It’s been a while, I know. I guess it’s best to write when I am inspired… and here I find myself at an event – “Master Your Power Within” presented by the Higher Laws team and Brandon Broadwater.
How I got here is a bit of a story, but I will keep that part concise – Andrea and I took a course by the Higher Laws group just over two years ago, and we committed to this next level, where we have spent three days so far learning about relationships.
Relationships form the foundation of everything we do. From friendships to family, business, and of course the one that we leap to immediately – our primary partner relationship.
Over the course of the first three days Andrea and I have both learned a lot about ourselves, and how we can be a better couple together. Good is good, but AWESOME is better!
That’s the summary – but I wanted to talk about one of my first and largest relationship lessons that I learned that isn’t related to my primary relationship – but related to business.
Now many of you know about my first million dollar business – this was a bootcamp company that I brought to Calgary, and subsequently grew across Alberta. There’s a really fun and long story behind that company, but I will keep that part short… as I really want to focus on the lesson, not the back-story. The key is that I found myself with a million dollar company after about four years of work – and owned the master franchise for the province of Alberta.
What I didn’t really understand at this point was how involved my ego was here – and it was. All the way to the bitter end.
I got to a point where I was in almost constant dispute with the franchise owners. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. It was a bit of a power struggle.
What it really was, as it turns out, was their pride versus mine (or ego).
What happened next was one for the books – I felt that I could force their hand. They felt that they could run my company without me.
We were both wrong.
We both lost.
My million dollar company vaporized more or less overnight. They discovered that they could not run my company to save their life – in the process their company became worth a fraction of what it had once been worth.
Nobody won.
Both of us felt we were right.
Neither of us really were.
So to get to the point – Brandon brought up something on day one of our course this week called the Pride Cycle. It’s a circle, and the cycle ends in a spanking.
The spanking I was on the receiving end of this time was ENORMOUS. It was worth a million dollars.
How’s that for a spanking?
And, unfortunately, that wasn’t my last spanking… BUT the good news is that despite this, and the spankings that I have had since, Brandon taught me a valuable lesson this week. The shortcut skips the spanking, which is preferable…. because the spanking hurts – and sometimes it takes a LONG while to get back up after being spanked.
The real key to success is to skip the spanking. You can skip the spanking by being HUMBLE. It’s really that simple.
While I cannot change the past, I can change how I deal this up going forward, and I appreciate the insight… NOT being spanked is my new preference!
The really tough part about this lesson? Even if I had been taught it before I made this mistake, I probably wouldn’t have learned.
Seems I learn best from making mistakes… regardless, I am grateful to Brandon Broadwater for the lesson. I am sure he will save me from a few more spankings going forward 😉