March Madness is Around the Corner: Life is Sport

The calendar has been flipped to March, and with that some Spring-like days present themselves, such as yesterday in Richmond as the thermometer reached a pleasant 70 degrees and the winds howled. With this, the daffodils are blooming and we are tempted to dust of our kites. Not to mention the fact that we will gain an extra hour of daylight in the evening come this weekend as we will "spring forward" an hour for daylight savings time. Besides being tempted outside to enjoy the first break of Spring, we know it's time to sharpen our pencils. Why, you ask? It will soon be time to fill out our March Madness (NCAA Basketball) brackets. Yep, one of those favorite times of year in the sports world is just around the corner. It is a time when everyone has a chance to win the "just-for-fun" office pool. Heck, I know of people that pick their bracket based on the team's mascot or color of their uniforms; while others will use the Top 25 ranking for their basis of decision. One thing for sure, it is highly unlikely that Florida will "three-peat" this year. Instead, the only certainty is that for a couple of weeks, we will all be glued to the internet or TV, keeping our fingers crossed that none of our Regional brackets come apart like a Firestone radial. But in the end, only one person is going to win the NCAA March Madness pool, and once again we will merely have made a "donation" to someone else's cause; and yours and my solace will be in knowing there are other endeavors at which we excel.

The amazing thing about this business, and we should all thank God for each and every morning, is that you don't have to be able to dunk a basketball to win at it. You don't have to run a 4.4 - 40 yard dash, and you don't have to be able to bench press a Volkswagen either. It might help if you have a name like Vince Young or Ben Roethlisberger, but you don't need their right arms' or legs to be successful in this place. As somebody baptized with the innate ability to attain mediocrity at just about any sport from an early age on, this realization comes as quite a blessing. Growing up, I was always good enough to start on the varsity sports team, but never quite good enough to score the goals. The coaches would always shower me with phrases like "great effort," or better yet, "good eye," which can be candidly transposed to "Oooh, not quite" and "Thank God you didn't swing at that one," respectively. These were hardly the same idioms I heard Marv Albert use in reference to Michael Jordan or Joe Montana growing up. And so it was that these shortcomings were not accepted gracefully on my behalf.

Perhaps the most painful reality was that these deficiencies were not brought on by lack of effort, which was never the issue, I just wasn't gifted at the particular endeavors I chose. It took a long time, and more than a few lessons in physics, to learn the mechanics of how one person may run a 5-minute mile with relative ease, while a stubby country boy from rural Virginia may take that long to lace his shoes. I learned, eventually, that we can all be successful at something, but we can't all be successful at something like basketball or long-distance running.

Life sure would have been much easier if all sports were like sky diving or bull fighting, where you find out very quickly if you are any good or not, but that often isn't the case. Most of us spend our formative years stumbling over soccer balls and cowering in front of approaching ground balls before realizing we are gifted at some unrelated occupation. Nonetheless, it is this mutual experience that makes sports a common language for us all.

We often make references to sports in our daily letter, but not because we expect all of our readers to be avid sports fans or even moderate ones. We rely more squarely on the power of sports to help communicate our thoughts concerning the market. When we say, "the NYSE Bullish Percent just reversed into Bear Alert status at 64%," we are speaking to a handful of people who understand the concepts and methodology. When we say that we are "playing defense," we are speaking to anyone who has ever missed a ground ball, or anything else, that unsheathed the facetious phrase "nice defense" from a coach or loved one. Whether through prior success or spectacular failure, we can all relate to sports in some fashion. Not only that, but we know in our heart of heart's that the same rules for winning in the sports world, apply to winning in life and business alike.

Time and time again we find that the same patterns of success exist for those that excel at sports, as it does for success in other walks of life. I read an article in Newsweek that reinforced that concept; it was basically an interview of many champions: Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Joe Montana, to name a few. The ubiquitous attributes found in these individuals, who have clearly succeeded in their business, exist in the successful stockbrokers and money managers we talk to each and every day as well. Perhaps life, and this business, is as our friends at Gatorade would suggest, a sport.

