My success cost me my first marriage.

You've probably heard some version of that statement before.

Maybe it was on a podcast.

Maybe it came from a successful entrepreneur sitting on stage at a business conference.

Maybe it was someone sharing the story of how they built a multi-million-dollar company, created extraordinary wealth, and achieved everything they once dreamed about.

And somewhere in the story, they proudly admit:

"My success cost me my marriage."

"My success cost me time with my children."

"My success cost me my health."

These stories are often presented as badges of honour.

As if losing yourself, your family, your health, and your peace is simply the unavoidable price of becoming successful.

But is it?

Or have we become dangerously comfortable glorifying sacrifice without questioning the choices that created it?

Years ago, I worked with a multi-millionaire who taught me something I have never forgotten.

He Had Everything He Thought He Wanted

This man had already sold a company.

He had successfully exited the business.

He had money.

Financial freedom.

Other companies running.

Teams in place.

Status in his community.

From the outside, his life looked extraordinary.

He had everything most entrepreneurs, business owners, and ambitious professionals spend decades pursuing.

And yet, he felt completely disconnected from his life.

He had been referred to me by another coach who had worked with him for years.

The coach eventually reached a point where he simply said:

"I don't know what else to do with him."

He believed that perhaps my work around purpose, vision, direction, and strategy could help.

So we got on a call.

I usually approach those conversations with one simple mindset:

"I don't know if I can help you, but I'm willing to have a conversation and find out."

It didn't take long for me to see what was happening.

This man wasn't struggling because he lacked money.

He wasn't struggling because he needed another business.

He wasn't struggling because he needed another achievement.

He was struggling because somewhere along the journey of building his success, he had lost himself.

The Most Painful Part of His Success

There was one particular moment he shared with me that I still remember.

I could see the pain in his eyes as he spoke.

He told me about one of his sons.

Every year, his son would come to him and ask for a few hundred thousand dollars.

The son would take the money, disappear, spend it however he wanted, and return when he needed more.

What frustrated this man wasn't simply the money.

It was what his son had become.

He saw no ambition.

No drive.

No sense of direction.

The son he had once placed so many hopes and expectations on had become completely dependent on him.

And he hated it.

He felt trapped in a cycle he didn't know how to escape.

But as we explored the situation, something became increasingly clear.

The problem wasn't just his son's lack of ambition.

The father felt deeply disconnected from his son.

And that disconnection had been building for decades.

He Built Wealth, But Lost Connection

This man had spent approximately 20 years building his company.

Twenty years.

And during those years, he had made sacrifices.

He lost connection with his family.

He wasn't there when his children needed him.

He wasn't present when his family needed him.

Yes, he provided financially.

But financial provision is not the same thing as presence.

And deep down, he knew that.

He regretted it immensely.

His success had also come at a cost to his health.

His relationships.

His peace of mind.

His sense of purpose.

He was paranoid.

Disconnected.

Without direction.

And physically, his health was beginning to deteriorate.

If you looked at his life from the outside, you probably wouldn't have known any of this.

He lived in a custom mansion.

He hosted gatherings.

He gave to charity.

He was respected in his community.

From the outside, everything looked fine.

But internally, his life was falling apart.

And perhaps the most painful part was this:

He didn't know how to go back.

The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Success

We often hear successful people say:

"People don't know what my success cost me."

And sometimes they say it with pride.

Almost as if the destruction of their marriage, health, relationships, or personal life proves just how committed they were.

But here's the uncomfortable truth.

Success didn't necessarily cost them those things.

They made choices that did.

That distinction matters.

Because if we believe success automatically requires the destruction of everything else in our lives, then we start preparing ourselves to make those sacrifices before they are even necessary.

We begin to believe that being a successful entrepreneur means:

Missing family events.

Ignoring your health.

Working endlessly.

Being emotionally unavailable.

Destroying your relationships.

Sacrificing your peace.

Always chasing the next deal.

Always answering one more email.

Always working one more hour.

Always telling yourself:

"Once I build the business, I'll come back to my life."

But life doesn't wait.

People don't wait.

Your children don't remain the same age.

Your relationships don't stay frozen in time.

Your health doesn't pause until your business becomes successful.

Life continues while you are busy building.

The Difference Between Building Wealth and Building a Life

Let's be clear.

There is nothing wrong with making money.

There is nothing wrong with building a successful company.

There is nothing wrong with becoming wealthy.

Money creates options.

Financial security creates freedom.

