Episode #1075
You’d think selling your business for millions would be the happiest moment of your life. But for many men, it brings something they didn’t expect: confusion, disconnection, and a deep sense of loss.
In this episode, Tim sits down with Bruce to talk about what really happens after the big win. They share real stories from men who’ve reached the top only to realize the scoreboard at home looks very different from the one at work. We dig into identity, purpose, the emotional cost of achievement, and why many men feel like frauds even after they’ve made it.
You’ll hear why the people at home don’t care how big the exit was. Why being respected in the boardroom doesn’t always mean being seen in your own living room. And why men often retreat back into work instead of leaning into the harder work at home. We talk about the emotional bank account and what to do when it’s overdrawn. If you’ve ever felt like something’s off even when everything looks perfect on paper, this one will hit home.
If you’re feeling stuck at home, like you’re winning at work but failing in your relationship, start by getting clear on what’s broken and how to fix it. Watch the free training here: https://fixmarriage.thepowerfulman.com/scales
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Tim Matthews 0:00
Instead of that being the best day of his life, it turned into one of the worst days of his life.
Bruce 0:06
I was making way more money than I could spend, and I was living well, and yet I never felt happy.
Tim Matthews 0:11
We're with you in spite of your business, not because of your business.
Bruce 0:15
They weren't phoning me for me. They were phoning me because I could do something for them and the success of their business.
Tim Matthews 0:25
At home, the scorecard isn't transactional. You shouldn't want it to be transactional. At home, it's relational.
Tim Matthews 0:41
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the TPM show. My name is Tim Matthews, and I am joined with an incredible guest, Mr. Bruce Greater. Bruce, good to be here. Great to have you. So side note, guys, if you want to find out more about Bruce and hear his story, check out the last episode. It's an incredible story, and Bruce shared a lot, so I’d highly recommend that if you haven’t heard it.
So Bruce, what I want to talk about I’m just looking at my notes here because I took these after the last event we were at in Napa one of the men there was sharing with me how he had just sold his company for tens of millions, and instead of that being the best day of his life, it turned into one of the worst days of his life. You know, this is a time when he was supposed to be very happy, and instead of him being happy, he was actually left feeling very empty, very alone, and he almost wanted to sabotage the entire thing.
He was sharing with me a study that he had just read, and in this study, they interviewed millionaires from, you know, 1 million, 2 million, all the way up to 100 million, and they asked those people, “Who here feels like they have enough money?” I’m sure you can guess what the answer was zero, right? Nobody thought they had enough, regardless of how much money they had. I’m sure the guy who had 2 million would look at the guy with 100 million and think, “Oh, how could you not have enough money?” But regardless, every single one of them felt like they didn’t have enough money.
And what we want to talk about today is this idea of feeling like a fraud this idea of sabotaging things when the going is good, like the client who sold his business wanted to do and this complex relationship that men, at least our clients, men in the movement, can have with money. Because a faulty assumption that they have is that once they hit this figure, whatever that figure is, they’ll finally relax and finally be able to enjoy it. But they never do. They perpetually feel like they never have enough. So tell me what your thoughts are on this.
Bruce 3:00
It’s exactly my journey my life in the earlier part of my career. So I guess in my 30s, I was making a lot of money, doing really well. And I thought, great, this is going to continue. And yet I never felt fully happy. I was making way more money than I could spend, and I was living well. And I guess I got to about 40, I had a really big 40th birthday party. Lots of people can’t remember what it cost me but it was small change compared to everything. And yet I never felt happy. So that was exactly my journey it was kind of never quite enough.
And I had a couple of investment properties at that stage let’s call it 10. I was thinking, okay, I would lie awake at night thinking, “How can I turn 10 investment properties into 20?” And then once I’ve got 20, how do I turn it into 40? And those sorts of thoughts were consuming me. And I’d roll my thoughts forward and say, “Okay, in five years’ time, I’ll be worth X, and then I’ll be happy. In 10 years’ time, I’ll be worth 5X or 10X, and then I’ll be really happy.” And of course, it never happened that way. So that’s been my own personal experience, and yet I mean, I haven’t sold a business for $100 million but certainly, I’ve been on that journey.