Genius Is 99% Perspiration

If you have survived a few years in this business, talent is a given, but what separates the true craftsman from the guy who simply gets by, is work ethic, the willingness to become a master at something. It certainly doesn't have to be Point and Figure, that is just what works for us, but the willingness to master something will unlock the power and confidence to enable success. The biggest producers I know still force themselves to pick up the phone and prospect each and every day. After all, we have said in this report before that there is just no secret to prospecting, no magic egg, it's a numbers game . . . but there is amazing opportunity for those willing to pursue it in this environment. As Wayne Gretzky stated, "No matter who you are, no matter how good an athlete you are, we're creatures of habit. The better your habits are, the better they'll be in pressure situations." The great athletes practice the way they compete, making greatness a factor of preparation. The genius of success is in perspiration.

Let the Other Guy Get Nervous & Don't Just Dominate, Intimidate

Your vision of success is but a dream if you can't find the confidence to believe that you can in fact get there. Those who expect miracles, perform miracles.

Without any plan or vision, it is very hard to be confident. It's difficult because we know regardless of how much we work, Murphy will always appear at our door somewhere. We live our lives in vulnerable times when we have that constant doubt in the back of our head, "What will I do if ______ goes wrong?" A solid plan for success doesn't ignore the possibility of obstacles, it relies on them, or more so, the ability to overcome them. What did Nolan Ryan do when he got behind in the count? Give up a walk to a guy, of course not, he threw high heat right under the chin! What does Joe Montana do when he finds himself trailing in the fourth quarter of a Super Bowl? None of these athletes transformed into a different person when they needed to overcome obstacles, they didn't run off to the nearest telephone booth to throw on a pair of red spandex tights and a cape. Rather, they relied on their skill and preparation.

Was Michael Jordan's last shot, to win an NBA championship, any different than the thousands he had shot in practice and previous games? Of course not, he elevated as he always has, followed through and walked away with a sixth world title to wrap up (at the time) an amazing career. What does Tiger Woods do when he pushes one into the trap at Augusta? Here was Wayne Gretzky's elucidation on Tiger Woods, "Most golfers can't believe they won. Tiger sounds like he expected to win or can't believe he didn't." Tiger may "hope" that it doesn't rain on Sunday afternoon, but hope has no place in his plans of victory, he KNOWS he will win!

Just like Tiger Woods has an arsenal of clubs, balls, and tees at his disposal, the DWA database offers you an array of tools to use in order to give you the ability to manage your business in a logical and organized fashion. Perhaps there are better ways, perhaps there aren't, but it is those who have no discipline to fall back on, no church to pray at, that feel cornered when events play out in an unexpected fashion. A simple, yet profound, acronym comes to mind here: C.B.A. Conceive, Believe and Achieve. As the order would suggest, you will not achieve your ends if you can't first see yourself attaining them.

Well, I still can't dunk a basketball, time is running out on my chances at a 4.4-40, and if I'm underneath a Volkswagen these days, either I've dropped my keys or something else has gone drastically awry. In short, my childhood sports endeavors never quite came to fruition, but the experience of failure and near misses in that facet of life have helped to teach the steps necessary to success in others. If nothing else, these failures have taught me not to bet anymore than a week's lunch money on an NCAA bracket.

Life may leave you handicapped at certain endeavors, in fact, it definitely will, but learn to fail fast on those occasions. Personal success will not often come with a detailed list of prerequisites, but it will always require your personal best. Hopefully your personal best will be rewarded with more than a gratuitous "good effort" or "good eye". This business, unlike most sports, allows anyone who is mentally capable and morally upstanding, a seat in the draft, but it's up to you whether you take this opportunity and dominate. A popular sports-radio host from "SoCal" by the name of Jim Rome brings it all together when he simply asks one favor of his callers, to "have a 'take' and don't suck!" That's really what most investors want, a broker who has a plan and doesn't rely on hope. We hear success stories every day, real life applications of this approach toward investing and prospecting. If it's the sporting adages that closes the deal, so be it; that's just another way to communicate, but the concept of what makes champions in life and in sports is very much the same.