Businesses can create opportunities for families, communities, employees, and generations.

The problem isn't ambition.

The problem is unconscious ambition.

The problem is pursuing a version of success that you have never questioned.

Many people say they want to become multi-millionaires.

But when you really sit down and talk to them, that's often not what they actually want.

What they really want is:

Financial security.

Freedom.

Time.

The ability to take care of their family.

The opportunity to do meaningful work.

The flexibility to travel.

The freedom to spend time with the people they love.

The ability to pursue personal growth.

A life that feels meaningful.

That is very different from simply chasing a number.

And yet, many entrepreneurs, coaches, business owners, and real estate professionals continue chasing bigger numbers without ever asking:

How much is enough?

Whose Definition of Success Are You Chasing?

This is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself.

Why do you want to become successful?

Whose version of success are you pursuing?

And why does that definition matter to you?

We live in a culture that celebrates visible success.

The mansion.

The luxury car.

The company valuation.

The real estate portfolio.

The investment portfolio.

The massive business deal.

The social media following.

The revenue numbers.

But very few people ask what is happening behind the scenes.

What happens to the entrepreneur who has millions in the bank but hasn't had a meaningful conversation with their spouse in years?

What happens to the business owner whose company is growing while their health is deteriorating?

What happens to the real estate investor who owns multiple properties but has no time to enjoy the life they were supposedly building?

What happens to the coach who helps everyone else transform their lives while neglecting their own?

These are not rare stories.

They are far more common than most people realize.

Success Without Self-Awareness Can Become a Trap

The people I have worked with who tend to make better business decisions are not necessarily the ones with the highest IQs.

They are often the people who have developed a strong relationship with themselves.

They understand who they are.

They understand what matters to them.

They understand their values.

They understand their limits.

And they understand what they are unwilling to sacrifice.

That self-awareness affects everything.

Your business decisions.

Your financial decisions.

Your relationships.

Your leadership.

Your partnerships.

Your ability to say no.

Your ability to recognize when enough is enough.

When you don't know yourself, you can easily become addicted to the next achievement.

The next deal.

The next property.

The next client.

The next investment.

The next transaction.

The next revenue milestone.

And the problem is that there will always be another one.

There is always another deal.

Another opportunity.

Another business idea.

Another transaction.

Another few hours of work.

Without boundaries, business will consume every available space in your life.

Your Relationship With Yourself Shapes Your Relationships With Others

There are two areas that deserve far more attention than most ambitious people give them.

The first is:

Your relationship with yourself.

The second is:

Your relationship with the people who matter most to you.

Your family.

Your spouse.

Your children.

Your closest friends.

Your business partners.

The people who will still matter when the deals are over and the applause disappears.

If you have a healthy relationship with yourself, you are far more likely to make healthier decisions.

You are less likely to constantly chase external validation.

You are less likely to make decisions purely out of fear.

You are less likely to sacrifice everything for money you don't actually need.

And when you have strong relationships with the people around you, those relationships become part of the foundation that supports your success.

Not an obstacle to it.

Long-Term Relationships Pay Dividends

This isn't just true in your personal life.

It is true in business.

If you understand business, you understand the value of long-term relationships.

A strong relationship can create opportunities for decades.

Trust compounds.

Reputation compounds.

Relationships compound.

A short-term opportunistic transaction might make you money today.

But damaging relationships for short-term gains can cost you far more in the long run.

The same principle applies to your personal life.

The people you consistently invest in matter.

The relationships you nurture matter.

The trust you build matters.

And unlike money, some things cannot simply be bought back later.

You may be able to rebuild a business.

You may be able to recover financially.

But there are moments with your children that will never come again.

There are relationships that may not survive years of neglect.

There are consequences to ignoring your health.

There are years of your life that cannot be purchased back.

You Don't Have to Choose Between Success and Everything Else

This doesn't mean building a business is easy.

It doesn't mean you won't have seasons where you need to work harder.

It doesn't mean entrepreneurship doesn't require sacrifice.

It does.

Building something meaningful requires discipline.

Focus.

Hard work.

Difficult decisions.

There will be seasons where your business demands more from you.

But there is a significant difference between making intentional sacrifices for a season and building an entire life around neglecting yourself and the people you love.

The problem begins when temporary sacrifice becomes a permanent lifestyle.

When working late becomes normal.

When missing family moments becomes normal.

When ignoring your health becomes normal.

When never having time for yourself becomes normal.