Tim Matthews 4:32
I can imagine it feels worse though selling a business for that amount of money because then you really have everything that you thought was going to be the answer. There’s really no question at that point, right? Because you have it. Exactly. Yet then you feel even worse.
I know for this guy, it was a very confusing period very confusing because not only that, I think he was expecting his family to see him differently as a result of it. And when nothing changed at home and he was expecting more respect, he was expecting, I think, well, I know he was expecting respect, admiration, almost for them to kind of laud him a little bit. And obviously, they didn’t, right? Because he’s just the same guy. It’s irrelevant in their eyes whether he’s got 100 million or 100 thousand.
They’re not with him because I actually had this conversation with him a couple of weeks ago they’re not with him because of how much money he makes. Amelia once said to me and I love this, I love this she said, “Tim, you just don’t get it.” I know there’s always a truth bomb coming after that. “Tim, you just don’t get it. We’re with you,” meaning her and the wives of the men, “we’re with you in spite of your business, not because of your business.”
She’s like, “You just don’t get what it’s like to be with a guy like you, do you? You don’t clock off. It’s not a nine-to-five thing with you. You’re not always very easy to be with.” So again, “We’re with you in spite of your business, not because of it.”
But I think as men and achievers, there’s a story that we can tell ourselves and I think this particular guy did, and I’ve done this as well that, “Well, I’m doing this for them. I’m doing this for them. When I achieve this thing, that’s when they’ll see me how I want them to give me respect, admiration, significance,” and so on. Yet, the reality is they don’t care.
Bruce 6:46
Exactly. Without kind of causing offense here, you’re the same, Tim, you know? So for me, I think a lot of men define themselves by how much they’re worth, and they step away from a business that they’ve sold or a successful career, and then they have no purpose. And yet, the people in their lives are still the same people, and they’re still there not because the money’s changed or the business has changed. It’s, as you say, it’s the same guy there, doing the same stuff, showing up the same way.
In a sense, I probably deluded myself when I was, you know, doing something very successful, and I stepped away from that. I’d had chief executives of major listed companies phoning me, kind of wanting to know stuff, sounding me out. And suddenly, it all stopped. And then the penny dropped. They weren’t phoning me for me. They were phoning me because I could do something for them and the success of their business. And that was quite a sobering thought that I’m still the same Bruce, but I don’t have the same purpose that I had when I was doing. And I guess that’s the same for successful men who suddenly have sold a business. The clients move on. The suppliers move on. Suddenly, they’re not phoning them, and they, I would guess, probably feel a little bit lost.
Tim Matthews 8:25
That’s exactly what this guy said really, exactly. He said, “Tim, you know, in my industry, I was the man.” There we go. “I was a mover and a shaker. People loved to be around me. I would get things done. The way that I get spoken to at home sometimes people at work would never speak to me that way. They respect me. They admire me.” To which I said, “Well, how many of them have called you since you stopped?” And he said, “None.” There we go.
And he said it was really tough for him to take, because then he realized that they were just in it, like you said, because of what he could do for them. And this is when I said to him, because he couldn’t he was very confused about this dynamic at home versus at work, and why he wasn’t getting the same respect at home, despite selling his company and all this kind of stuff that he would get at work.
I tried explaining to him how it’s a different scorecard. You know, work is a very transactional nature, as you’ve seen by people now not reaching out to you because you have nothing to give. At home, the scorecard isn’t transactional. You shouldn’t want it to be transactional. At home, it’s relational. And unless you’re going to play a relational game with the people that you love and realize the currency over there is trust, the currency over there is time, the currency over there is presence not dollars and profit and balance sheets unless you’re going to play by those rules, you’re always going to be losing over there.
And that’s what he was really struggling to get his head around and deal with, because success, or feeling successful over here, failure over there it was a very tough pill to swallow.
