Good morning from New York City. What’s on my mind this morning is ego as it pertains to business,  and how it can help or hurt us in our business dealings. Talking to a dear friend of mine who is a business owner, he was telling me this story about a contract negotiation with an existing client, someone with whom he’s been working for many years. Somone who knows him really well, trusts him, etc. They were renegotiating a contract and it was taking forever.

I think in his mind he had a strong body of work for this client in particular,  and he’s an honest guy who values being trusted. He was offended by the whole process. I’m not sure he was ready to walk away from the whole thing, but he was definitely ready to send a not-nice email.

As the story goes, he was out to dinner with a friend, They were talking about something completely different, and this friend said to him “ego is never a good business”. A light bulb went off for my friend, and he decided not to do anything.  In the end, the contract which was a very lucrative three year contract, came back to him on the client’s letterhead word for word as my friend had drawn it up. His first thought was, ‘yeah, ego is never a good business’.

This got me thinking about when I was running my business, Scout Talent, in the headhunting world. I had a lot to say but instead of writing articles or having a voice on social media, the story that I was telling myself was that it would be egotistical. I was filtering any sort of media presence through the idea that it was about ego. Quite frankly, I think it was a form of self-sabotage, and I shot myself in the foot. Now I don’t have any regrets about that business – I was very successful in my own way – but I could have done so much more. And it’s true, I shot myself in the foot.

I know it’s completely different from my friend’s story, but I guess I would say the quote on ego –  ego is never a good business – has more than one angle. In my situation, I was looking at any potential media presence for myself through the wrong lens. That’s for sure.

That’s all for me today. Until next time, from my heart to yours.