When your relationships only receive whatever energy is left after your business has taken everything else.

That isn't necessarily success.

Sometimes, it's simply poor boundaries disguised as ambition.

The Question You Need to Ask Yourself

Take a moment and honestly evaluate your life.

How is your relationship with yourself?

Do you actually know what you want?

Or are you simply chasing what everyone else seems to be chasing?

How is your relationship with your family?

Your spouse?

Your children?

Your closest friends?

Are you present?

Or are you physically there while your mind is always somewhere else?

Are you telling yourself:

"Once I build the business, I'll come back to these things?"

Because here's the truth:

Life doesn't wait for your business to succeed.

Life continues.

People change.

Children grow.

Relationships evolve.

Opportunities disappear.

And one day, you may achieve the success you worked so hard for, only to realize that the people and things you wanted to enjoy it with are no longer there in the same way.

Build Success That You Can Actually Enjoy

I believe in building businesses.

I believe in making money.

I believe in financial freedom.

But I also believe that success should give you more life, not take you away from it.

As a business owner, there will always be another opportunity.

Another transaction.

Another reason to work late.

Another deal that looks impossible to refuse.

Without self-awareness and boundaries, you can spend your entire life chasing things that you believe will eventually give you freedom while becoming less and less free in the process.

The goal shouldn't simply be to build a successful business.

The goal should be to build a successful life.

A life where you have financial security.

A life where you have meaningful work.

A life where you have time.

A life where you are healthy enough to enjoy what you've built.

A life where your relationships are strong.

A life where you know yourself.

A life where success doesn't become something you eventually regret.

Because at the end of the day, the question isn't simply:

How successful did you become?

The better question is:

Who did you become while building your success—and what did you lose along the way?

Build wealth.

Build businesses.

Invest.

Grow.

Create.

But don't wait until you have everything to discover that the things you ignored were the things that mattered most.

Because money can give you many things.

But it cannot always give you back time.

And it cannot always give you back the relationships, health, peace, and moments you sacrificed while trying to become successful.

Build the business.

Create the wealth.

Pursue your ambition.

But make sure you are building a life that will still be worth living when you finally arrive.



TRANSCRIPT

I wanted to share a story.

Years ago, I worked with this multi-millionaire. I worked with him quite a bit. He was actually referred to me by another coach who got tired of working with him.

I found out fairly quickly why that coach was referring him to me, and he pretty much said, "I don't know what else to do with him."

The situation was that this multi-millionaire he worked with felt purposeless, disconnected, and not engaged with his life, even though he had everything. He had all the money in the world, and he's like, "I've done everything I can."

He had worked with him for a couple of years and asked, "Can you support him?"

He had seen my work in terms of purpose, vision, direction, strategy, and those kinds of things. He thought I would be able to support him.

And so, I got on the call. I usually say the same thing: "I don't know if I can, but I'm willing to get on a call to see if I can."

And I did get on a call with him. I ended up working with him for a while, but I could see very quickly what the problem was on that first call.

And here was the situation.

Now, I won't go into all the details, but the situation was this.

Think about somebody who had sold a company already, exited a company, and had other companies going. He had all the time in the world, all the financial freedom, and he had teams in place. He didn't need to do anything.

He had status in the community. He had the money. People always came to him.

And I'll share one moment that I thought was one of the most painful moments that he described in his life.

And that moment was this.

I could see the pain in his eyes.

He told me, and this was in confidence, and I'm not revealing his identity. I've worked with quite a few people that are similar.

He said that he was very frustrated. He got on a call with me angry. He's like, "This is not why I built the wealth. This is not why I made all the money."

And he was just going on.

I asked him, "What happened?"

He said, "I don't share this with anybody, but the moment I hate the most is pretty much every year, one of my sons comes up to me and asks for a few hundred thousand, goes off and does whatever he does with it, and doesn't do anything."

He sits around and has no ambition, has no drive, just uses his dad's money and moves on.

And he hated that with a passion.

He felt stuck in that cycle.

That son that he had a lot of expectations from, had a lot of hopes for, had become utterly incapable.

Now, if you knew him, you would see that he was doing a lot of things. From an outside perspective, nobody would ever guess any of this stuff.

He looked sort of happy. He had a custom mansion. He would do all kinds of gatherings. He gave to charity. He did all kinds of good things too.

But on the inside, he was disconnected from himself.

He was disconnected from his relationships.

He was utterly paranoid.