Bruce 10:19
I agree. So, I mean, I can look back and say I came back from a kind of really successful board meeting, or really successful strategy day with clients, or a really great meeting, and I’d come back home and I’d kind of feel really good about myself. And my young kids one of my young sons at the time would say, “Dad, you’re just a boring old accounting nerd. Get real.” There’s nothing like that kind of humility to bring me back to the reality of actually this is the important stuff. Not that, you know, “You’re my dad, and I want to spend some time with you and give me a hug.” And you’re nothing special, by the way.
Tim Matthews 11:01
And this again I keep thinking about this guy, he’s an amazing guy as well. You know, when you meet him, you’re gonna love him. But he got some feedback from his son. It was solicited he’d attempted a clearing conversation and his son, who is in his early 20s, was just honest in his experience of him. And that really hurt. That really hurt him. And again, well, it triggered him as well. He got defensive, and the way he handled it wasn’t very good.
Actually, the way he handled it he’s supposed to be kind of retired right now. He will get back into business, but right now he’s working on himself. So he’s supposed to be “retired.” So the way he handled it was, he went and got a contract a consulting contract to come back to his wife and his son and said, “Listen, I’m gonna have to be away from the house a few days a week.” That’s his retreat, right? Because it’s too uncomfortable to face the reality of the emotional bank account.
Over there at work, he’s got the financial bank account that’s overflowing. At home, the emotional bank account is overdrawn. And he was struggling to deal with the reality of it being overdrawn and the consequences of it being overdrawn, which are there are some hard realities to face. So when you’re asking for that feedback, you’ve got to be ready to hear some things that could be quite tough.
Bruce 12:41
So I’m reminded of a man I met, oh, 10, 15, maybe even 20 years ago. He’d sold his business to a big listed company for a lot of money. He was in his early 60s, and he thought, “Great, I’m going to retire now.” So he started spending a lot more time at home, whereas before he was always traveling or working late, and he didn’t see his wife and kids much. But the marriage was okay.
Doug Holt 13:07
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How do you retain that where your wife’s looking at you the same way she used to look at you when she said “I do”? You know, I don’t know about you, but for me, when my wife looks at me like I’m her man, I feel like I can conquer the world, and I want that for you. Simply go over to thepowerfulman.com/scales. That’s thepowerfulman.com/scales, and I have a free video training for you. You can just click play and see if this resonates for you.
Now, back to the podcast.
Bruce 14:09
Suddenly, when he’d retired, things weren’t so okay, because he was showing up at home the way he was running his business. So his wife said to him, “You need to get out of the house. You need to go and learn to play golf. Get out. We can’t cope with you showing up this way.” So, great, okay, that’s something to do I’ll go off and learn to play golf. But it didn’t last very long, because that wasn’t him. He wanted to show up and kind of tell people what to do and be the, you know, the kind of big guy in the room. And it was really tough for him to show up differently at home from the way he’d showed up for his entire career. And I can’t remember what happened with him, but he really struggled for a long time to make those connections with his wife and his children that were fine when he was around 10 hours a week, but when he was around full time, the pressure was just too much on everybody.
Tim Matthews 15:08
There’s a performance that can take place at work, right? Exactly. And typically, the people who you live with they really see you. They really see all of you, the flaws and also the strengths too. And again, if that emotional bank account is overdrawn, which for a lot of the men it is, and a lot of the guys are also very impatient as well they’re used to getting their own way. Sure, they’re used to getting their own way very quickly. They’re used to being able to influence change very quickly, and it’s a different beast at home. A total different beast. What works for them at work is actually going to work against them at home. Like if they’re trying to influence change really quickly at home, or if they become impatient at home, or any of the things, like I say, that help them to drive strategy at work it’s just not going to work. People are going to feel pressured. People are going to feel more than likely manipulated, unseen, and at the end of the day, on a human level, as human beings, we are social creatures. One of our core desires is to be seen for who we are. So trying to bring over what works for these guys at work into the home is just a recipe for disaster. Exactly.
Bruce 16:34
And I’ve seen it any number of times, where men validate themselves by how much money they have, and that’s great, because then they feel good about themselves. But if and when that changes, wow, it’s a difficult transition back to reality or humility, or staying in decent relationship with the people that they thought they cared about. It’s really hard, in my experience.
