June 24 marked one of my favorite events of the year: the Ultimate Runner.
The race – the only one of its kind, as far as I know – is composed of five events: mile, 400m, 800m, 100m, and a cross-country 5k. Each year, over a hundred lunatics participate in this punishing medley under the midsummer sun, their only prizes a t-shirt and decal imprinted with the number 4.91 (representing the combined mileage of all five events).
Call me a lunatic, but I love it. I love the challenge, the camaraderie, and the energy. Road races are fun, but I believe the track is more intense, more thrilling. When you round that final turn and battle down the home stretch – legs and lungs ablaze – the feeling you get is an intoxicating mix of pain and euphoria.
Still, as fun as the actual race day is, it’s the training that makes it all worthwhile. If I had shown up at this year’s event with no preparation, certainly my times would have been slower, but more importantly, I would not have felt the same level of satisfaction. There is something about the grinding effort and commitment to consistently train that is inherently fulfilling. While I had goal times going into the race, I also knew that I would be happy with the outcome no matter what because I was satisfied with my level of preparation.
Many of the conversations that I have with clients are about goal setting, and the proper steps to achieve those goals. Whether the goal is exiting a business, enjoying a comfortable retirement, saving for college, or leaving a legacy to one’s heirs, everyone has a race to run. With that in mind, here are three principles that apply as much to financial planning as they do to running:
1. Achieving or exceeding goals is great, but the work that goes into it is what makes the achievement satisfactory. The sale of a business is, I think, the clearest illustration of this first principle. Like crossing the finish line of a race, there’s a lot of excitement when the proceeds get wired to the seller’s bank account. However, in my experience, most business owners don’t simply look at their bank account and celebrate. More often, there are mixed feelings of excitement and exhaustion, joy and sadness. Why? Because they have poured so much of their lives into the business to get to this point. They had to make sacrifices: spending time away from family, taking financial risks, etc. They built valued relationships with their employees and their customers. They experienced hardships and victories along the way. In short, the business becomes a part of their identity. Once the deal closes, it’s great to see a few more zeroes in the bank account, but it’s greater still to know that they created and nurtured something of value along the way. That value creation, that entrepreneurial journey, plays a significant role in making the successful exit satisfactory.
2. Committing yourself to training and healthy habits is inherently fulfilling. In the context of financial planning, consider the goal of saving for retirement, which requires the adoption of healthy money habits (living within your means, saving, etc.) versus unhealthy ones (overspending, under-saving, etc.). When you direct part of your paycheck to your 401(k), or set aside any other funds for long-term investment, the immediate result is less money for current expenditures (whether necessary or discretionary). Like getting up early to run when you could be sleeping in, this tends to be, at first, rather uncomfortable. However, once these positive money behaviors become habitual, those who practice them tend to feel more secure and fulfilled than those who don’t. As the author of Hebrews put it: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11). Saving for retirement is no exception.
3. The only person you are truly competing against is yourself. When it comes to running or investing, it can be tempting to focus on how you stack up against other people. If you’re a professional runner, or a professional money manager, I imagine there is an even greater temptation to compare your performance to that of your “competitors.” Fundamentally, however, the measure of success has nothing to do with the time you ran, or the size of your portfolio, in relation to someone else’s. Instead, it has only to do with how your time, or your savings, compares with the goals that you set for yourself, and the extent to which you adhere to the disciplines required to achieve those goals.
As you go about your training, it can be tempting to focus on the finish line, or on all the fun you’re missing, or on others who make it look so effortless. But the fact is that life consists of a lot more training days than race days, so it’s important to embrace them. When the race day does arrive, you’ll feel more fulfilled having put in the work, and whether you finish first, last, or somewhere in between, the outcome will matter less than knowing that you gave it your all.
And Now For Something Completely Different...
Check out this incredible clifftop house in Sedona that owner Glendon Good built himself.