He had no sense of purpose or direction, and his health was almost gone.

And part of the reason why he was afraid to go into another business, even though he didn't need to for money's sake, was how much it cost him to build the last one and sell it.

He spent 20 years doing that.

And from his perspective, he lost his health. He lost connection with his family. He wasn't there when his kids needed him, when his family needed him.

Of course, he provided from a financial point of view, but he was not physically there.

And he regretted that immensely.

And part of the reason why one of his sons turned out that way was because he felt disconnected from him.

All he cared about was his money.

And if you saw his medicine cabinet, you would know that he would give up a lot of his money for him to gain his youth back, his health back, his family back.

A lot of it.

He never thought that was worth it, but he had to put on a face that it was.

And this is inherently the problem.

Often, you will hear this on a podcast. You will hear this in a conference.

Some very successful guy will sit on the throne and say, "People don't know what my success has cost me."

And they will gloat about it, and they will be prideful about it too.

"My success cost me my first marriage. My success cost me this, that, and the other."

But here's the challenge.

What they never admit is that they made certain choices that took them there.

They made certain choices on their health side, relationship side, and sanity side to gain a bunch of money that, while useful, gave them a lot of resources and the ability to do certain things, but their life became meaningless after a while.

Now, I'm not saying money is the problem.

What I am saying is that if you have been inspired by those kinds of stories and you're building a path that gives you a bunch of resources, financial security, and freedom at the cost of something else, you've been deluded into believing that these people had no choice and they had to sacrifice their marriage, their relationships, and all kinds of stuff.

They made certain choices.

And the choices were that you could make $1 million or $100 million.

Well, if you wanted to make $100 million, you had to be day in, day out.

And that's true.

You have to work very hard, at least initially.

But if you just want enough to support your family and also have some freedom in the process, that's a different process.

That requires you to step back from business sometimes if you have a family, if you care about your health, if you care about your spiritual world, if you care about your sanity.

That story is not shared because, one, it's boring.

Two, the results are not as fantastical as most people want to believe.

But the reality is, most people that I've worked with, they don't want to be multi-millionaires or billionaires.

Some do, and they have a purpose behind it.

What most people really want is enough security to build a life that matters to them, enough freedom to do the things that matter to them, and to spend time with the people that matter to them and to pursue their own growth, if they become sane enough and conscious enough.

And a lot of that is tied into two things:

Their relationship with themselves and their relationship with others.

If they have a really good relationship with themselves, with their own core, and they have really good relationships with the people that matter, they tend to make better decisions on the financial side, the business side, and all kinds of things like that.

These stories are more common than you think.

It might not be as extreme as this, but I can't tell you how many times I've heard parents feel disconnected from their children because they were completely in their own world.

Husbands and wives got disconnected after years of them being focused in their separate worlds.

Families falling apart because of this reason.

Somebody dealing with depression or anxiety or all kinds of stuff after years of ignoring their own sanity, their own internal world.

Not to mention heart attacks and all kinds of other issues that come up when you don't pay attention.

So my question to you is:

Are you paying attention to all aspects of your life, especially the relationship with your own core, your soul, yourself, and the relationship with others around you that matter?

If you're not, you're likely operating based on those pop culture stories that are so pervasive and that have taken over everybody's psyche.

And everybody's chasing that story of, "I need to become a big success."

For what reason?

Whose version of success?

And why does that matter to you?

My challenge to you is to really think about those two areas.

How do you feel about the relationship with yourself and those around you that matter?

Your family, your friends, the people closest to you.

If you're not paying close attention to it and you're saying, "Well, once I build the business, then I'll come back to it."

Well, guess what?

Life does not wait.

People move on.

Life moves on.

Life continues while you're in the pursuit of building that business.

Again, I'm not against making money or building businesses, and I do that.

But there are certain difficult choices I've had to make as a business owner that I wouldn't have made had I not been aware of this.

I would have been pulled into that greed.

I would have been pulled into that tendency to go towards the next deal, go towards the next big transaction, go to just one more day, one more few hours.

And there would be no boundaries in my schedule.

And I would have no time for myself, for those around me, the people that I care about.

And pretty soon, I would regret pretty much all of it.

You need to have a better relationship with yourself to have better relationships with others.

That is the most crucial piece for your personal life and for your business relationships.

If you understand business at all, you will know that long-term relationships pay dividends.

Short-term opportunistic relationships might pay you a little bit in the short term, but they actually cost a lot in the long run.