Tim Matthews 17:00
I think so as well. I think it definitely can be. And again, I’m thinking about this particular guy, and I know he’s not alone, right? Same about your friend there are so many men in the movement that experience this. Regardless of whether they’ve sold the company or not, the point is they have provided in a way that they thought they needed to because then they would get everything they wanted at home. So that’s the position they’re in.
Thinking about this particular guy, I think one of the things I said to him when he talked about everyone in his industry leaving him, not contacting him, I said, “Well, the people in your life your wife and your kids, especially your son, who’s in his early 20s like, at that age, he’s choosing to be around you. He has a choice. He can go off and do his own thing, or he can choose to spend time with you.”
And I said to him, “Look, your wife and your son, they want to be around you because they see you for who you are, irrespective of what you’ve achieved, irrespective of your accolades. Which one would you prefer? Would you prefer to only have people in your life that are there because of how you’ve performed and essentially the mask, to a degree, that you’ve worn? Or to have people in your life who truly see you and actually know the real you and love that guy and want to be around that guy?”
And when he could kind of get that reframe, he could see it very differently. And he got a little bit more patience in his step. He’s been able to just listen, really, to his wife’s frustrations. It’s difficult for the wife too, because he’s been out of the office out of the home, rather for the past, I think it was seven or eight years he was building the business, traveling a lot. She was used to doing her own thing. She’d become very self-reliant and very self-sufficient, almost in a masculine way, as he described it.
So for him to then come back into the home and almost be a bit like a Tasmanian devil, like he was at work they were then butting heads. It was really difficult for him. But I think this feeling of being a fraud was something that would really eat him up as well. This idea of, you know, “I sold my business, it’s supposed to be the happiest day it turns into the worst day.” What advice would you give to some guys that might be listening to this, feeling that way, having these feelings of being like a fraud, and then they’re also failing at home because now they’re at home while they’re getting told all these things, which probably compound the feelings of being like a fraud? What advice would you give to that guy?
Bruce 19:45
I guess my advice would be to look inward and ask yourself, who are you? So I remember somebody asking me five no, ten years ago, “Bruce, who are you?” “I’m an accountant. I’m a business owner. I’m this, I’m that.” And they said, “Bruce, who are you?” “Oh, I’m a father.” Almost, sort of, forgotten about it and a partner. And then, “Bruce, who are you?” And I struggled to answer that question. I really struggled, because I defined myself, you know, as a kind of hardworking guy this is how I showed up in the world.
So for me, I think the advice is, look inwards. Do a little bit of self-discovery of who you really are, because it’s not the mask I showed to the world. I think for many people, it’s not the mask that they show to the world it’s something deeper.
Tim Matthews 20:43
How would you answer that question today? Who are you?
Bruce 20:47
I still struggle with it, but for me, it's around I'm more authentic. I'm more present. I enjoy being around people. I'm reliable, I show up. Family's important to me, and I'm clear on what my values are now, whereas before, I wasn't. So who am I? I'm just an ordinary guy trying to be a better version of myself, I guess more aware, perhaps, than I was 20 years ago.
Tim Matthews 21:25
It's a good way to break it down. It’s like “Know thyself” what are your values, what’s important to you, what matters to you? Because again, I think a lot of the guys lose sight of that stuff in the pursuit of success, right? They lose touch with their interests, with their hobbies, with their passions. They very much become defined by labels, by net worth, by things. And the people at home they knew the guy that was the guy before that. He’s the guy outside of that, and they want to see that guy, right?
But it’s so interesting how we get conditioned as human beings, right? Because naturally, if we were rewarded for being a certain way, the way the mind works is it’s very easy to want to be more like that, sure. So if you’re getting all the plaudits at work and everything else for, you know, that guy who can walk into any room in his industry and make things happen, there is a big sense of loss there, right, when you sell the company. There’s a big sense of there’s a grieving period, I think, that has to happen because it’s a transition. It’s a complete shift in identity.
