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Say "How Much Do You Have?"

Say "How Much Do You Have?"

Then take all the money with a smile

Mark Brower
July 03, 2025

The Cost of The Performance Prison

I remember vividly sitting up in bed in a dark house, the world around me had been silent for many hours. I had battled through 2 significant waves of fatigue and now at 2:47 AM it's like the will to sleep was gone and my body was fully awake. The panic of not giving myself enough sleep was now mixing with the cortisol and adrenaline coursing my veins. I thought I was being a hero but I was acting like a junkie. Addicted to pursuing a lie…

I wasn't just working on my emails. I was answering ALL the emails and I was convinced I was being a hero. I wasn't. I was destroying myself and my business trying to fill the insatiable appetite of performative self-worth. The payoff was comments people would make: "3 am on that email response Mark??" I wore it like a badge. I could outwork anyone. I'm important. I'm the hero.

Except I wasn't. I was strangling my business, my team, my family. I thought I looked great to the world but my insecurities were on full display. I may as well have signed off every email with "Trying too hard to please you because I don't love myself, Mark"

Every email that sat in someone's inbox for more than 3 hours, I'd swoop in. I was bottlenecking my company, creating maximum uncertainty about accountability and teaching my team to just let me handle it. These late nights were happening 2-3 times per week.

Give Me All Your Money

So I'm sitting with my business coach Troy, complaining about my "unreliable" team. He listened. Then he stopped me cold.

"Mark, let me tell you about my friend who works at a bar."

Guys would sidle up and ask: "Should I tip you?" She'd say yes. "Well, how much should I tip you?"

Troy told her the perfect response: "Next time, look them dead in the eye and say, 'How much do you have?' When they open their wallet, reach in, grab all the money, and say, 'That will do.' Then smile."

I laughed. Then he delivered the punch line that changed everything:

"Those guys weren't asking about tipping etiquette, Mark. They were testing her sense of worth. Finding out how much they could get away with."

The silence that followed was brutal.

"You've tied your self-worth to being the fastest, smartest responder in the room. You've set the bar so impossibly high your team can't meet it. So you swoop in to save the day, which makes you feel valuable, which keeps you trapped in this death spiral."

He was right. I'd built my entire identity around being the guy with all the answers, delivered at lightning speed. The problem? I could never not have the answer. I could never be slow. I could never let anyone else be the hero.

"Try this," Troy said. "Instead of 'I'm valuable because I respond faster and smarter than everyone else,' what if you believed 'I'm valuable because I'm committed to my clients' success'? Period."

The shift was subtle but it rocked my world. Within weeks, things started changing not not just because I backed off and let me team work. I started trusting my team. They started growing. I started sleeping.

And here's what shocked me: I began expecting more support from my clients because I felt more worthy of their support.

That's the whole point.

The Leverage Game (How People Test Your Worth)

Getting to the root of our psychological dysfunction is the most leveraged leadership activity we can do. It will solve more problems and make us more money faster than anything else. It’s both terrifying and empowering to know that Taylor Swift was right.

And what's at the root of every leadership problem? What's pretty damn close to the root of every issue for every leader? Their impression of themselves. Their deepest motivation. Until you address them, your deepest psychological needs are holding you back more than anything else.

When CIA operatives turn an asset, they're trained to find the deepest core motivation that person has and exploit it. To get them to put themselves and their families at risk of being killed. That's how powerful getting to the root of someone's identity and self-worth is in shaping their behavior.

Here's my uncomfortable truth: Almost everyone has experienced or is currently experiencing the feeling of not being enough. Whether it's conscious or subconscious. Many of us, especially entrepreneurs, are trying to earn self-worth through our performance.

When we feel like we're not enough and we engage in business relationships—there's this uncanny tendency for the other party to exploit our desire to prove self-worth through performance. It's being used against us actively. We're putting ourselves in a position to be leveraged because we want to avoid the pain of not being good enough.

The problem with the belief "I'm a good person" is that when it's performance-based, it's contingent. We have to keep meeting some arbitrary standard to continue qualifying for that belief about ourselves. And if our sense of identity is largely based on performance, then those micro-definitions of what's required can and will be exploited by people who unconsciously pick up on our insecurities.

A former business partner once told me something that really bothered me when he said it, but I've since learned how true it is: "In life, we leverage each other." Most people will find out what they can get away with another person and largely take things right up to that line. They'll exploit that person to get their needs met.

Just like those guys at the bar asking "How much should I tip you?" They weren't asking about etiquette. They were testing boundaries. Finding out how much they could extract.

The Identity Shift (From Proving to Knowing)

So here's the shift we desperately need to make.

The strand in our core beliefs can't be "I'm a good person" based on performance. It needs to be the bedrock of: I am infinitely valuable and worthy of love, irrespective of any action or inaction. I am infinitely worthy and deserving of love, acceptance, kindness, and affection without doing anything to qualify for it.

Nothing is required to qualify for that. You own that. You deserve that. Feel that to the center of your core.

When we're tethered there, we start with an unshakable foundation for healthy relationships and real confidence. We don't have to fake bravery or confidence. We don't have to fake gravitas. We don't have to fake it till we make it because we approach every relationship and every problem already having arrived. With a strong sense of infinite self-worth.

What does this do to our reality? Our work? Our relationships?

It puts us in a position to make unlimited mistakes with the permission and grace we deserve. Our lack of knowledge, ability, or skill doesn't affect who we are or how we feel about ourselves. It can't be exploited against us.

Gone is the tendency to hide or minimize our errors. There's no shame about mistakes because our performance has nothing to do with how valuable we are. We can approach life with childlike curiosity, fully ready with a beginner's mindset to learn faster than we otherwise could.

And in such a state, we would be shocked and curious if anyone tried to shame us. We would remove ourselves from such relationships and go learn under the tutelage of people who treat us with the respect we so rightly understand we deserve.

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." —Romans 8:38-39

Your worth isn't earned. It's given. It's not performance-based. It's love-based. And that love is unshakeable, unchanging, and infinite. When we fully believe this it opens us to a new level of relationship and everything gets better.

The question isn't whether you're worthy. The question is: Are you living from that truth or are you still trying to prove it?

The Challenge

This week, I want you to examine one relationship where you might be operating from "proving" instead of "knowing" your worth.

Ask yourself:

Where am I setting impossible standards for myself that I wouldn't expect from others?
What am I afraid will happen if I don't perform perfectly in this relationship?
How might this fear be giving the other person leverage over me?

Then practice this simple reframe: Instead of "I'm valuable because I perform well," try "I'm valuable because I'm committed to this person's success, and that commitment is enough."

Watch how the dynamic shifts when you operate from that place.

The long game beats the quick win. Every time.

Your brother in the fight,
Mark