he gave back the four million out of bravado

the hardest call on when to walk away from a deal isn't the bad deal you can see. it's the bad deal you take to prove who you are.

a construction founder turned author came back on the show for part two, and he told a story i keep thinking about.

phase one of a large earthwork contract made his company somewhere between four and five million dollars in profit. good work, good money.

then came phase two. and every sign said no. a bad client. tedious work. high risk.

he said yes anyway. his words... "and i did it because of the bravado of, this is the kind of work we do, why say no? but all the signs were, get out, this is a bad client."

phase two ate most of what phase one made. net result, near zero.

he didn't lose money because he misread the risk. he read it fine. he lost money because saying no felt like admitting he wasn't the kind of company he wanted to be.

that's the most expensive yes there is. the one you say to protect an identity.

he had a frame for this that i liked. he called it being a forward gapper. you keep moving the goalposts. you hit the number and the number moves. he brought up the old rockefeller story... how much is enough? just one more.

and he described identity as a movie set. it looks like a building from the front. walk around the back and it's plywood and two by fours, propped up to hide whatever we're afraid of underneath.

the bravado yes is the movie set talking.

now here's the part that made the episode. the night before we taped, he walked away from a deal. bad terms. he didn't take them.

same man, same industry, different answer. the difference wasn't the deal. it was whether he knew why he was in it.

he credited a line to rumi... "if you know your why, you can accomplish any how." i'd add the flip side. if you know your why, you can also refuse any how that doesn't serve it.

think about a surfer. the good ones don't paddle for every wave. they let most of them roll under. that's not fear. that's knowing which one is theirs.

for founders, this shows up everywhere. the customer who'll cost you more than they pay. the investor whose terms will own your next five years. the partnership that looks good in a press release. you know the signs. the question is whether you'll act on them when your pride is in the room.

right choices for the right reasons. not bravado.

a good rule of thumb. if the only reason left to say yes is that saying no would feel small, say no.

what struck me most was the order of events. the expensive lesson came first. the clean walk away came years later, the night before we taped. understanding why he said yes the first time is what let him say no the second time.

most of us don't get that lesson for free. we pay for it once, and the question is whether we learn it the first time or keep paying.

and you can usually tell which deals are bravado deals before you sign. they're the ones where you catch yourself explaining to someone why it's fine, and the reasons sound more like who you are than what the numbers say.

a lot of how i decide came from books like his and the ones that shaped him. i keep the list here.

so what's the deal you said yes to last year to prove something... and what did it cost you?