Tiger Woods and the Science of Winning

Based on my business win/loss ratio, I am highly skilled at winning.  I have won more business deals than the number of professional golf wins of, well, Tiger Woods.

Woods would probably kill to have my win/loss ratio – just as I may feel the same about his athletic achievements and considerable wealth!  Yes, I am aware that this comparison is both preposterous and pretentious (and you could probably add a few WTF’s), but please indulge me for a minute and continue reading…

I am more than a decade older than Tiger, and I have lost hundreds of business deals more than those I have won... so therefore I am also a far more experienced and successful at losing than Tiger Woods.  Better?

Like Woods, I have finished second many times.  Unlike Woods, when I finished second, I didn't make any money.  In business – unlike golf or other 'sporting games' – the winner takes it all. We can probably blame ABBA for this!

Sometimes, winners don't actually play, or even plan, to win.

They just keep doing the right thing, consistently, for long enough to cause competitors – who may even perhaps temporarily be in the lead – to lose.  We witnessed this recently when Tiger won the TPC at Sawgrass.  Tiger could have e.g. finished in second place to Sergio Garcia, who had the lead at one stage in the final round.  The difference?  Tiger was more consistent; Garcia not.  Shot for shot, they're more-or-less, generally speaking, equally good.  But Tiger wins more often because of incredible consistency, and perhaps because he's better equipped, emotionally, to win.

Winners therefore win more often because they keep practicing their craft, over and over again, and then execute consistently. They don't allow themselves to easily get distracted by the ADD crowd who sometimes pull winners in different directions, often as a result of chasing a shiny new thing that came along. 

Sometimes, winners suffer long periods of defeat before they start winning again.  Often, as a result of self-inflicted, very personal distractions… as displayed recently by Tiger for the entire world to enjoy and gasp at.  After all... what's life without good soap-opera-style drama?

But, like the proverbial cream rising to the top, you can't keep a true winner winless; not for too long anyway!

Sony was a winner at one time.  People of my generation (junior baby boomers) will remember Sony's incredible successes, like the Walkman.  Everyone aspired to owning a Sony TV, because it was simply the best.  Maybe we can blame Tina Turner this time, although I don't think her hit song had anything to do with Sony?

But, people may also remember Sony's controlling attitude regarding their intellectual capital & property, which was once very similar to Apple's ($AAPL) current closed-shop, secretive, non-sharing, keep you guessing, technological innovation and product pipeline environment.

Sony insisted – nay, even proved – that Betamax was better than VHS. But they refused to allow other manufacturers to help them promote and sell their better consumer technology product.  Betamax was left behind in a proverbial tsunami of manufacturers getting onto the shared VHS system, invented by JVC.  Ultimately Betamax was crushed into oblivion by Panasonic, Sharp, JVC and other Asian technology giants of that era. 

By the time Sony had agreed to license their 8mm camcorder technology to some camcorder competitors, like Hitachi, Canon, etc., the world was already moving towards digital technology, and the technology sharing was too little, too late.

Few people may recall Sony's other failures, like Minidisc and MemoryStick. There were many more!  These comments are not intended to be overly critical, because risk of failure is inextricably tied to innovation.

Think of the above in the context of Apple’s iPod successfully replacing MP3 players.  Or Bill Gates’ 2001 PC tablet launch and prediction that these would replace PCs in 5 years.  Of course, Gates was simply ahead of his time and Apple successfully launched the iPad in 2010.  The iPhone offered consumers a new, funky, playful device to replace 'irreplaceable', stodgy, market-leading and once innovative Blackberry ($BBRY) mobile devices.

The common thread in the paragraph immediately above is obviously Apple, having successfully replaced a variety of competitive products with better products, mostly based on the concept of improving an existing product.  And, in the process, becoming the largest corporation on the planet.  What a great achievement!

Innovation?  For sure - you can't upgrade and replace any existing, leading- or cutting-edge products without technological innovation (of course in the case of Apple, also complemented by great personal product marketing by their larger than life CEO, Steve Jobs, at the time). 

Successful copying and improvement of existing products? Unquestionably so.

Will Apple be the next Sony, or the next Tiger Woods come-back story?  

Winners both!  One – the golfer – has already returned to form.  The other – the product company – is trying to reposition itself instead as a software company.  Apple fans are patiently waiting for new products.  Investors, small and large, are buying the 'under-valued' stock in the hopes of a return to the recent glory days of market leading returns on investments, which were quite extraordinary, especially for giant company stocks.  The attempted repositioning is not a bad strategy, assuming Apple were able to pull it off.  Similar to what IBM had done years ago, successfully.

Americans love Apple, but competitive product threats are global, ever improving and just keep a coming.  It's also not only Samsung, but rather everyone not-Apple, especially in Asia.  Being #1 one is often a lonely, threatened place to be... just ask Toyota!