So the desire to want to sabotage it sabotage the sale, for example so you can hold on to it, I understand it, you know. And then even sabotage home life so you can then go and build another business, right? I understand it. But I think there’s a recalibration there, right, that has to happen in the nervous system because he’s got used to operating at such an intense level for so long. So there’s a recalibration emotionally on a nervous system level, and then also practically at home too, as he begins to understand who he is outside of the business instead of being the business.
Bruce 23:32
And for a lot of people, I’m guessing that they’re living on that adrenaline buzz of being the big guy in the room or the business owner. I had a little taste of it yesterday I had a meeting with a client. It was quite a confrontational it was quite a contentious issue. And I felt, going into that conversation, that old buzz of the kind of adrenaline rush of, “Right, this is a big issue here. We need to sort it out.”
It wasn’t TPM, by the way, but it was like there was this really difficult conversation that needed to be had, and I kind of felt that old familiar buzz of, “This is how I used to live my life, day in and day out.” And I think for a lot of business owners, they sell their business, suddenly they’re not being rewarded with that whole adrenaline buzz hit, and then they’re a little bit lost.
Tim Matthews 24:25
Which goes back to the point that you’re saying what’s important to you because if they understand themselves, they can start to get the dopamine from healthier sources, really more conscious sources. So three takeaways for the guy that’s listening to this that has provided, let’s say, everything that he thought he needed to provide, whether he sold his business and has cash in the bank or whatever it may be, but he’s really struggling to feel successful at home. He’s in that period, and so he keeps wanting to retreat back into work be it start a new venture, be it work late, be it whatever it may be. What advice would you give him?
Bruce 25:18
I guess it’s lean into the awkwardness of the change. Don’t retreat from it, lean into it. There’s an expression somebody shared with me, and I won’t get it perfectly right. It’s something around, “The only way out is in,” or something like that. I’m not quite sure “The obstacle is the way.” The obstacle is the way, there we go. So sort of lean into the resistance, lean into the obstacle. Don’t retreat from it.
What I said earlier ask yourself, with some support from other people, I guess, “Who am I? Who am I really?” And I’m at a loss for kind of the third piece. I guess it’s you’re not your business, you’re not your career. You’re something else. Kind of a bit aligned to “Who are you?” But I’m struggling too but it’s look inwards. It’s look inwards. Who are you?
Tim Matthews 26:14
I think for me, I’d probably say number one understand the game that you’re playing now. Scorecards are different, sure, very different. So I think understanding that you’ve been operating a financial scorecard at work you’ve been winning. There’s an emotional scorecard at home you’ve been losing. Just accept the reality of the game.
And I think within understanding where you are, I think your point of just being used to getting the buzz, the adrenaline, the dopamine, the significance recognize that’s a piece of what you have come to rely on and find other, healthier ways to get excitement in your life. Because you can still get the adrenaline, you can still get the buzz. You may still need exciting things going on. There are just ways to go about it whereby you don’t have to get consumed in work or a project.
So I think that’s the first piece understand where you are. The second piece would be to surround yourself with a group of guys who respect you and want to be around you regardless of what you’re bringing to the table. Because I think about this guy in particular him putting himself in a room with the guys in the Inner Circle and being able to share openly and be accepted and be very real and get called out and get called forward and be held accountable really helped him to recalibrate and get over the fact that he was “the man” in his industry. He left no one’s cared about him. Well, who are his people? He’s now found his people again. I think that’s really important. So “find your people” would be the second piece for me.
And the third piece, I’d say, is be patient. Be patient. The mistake that I’ve seen men make is after a little while, the discomfort becomes too much be it at home or within themselves they end up just rushing and starting another business or getting a consulting gig or whatever it may be. That time will come and can come, but I’d say be patient with it. Let it come from a different place. Be pulled by pleasure versus pushed by pain.
Fantastic. Okay, so guys, thank you very much for joining us for another episode of the TPM show. If you are struggling at all with anything we’ve spoken about, feel free to reach out speak to one of our advisors or just speak to somebody who you’re close to. The key is to not lone wolf it. We’ll see you next time on the TPM show.