Real Estate Investors Learn Lessons – Many Of Them As Kids
Posted @ 10:16 pm - Filed under 1031 Exchanges, Purposeful Planning, Retirement
How do you not do your best? How do you not get the best training, or provide for it the best you can? How does a real estate investor not find answers, or consult experts when risking their capital?
I’m gonna figure out how to relate this to youth baseball. First though, I ask you to recall a short story I told the other day about an old friend who’d sold a an investment property. She’d done her research, and was asking me my thoughts on where she should next invest. I asked her when her sale was scheduled to close. She gave me that familiar RCA Dog look, and I knew something wasn’t right. She then told me it had closed, but the funds were safe in a separate bank account — waiting for her to find her next investment. This way she wouldn’t have to pay taxes on her gain. Yer makin’ this up, right?!
Holy #^$$%&@ cow! As much I as think this, I’ll say it out loud: You just can’t make this stuff up. She couldn’t be expected to know how to effect a tax deferred (1031) exchange, but she sure could’ve wondered if there was something she didn’t know. This wasn’t exactly a case of buying cookie dough and reading the package directions. Know what I mean, Verne? 
If you want to win, you have to have knowledge, expertise, coaching, and the rest of the tools. There is no unfair way to win, as long as you’re playing by the rules. Ask yourself — would you turn down a deal for a property you thought was priced below the market? Silly question?
After what I watched the last few days, I wonder. This involved kids though, and it made me wonder what kind of lessons they were learning on the field, but most of all from the adults showing them how to lose. What great lesson is passed on to kids who are consistently taught how to play what I’ll call picnic baseball with Grandma?
I was at a Little League All-Star game yesterday. The manager and coach came from the Kumbaya school of youth baseball. Don’t get me wrong, at 12 years old, lessons are pretty valuable whatever their source. Yesterday, a bunch of kids learned that when you play against a team who understands the idea is to win, and are organized and coached to do just that, your season is probably over. At that point they all learned the lesson most kids learn sooner or later. Of course, to learn this lesson they had to lose to a team whose adult leaders understood the concept of why we actually keep score. (A key concept in life, I’m sure you’ll agree.)
Regardless of what the local Mr. Rogers says, losing ain’t what kids signed up for. It’s not that losing isn’t a part of life, but going out of your way NOT to use all the tools available, under the guise of some false sense of sportsmanship and fair play, teaches the kids the wrong lesson. I wonder if the adults in charge of this team run their businesses using the same approach? I doubt it, since most of them were driving Mercedes and Beemers to the game. They apparently know how to keep score in their real worlds.
Just when did Mary Poppins take our kids’ competitive games over? At what point did we give our kids over to the everyone’s a winner pablum, now rampant everywhere you look? By the time boys are 12, and good enough to be an all-star, they’re there to win — and more than willing to pay the price. I realize at 55 I qualify for grandpa status, but seriously, 12 year olds aren’t six year olds playing T-Ball. They’re just as close to being Marines as they are kindergarten for Heaven’s sake. The reality of life is one of winning and losing.
The lesson we always taught our players in youth leagues (at least the ones I coached) was that losing a game never, ever meant they were losers. It meant they’d met another team on the field of play who was a better team that day. If they worked hard, and practiced, improving their individual weaknesses in the process, they’d have a great chance of beating that same team the next time out. It was that agenda of excellence, the hard work as a team, that made them winners, not the score of any particular game.
But they should also understand that keeping score is how we know who wins and who loses. If they worked hard, played their best, and still lost — they were still winners. A winner is never a loser we told them — they just lose games every now and then. They understood, and embraced that approach like the young men they were becoming. I sometimes get glassy-eyed just thinking about some of the teams I coached, and the kids who blossomed during various seasons.
How does this relate to Purposeful Planning for your retirement? Easy — We all win and lose on the way to our magnificently abundant retirements. We’re not winners or losers because of the outcome of a particular transaction. We’re winners or losers because we are committed to excellence or we’re not. The 1927 Yankees are considered by many to be the best baseball team ever. They lost 44 out of 154 games! But they were winners because they went after it full tilt for all 154 games.
As a young man I thought baseball was life. Now that I’m older I’ve realized baseball isn’t life, retirement is life. (Baseball’s in the top five still.) But one thing holds true for both ages — whatever your childhood passion happened to be, baseball or otherwise, apply that same passion to your retirement plans.
Folks who didn’t put passion into their retirement, will likely not view their results as winning — which brings me back to the poor kids, standing around so disappointed by their losing effort yesterday.
Playing ring around the Maypole isn’t a competition, and no score is kept. It’s a fun time to have in a group. When you’re playing baseball, and your team is supposedly made up of the best your league has to offer, playing like a bunch of fourth grade girls at recess doesn’t cut it. (No offense to our female fourth grade readers out there.) I won’t even address the fact that the coaches they chose to lead their best players, were picked over a manager who actually pitched pro ball! What, was he gonna make their team too good for the competition? Was winning too much……..unsportsmanlike?
Calm down BawldGuy.
Being a winner has very little to do with whether we won today’s game or not. It has to do with our attitude about life in general. As long as we play by the rules, commit to excellence, and give all that we have — we’re winners.
What lessons did those kids learn yesterday as they were leaving the baseball field for the last time this year? If they learned they weren’t playing ring around the Maypole, and that life keeps score, they won.
They just won’t know it for awhile.
You know what the kids did know? They were overheard after the game, talking among themselves. They were wondering if maybe next year they’d actually get some real baseball coaching.
Knowing you were shortchanged is a tough lesson to learn at 12.
Repeat: How many losses you experienced on your way to a winning retirement, isn’t even relevant in the long run. You will either enjoy an magnificently abundant retirement or you won’t. Those that chose to go after their retirement with the same passion they pursued their childhood loves will retire grandly.
And they’ll be winners.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 10:16 pm and is filed under 1031 Exchanges, Purposeful Planning, Retirement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
