so that was a bit of an ego purchase. What are the big pitfalls you’ve seen with ego purchases or lifestyle?
Mike: It’s the same old thing. Keeping up with the Joneses is probably the easiest way to say it. The perception of what car I drive, what clothes I wear, what my house looks like, what school my kids go to.
I mentioned in the previous episode that I worked in California. As a Midwest kid, we grew up in pretty humble beginnings. The rule was, if you don’t have the money to buy it, you don’t buy it. When I flew to California, about three or four months into the responsibility, and at the time we lived in Iowa, somebody said, you know the difference between Iowa and California? I said, no, besides the weather. They said, in Iowa your money’s in the bank, in California we drive it and wear it. It really struck me, because everybody was in a Mercedes and a Lexus back then, which were the cars to have. I just thought they were rich. So the perception worked, but they had no money. They were strapped.
I used to give a talk where I’d draw a scale on the whiteboard. On one side I put contribution, on the other side I’d put rewards. I would ask people, are you willing to make the contribution to get the rewards? The more contributions I make, the more chance of these rewards happening. Now, if I take the rewards before I make the contribution, I would always write in the middle of that scale the word debt.
So I’m willing to take the reward way before I’m able to make the contribution. That debt means I simply deserve, ego-wise, the reward just on the promise that I’m going to make the contribution. If you make that debt big enough, there aren’t enough hours in the day to make those contributions. Depending on what you do, you may work your tail off but still not get paid enough for all the rewards you took before you made the contributions. That’s when people start to fail. I’m going to show my success through product, through lifestyle, before I’ve ever made the contribution.
Unfortunately, in the United States today, that culture has been around for 30 years. Probably in the 80s, we had just come out of this huge recession in the 70s, and then there was this boom in the 80s. This is when Pretty Woman came out, BMWs, Lotus, all this stuff, and everybody wanted that perception, including myself. I had pictures of Porsches. I had pictures of all these cars that I wanted. Fortunately for me, interest rates were about 18 percent, and I made nine bucks an hour, so they weren’t going to loan me the money for a Porsche, or I would have tried to take that reward.
Emotionally, and I would say psychologically, I thought that was the pinnacle of success. My ego back then was that it’s material things, I need to show people how well I’ve done. Sixty-two years later, I look at things and go, I really don’t care anymore. I wear jeans and tennis shoes most every day. It used to be Wranglers and boots, but I’m too old for that, they don’t bend like they used to. But that’s the difference. As young people, I need to show other people my success. That’s the beginning of the ego. I get it. I’ve been there.
Sean: As a younger person in today’s world, I grew up in that social media era. I remember going to the book fair. Now I’ve got a kid who goes to the book fair, and you hand them 20 dollars and tell them don’t buy any posters, just buy books. But I remember you’d give me, I don’t know if it was 20 bucks, and I would buy the Lamborghini poster every single time and hang it in my room. Still, if you go to my Facebook Marketplace, I’m looking for a 1982 Porsche 911 with a whale tail, the same one you had when we were kids. It’s not the pinnacle of success, but right price, right place, it might all work out. It’s hard to get yourself back out of that mindset.
Funny story. We went through this big house transition in 2023 to 2024. We didn’t make a lot of ego decisions, we made decisions we had to make at the time, that then put us in a tight spot. But last summer we went to somebody else’s pool after church, and I was like, this is a nice pool, we need a pool. So I got home and called Marco, and said, hey, fast math, I don’t know if this is a dream where I want it to be a goal with the plans behind it. Marco comes back and goes, well, tell me what you want. So I sent him all the details, and he comes back with a price. In my head, I was expecting a much larger price, so I’m like, I’m sure I could scrape some pennies together and make this work. I go, Casey, you think we can pull this? She goes, you can’t do it, what are you doing? And funny enough, she brought the goal list back out on paper and goes, Sean, it’s not on the goal list. I was like, all right. Then Marco goes, well, I can get it in by August, same year. I go, that’s not what I was thinking, this is 2027, 2028, I’m looking further. And then two nights later, my barn burnt to the ground during a fireworks incident. As an insurance agent, I didn’t do it on purpose, it was a complete freak accident. That was me going back to Casey and saying, all right, sign from God, we’re not doing it. My ego got in my head of, yeah, you can do it, you can do the house with the pool.
Mike: But there is a difference. Going back to the beginning of this, edging God out, wanting material things, God wants us to have a wonderful life as long as we put Him first. That doesn’t mean you’re going to go on your knees and say, God, should I have a pool, and He’s going to go, yeah, Sean, you need it.