Most of us struggle to reinvent ourselves in order to stay relevant, to keep winning. Although one may be able to keep winning by practicing and consistently doing the right thing, sometimes this simply isn't enough.

Here a suggestion: write down 10 new ideas for improving your personal future win/loss ratio, right now.

Stuck already?

Then you're not going to win, so you need more practice.  How?  Okay, how about writing down one idea, two, or maybe three instead.  Then tomorrow, you add another one.  Then, when you get up to ten new ideas, review the list and replace the stupid ideas with better ones.  Ask people around you for more new ideas.

And then... just do it, or at least try and execute on a few of your ideas, to start.  You are a winner; you may just have temporarily forgotten the taste of victory. 

Like Tiger, your name could be back in the W-column soon as well.  Let's see if you can beat Apple.  It’s too late to try and tame the Tiger… he’s already back, and in total control!

Screw the American Dream, #Retire Rich Instead

One of my favorite bloggers/authors – James Altucher – reminded me via a recent blog post he wrote, that people who write, should tell stories.

So here are the stories of two of my friends who bought houses in their early working careers, because that’s what the man told them to do... chasing ‘the American Dream,' with home ownership at its very core, as a foundation for wealth creation.   

I prefer to call it a classic middle-class debt trap, because as is the case with all other things middle-class, debt is the ball and chain that keeps you tied to your cubicle, day-after-day, year-after-year!

My friends are well educated, both having read and completed post-graduate studies with majors in business management.  Both enjoyed above-average incomes for 25+ years.  They were married, one with two kids.  The other – along with his spouse – adopted underprivileged children and cared for the kids, as if they were their own.  Good, average, ordinary, salt-of-the-earth, middle-class Americans.

One bought a house in 1989 for $226,500, worth an estimated $700,000 today.  The other bought a similar-sized house in 1986 for $285,000, worth about $1,000,000 today.  Justification for the difference in estimated resale price... the usual mantra: location, location, location…

Both would like to sell because a 4-5 bedroom house is not suitable for 'empty nesters.'  The illustrative resale values above obviously assumes they would each be able to find a buyer. Purchase prices & estimated selling prices courtesy Zillow.

Let’s conservatively estimate that over 25 years, the total, additional carrying cost on the house (interest, property tax, maintenance, etc.) was about $150,000 – reasonable?

Take a good look at the chart above.  The stodgy old DOW (blue line) delivered a 730.8% return on investment (ROI) over ‘the same’ period.  The orange line shows the S&P 500 performance.  Shaded vertical lines on the graphs indicate U.S. recessions.

An investment in DOW stocks, instead of a house, would have delivered:

1. $226,500 (purchase price) + $150,000 (‘operating costs’) = $376,500.  Invested to deliver 730% over the period:  Present Value of $2,748,450
2. $285,000 + $150,000 (‘operating costs’) = $435,000.  Invested to deliver 730% over the same period: Present Value of $3,175,500

You may counter and suggest that my simplified calculation doesn’t take tax breaks (e.g. for mortgage interest) into consideration.  You could also suggest (as middle-class people often do), that “one has to live somewhere.”  Neither of these – or other, similar arguments – devalues what I’m demonstrating.

I can offset tax breaks that you may have benefited from against other costs that you had incurred, e.g. filling your home with worthless stuff like furniture (as measured in investment value terms, and not usefulness or utility of the products).  Consider the additional things that you needed like lawnmowers, snow blowers, window coverings, upgraded kitchens and bathrooms… no contest in assessing these hard costs vs. tax savings on mortgage interest.

Debt includes mortgages, car leases, student loans (sometimes for multiple generations), credit card debt, and more.  That debt is the only thing that causes you to spend your life behind a cubicle, doing work that you don’t enjoy, 'locked down' daily in a place you may despise, working with and answering to people you may not even like, etc.  Dreamily spending hours of your life looking out the window, if you are fortunate enough to have earned a window seat.

You didn’t need the fancy house you live in; you simply wanted it and bought it with ‘other people’s money.’  The people who lent you the money are getting wealthier and wealthier, selling your debt to others and investing your savings (if you have savings)… while you dutifully pay off your loans to those same masters.

More importantly, consider this: if you owned stock, instead of a house, you would not need to find one buyer wiling to pay you the highest price for your used home.  You could simply sell it at any time; generating the cash you needed at that time, when you needed it.  No open houses, no dealing with realtors, no fixing and cleaning, etc.

But, you may yet ask what my actual point is, and that would be a fair question. 

It is simply this: debt is the middle-class trap.  The wealthy use debt (leveraging) as a means to make money... not to burden themselves with recurring, ongoing costs!  That is one of the reasons why the so-called 1%ers become ever-wealthier, and you don’t.

While you continue to use debt to fund a lifestyle more lavish than what you’re able to afford, keep that ball and chain within sight of your cubicle, because you’re simply screwed… perhaps even for life!