LEBRON JAMES SEES SHORT-TERM SUCCESS AS A LAGGING INDICATOR! – A RAINBOW OF ROLE MODELS {WEDNESDAY SERIES}
I celebrate ACHIEVEMENT EVERY DAY! WEDNESDAY’S “A Rainbow of Role Models,” I do not see race, skin color, religion, sex, attractiveness (ok, I do like beautiful ladies), age, or any other nonsense. I love learning from inspirational people that inspire me to drop MY EXCUSES and JUST DO IT! Role models who stretch my ambitions and model GIVING BACK!
There is dignity in achievement and success—in becoming a great factor in civilization.” Carter G. Woodson.
I hope you will share these short articles; perhaps a few people will be curious to learn more.
Disclaimer: Good Day, Readers. WealthBuildingPowers blog is a financial literacy/competency blog and does not provide specific investment recommendations.
LEBRON JAMES PLAYS THE LONG GAME! – A RAINBOW OF ROLE MODELS {WEDNESDAY SERIES}
Say you’re LeBron James and your long-term goal is to score 38,388 points and break the NBA’s all-time scoring record.
Scoring 30 points in a forgettable mid-season game early in your career was great, but it was also just a drop in the 30,000-plus points bucket. Success has, until last night — when you scored 38 points against Oklahoma City to become the all-time scoring leader — was always a lagging indicator.
LeBron had to play the long, long game.
Fortunately, that’s a game LeBron has always been willing to play.
Take May 2003. Lebron is an eighteen-year-old phenom about to graduate from high school. Reebok, Adidas, and Nike all hope to sign him to a shoe deal. His first meeting is scheduled with Reebok, whose executives hoped to win the competition before it even starts.
According to Brian Windhorst’s LeBron, Inc: The Making of a Billion-Dollar Athlete:
The idea came from Steve Stoute, a former music industry executive who launched the careers of dozens of artists from Will Smith to 50 Cent to Nas. Soute was working for Reebok and urged (doing) what he’d done with many talented teenagers who had come from poverty. Show them the money, and it closes the deal.
“This happened all the time in the music business: Give the guy a big advance, and they do the deal,” Stoute said. “This wasn’t short money. We were offering him the deal he wanted… We assumed if we gave him his price, he’d take it.”
So Reebok offered LeBron a deal that would have been worth up to $100 million in total.
And a cashier’s check for $10 million, but with one caveat: Take the deal, keep the bonus check; walk away, the bonus disappears.
As Windhorst writes, “Even Nike and Adidas would have understood him saying yes. It was the type of offer you probably shouldn’t say no to.”
Yet LeBron said no. He turned down $10 million (and went to school the next day.)
As LeBron later told Windhorst, “You have to think of the back end. I was going to be making a deal for life. You don’t think about the first check; you think about all (my italics) of them.”
Weeks later, LeBron signed a seven-year, $77 million contract with Nike that included a $10 million signing bonus. Great money if you can get it, but still: the Nike deal was worth $23 million less than the Reebok deal.
So why did LeBron go with Nike? As Windhorst writes:
LeBron picked Nike because he believed they would put him in great commercials and design memorable campaigns. He picked them because he thought they could give him the best shoe designs. But he also picked them because, in that vital moment, he valued legacy over an all-out cash grab.
That showed a value system and an instinct that would set the stage for many of the business decisions he made over the rest of his career.
“Signing with Nike,” LeBron said in 2018, “is the best business decision I’ve ever made.”
Even though, short-term, it meant leaving money on the table.
LeBron didn’t make the easy play, short-term play. He made the smarter, long-term play.
“Long-term” definitely applies to breaking the all-time scoring record. (Or, even more remarkably, also ranking fourth all-time in assists and 32nd in rebounds.)
No matter how many points you average per game, you still have to play a lot of games; one of the most important abilities every great athlete needs to possess is availability. LeBron has played over 1,400 NBA games; if you’re keeping score, that’s about 150 less than the previous all-time points leader, Kareen Abdul-Jabbar.
At 38, to be available at a high level he spends approximately $1.5 million on fitness and health to endure the grind of an NBA season. Training, nutrition, recovery, massages, cryo chambers, biomechanics… to Lebron, everything matters.
Especially over the long term.
Consistently doing what you need to do to succeed, with total focus and resolve, is incredibly difficult. That’s why most successful people are great at withstanding temptation and delaying gratification, trading now for later.
Research backs up that premise: a study published in Psychological Science found a definite link between intelligence and self-control. Participants were asked to choose between two rewards:
- receiving a smaller, immediate financial reward, or
- receiving a larger financial reward at a later date
People who chose to wait for the larger reward tended to score higher on intelligence tests.
Which makes sense: Having the ability to objectively weigh two outcomes and choose the better option is an obvious sign of intelligence.
See success as a lagging indicator, play the long game, and exercise self-control in order to maximize the fruits of your effort, labor, investments, etc., and you’re likely to be much more likely to be successful.
Whether you’re making a shoe deal. Or trying to be the NBA’s all-time points leader.
Or, by choosing to play the long instead of short game, to be successful in whatever way you choose to define success.
Because eventual success is always based on all the decisions — and actions — you make over the next weeks, months, and often years.
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ABOUT ME
I am a proud nerd (as my beautiful wife and daughter have told me) investment and finance blogger with an N.C. State, Chemical Engineering, University Rutgers, MBA and Harvard University, Advanced Management education.
I left a corporate career because I desired to make a difference as a speaker and writer. I was blessed to be coached and mentored by strong women and men in my family and professional life. It is my time to serve and give back.
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I started my first business at ~13 years of age (a small but brilliantly created plant nursery). I am a successful investor in stocks, options, and real estate and am happy to share my finance and investment lessons. I am NOT a licensed financial advisor. Please do not construe my suggestions on this blog as recommendations for your situation. As an investor, you must establish your risk/loss tolerance. Investment in any asset involves risk, including complete loss.
Please seek your licensed CPA or fiduciary financial advisors for individual financial advice.
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