In the macro part of the world, there are going to be times you do things personally that you would never do in the business. The rule we have in business is, when it costs us not to have something, we better have it. For example, we’re overwhelmed, we need another person. Or we’re missing a piece of equipment to do the job better. With personal stuff, you just have to be very careful, from an ego perspective, that this doesn’t get out of control. Otherwise the business is going to hurt, because you can’t make enough money in the business to pay for all the ego stuff you bought personally.
Sean: Let’s go back to time. One of the things I watched when I graduated from school and was ready to move into my first house is that I was still very open to hand-me-down furniture, anything I could get, whether from the Salvation Army or an old relative, that we could fill the house with. What I watch today is that kids don’t do that.
Mike: And they certainly don’t want an old bed from somebody. They don’t want an antique piece of furniture. They want to go to Ikea, where they buy crap, but the perception has to be that everything is new. That’s the ego to me. You go, wait a minute, you can’t afford this, you can barely afford your rent, and now you’re going to put new furniture in.
So to me it’s just part of the culture. Social media doesn’t help it. All this onslaught of advertising that comes at you, 90 days same as cash, you don’t have to pay for a year. The whole system is geared toward what? The ego. You can have it, you can pay me later.
I was in Newcastle yesterday at the laundromat, and I pulled out and saw a truck in front of me. They park on both sides of the road, so I had to pull over, and it was one of those repo trucks picking up somebody’s Ranger boat. I thought, well, that’s a repo, somebody got over their skis and went, yeah, I’ll sign on the dotted line. The sales guy doesn’t care, because the sales guy sends it to a finance company, so they’re on the hook, and he got his commission.
Checking the ego at the door allows you to do a couple of things. The most important thing it does is give you peace. When I care more about what I think about me than I care about other people, that’s a problem. What I want to make sure I do is care more about other people, family, kids, the employees. When I care more about them, I don’t have a choice but to keep my ego in check. And if your ego gets out of whack, Casey will put you right back in place.
Sean: Absolutely. And vice versa.
Mike: That’s the balance. It’s the symbiotic relationship that allows you both to go, hey, I’m just me, and she’ll look at you and say, that’s where the goal planning sheet comes out.
Sean: She did the right thing. Pull the goal planning sheet out. It’s not on here. She did my move to me, it was crazy.
Mike: Well, you taught her well.
Sean: One of the things a lot of business owners get stuck with, ego-wise, is the power of delegation. We were listening to the first episode on the way in, and I talked about one of your mantras, do it, ditch it, or delegate it. Even, it’s quicker if I do this, I’m going to do it better than the new hire. Speak to what delegation does from an ownership ego standpoint, and where you see it crumble for some small business owners who maybe just can’t get past that plateau line because of their ego, and it’s not even on purpose.
Mike: It depends on what the task is. When I was 12 years old in the fall, if the grain leg stopped and we had a pile of corn 10 feet around and six foot tall, that wasn’t ego, and nobody had to train me. Terry Moore would just hand me a shovel and say, you need to shovel that corn into the hopper. It wasn’t a lot of training, the goal was to move the corn from there to there.
But if you take our industry, there are some very technical things. I can only delegate if the individual’s taproot is deep enough to be able to do it. It may be a skill set they’re not familiar with, but it’s going to take their taproot deeper by doing that. I have to coach them. I can’t just delegate it and hope they figure it out, because it’s not for them or me that they’re doing it, it’s for the client. I can’t risk losing the client relationship because I didn’t train the person to do it.
If I’m going to train them, I’m going to do it through systems. Those systems are transferable from me to you, and they’re inspectable from me to you. So if I’m going to delegate, I must give them a track to run on, one I can come back and check on, and make sure they feel completely comfortable asking questions. Then I’m measuring their capacity. Do they have a skill set that allows them to learn this? Some people aren’t good with numbers. We have to be good with numbers. If they’re not good with numbers, it doesn’t make them a bad person, but they’re either going to do some self-work on getting better with numbers, or I’ve got them in the wrong seat on the bus. I can’t spend hours upon hours hoping they get it. I need to be able to instruct, have them learn it, and then have the confidence that if I give them the same task again, I don’t have to train them again.
Sean: You’re not into a lot of partnerships personally. You have a few great partnerships and relationships. With personalities and egos, where do you see the biggest struggle when it comes to partnerships, and where ego jumps in?
Mike: In a partnership, everything starts out with a great idea. Let’s say it’s a restaurant. You’re good at this, I’m good at this, we’re going to start a restaurant. But let’s say you’re both really good at marketing and nobody knows how to cook. It’s not going to work. Or you say, I’m going to put some money in, that’s my part of the partnership, and I’m just going to show up occasionally to help. It’s not long before the person tasked with all the labor is going, I’m doing way more than you are. And this person goes, but you couldn’t do it without the money. They’re both correct.
That’s where, in a partnership, an operating agreement has to be set up front that says, here’s the task that’s your responsibility, here’s the task that’s my responsibility. If you don’t have that and you’re just winging it, it’s destined to fail. We also have to remember that most individuals have other individuals they’re responsible to, a spouse. So partner one may have a clear understanding of what his or her role is, partner two has that same thing, but partner three and partner four, the spouses, don’t. The pressure comes in, we’re not getting anything out of this, or you’re doing all the work and they’re not. Partnerships are incredibly difficult. But if everybody has it in writing, here’s what my role is, here’s what your role is, it starts to mitigate some of the friction.
Sean: It’s kind of that taproot. I’ve gotten better about advising it to more and more clients, just from seeing enough of them go sideways. It’s the marriage certificate. It’s the document Casey brought back out and put in front of me and said, this is not what we discussed originally. I see partnerships fail when there is frustration, but the piece of paper never comes back out. That deep-seated, almost disdain, those frustrations begin to bubble.
Mike: Sometimes, going back to our topic, it is ego. Sometimes it’s just miscommunication or poor communication. Keeping it on the ego side, as long as people can check their ego at the door and realize that whatever the partnership, call it marriage, I’m good at this and you’re good at this, and together we’re better, I’m better when I’m with you. As long as that’s open and people have dialogue, and as long as people are going, remember these goals we wrote down, that’s what we’re working toward, your taproot does this, my taproot does this, then we’re going to succeed. And then you have to last. You just have to make it last.
Sean: I think the best lesson I got was that your humility compounds faster than your ego. Let’s use marriage, because partnerships really are just a marriage, it’s just money in between, the same financial struggles. It’s when you wake up every day worried about how you’re going to make the other person’s life better, when you have the humility to go make a pot of coffee even if you don’t drink coffee, or start the shower because you know they’re coming up next. That humility is what edges things forward. It’s so much easier for the ego to drift further behind if you can just serve first.
Mike: Serve. There’s the word. As long as I’m serving first, everything tends to take care of itself. Now, there are people who would take advantage of that. That’s where the toughest word in business comes in. No. It is truly tough to tell people no. But if people are sucking your energy, pulling you off track, pulling your goals out of whack, sometimes you have to look at them and say, it’s time for me to say no. But with dignity. Say, it just doesn’t work, we tried it, it just didn’t work.
Sean: I think that goes back to the investment in the relationship in the first place. One of the things you’ve always said is you have to make daily deposits if you expect a withdrawal. You can’t turn into an ATM or a vending machine that works for free. You have to make those daily deposits. I used to struggle with this with friendships. I have wonderful friends, but as I’ve gotten older, it’s harder to make friends. Everybody’s living a thousand miles an hour, especially when you have kids, and everybody’s focused on one thing, themselves. We are apes, we’re worried about survival. When you make those deposits, part of that ego gets in the back of your head and you get jaded about, I do this all the time, I text first, I call. Being able to say, I serve that person because I love that person and I hope they’re doing well, with no expectation of the receiving side, is such a freeing thing. Call it surrender.
Mike: Absolutely. But I also believe it’s impossible to give more than you get. You cannot give and give and give and not get something. What I just heard you say is that your ego and your humility allow you to have no expectation, which is the most precious way to give. I have no expectation of anything back. From the receiver’s perspective, that is the greatest gift, because you didn’t want anything.
Sean: And you’ve called me out on it. Dad, you give too much free advice.
Mike: And I go, no, it’s not free advice. This is as much for me as it is for them. My job is to help them get where they want to go. If they choose to use this, they will. Hopefully the ones who appreciate what we did come back. But I’m not afraid to sit down with somebody for an hour. You’ve watched me, and I get nothing out of it financially, but emotionally and intellectually, I’m here to help. I’m not in the survival stage anymore.
Sean: So going back to invest your time wisely.
Mike: If I invest my time wisely in helping enough people get where they want to go, I’ll always be where I want to be. Always.
Sean: That’s where I get to wealth not being all about looking important. It’s about the relationships you build, the way you carry yourself. To anyone listening, if this resonates with you, more than anything it’s the original Mike-ism, you can’t give more than you get. If you serve first, it’s easy to leave the ego at the door.
Mike: I’m not going to edge God out. Whenever I hear the word ego, that’s immediately what comes to my brain. I’m not edging God out for you, I’m not edging God out for me, I’m not going to edge God out for anything. If I put Him first, which biblically says serve, love thy neighbor as thyself, and if you live by that, your ego is not going to show up. You may get your feelings hurt occasionally, but you’re going to get over it. They may be having a bad day, you never know.
Sean: Dad, I appreciate your time today. That was a great lesson. If you guys resonated with that, that’s a great way to invest your time wisely.