It’s 4:50 in the morning and I’m standing at the front desk getting ready to work with my first client. No, this is not an investment client; it’s 15 years ago, and I’m in Austin, Texas working at a gym as a personal trainer. I hate early mornings, but the inevitable afternoon fatigue is well worth it because on this morning I get to work with my favorite client. As much as I hate working at 5 a.m., she hates working out even more. As my client walks in the door, she suggests, in a semi-pleading fashion, that there is still soreness from the workout we did two days earlier and maybe I should take it easy today. With a grin, I respond, “It’s Shark week.” She knows what this means. Shark week is brutal; there is no mercy. She slinks off to do a quick five-minute warmup before the real work begins.
Over the course of the next hour, we move through a dynamic workout incorporating free weights, machines, plyometrics, medicine balls, balance boards, and just about anything else you can find in a gym. Sweat drips, wobbly legs develop, and there is certain to be more multi-day soreness. At the end of the workout, I ask, “Do you have a stand-up desk at work? Because if you sit down, you may not be able to get back up.” She rolls her eyes at me and smiles. Another satisfied client.
This was our shared morning routine every Tuesday and Thursday for over a year. You might ask, why someone would subject themselves to this form of torture? (You might also ask what any of this has to do with investing; I’ll get to that). This client had a very specific goal. With a milestone birthday approaching, she evaluated her life and was unhappy with living the status quo. Health became a priority. Her goal? She wanted “Michelle Obama’s arms” and she wanted to show them off at her next birthday party.
3 Tips for Success in Investing and Working Out
Be Specific
As a trainer, I worked with all sorts of different people with different goals. Potential clients would walk in the door with goals to lose weight, or goals to “learn to work out,” but those types of goals are hard to visualize. Your goals, financial or fitness, should be specific enough that you can visualize success in your head. In both investing and working out, when a goal is weak, it’s easy to lose sight and give up. Visualization makes a goal stronger. This is why I loved my client’s goal of wanting Michelle Obama’s arms. It was very specific and easy to visualize what success looked like.
In my training career, I had two clients who lost over 100 lbs, and both of them did it before they ever worked with me. Why did they need me? Didn’t they already achieve the goal? No. They had more specific goals in mind that motivated them to do more.
Understand the Price of Success
There is always a price to pay for success. To be successful in both fitness and finance you must dedicate resources, take risk, and tolerate discomfort. Working out requires you to dedicate your personal time and physical presence; even if you hire a trainer or attend a class, only you can physically complete the workout if you want the benefits.
The discomfort from working out can come in the form of fatigue, soreness, and frustration that someone else beat you to the machine you wanted to use in your gym of choice. The discomfort from working out is almost always temporary, but there is risk of injury.
Investing requires less personal time and you don’t need to be physically present. Unlike working out, in investing your financial assets do the work for you—but only if you are willing to accept some level of risk.
The discomfort associated with investing can be severe and long-lasting. Uncertainty, pain of loss, and fear of missing out are just a few of the common discomforts that can come around in investing and knock a well thought out plan off track.
If you truly want the benefits, you must understand that enduring these pains is the price that must be paid to reap the rewards. My client, whom I introduced at the beginning, hated working out. That did not change in the year plus that we worked together. She accepted that the pain of working out was the price that had to be paid to achieve her goals.
Focus on the Big Picture
We can invest your dollars in a way that will help you achieve your goals, but you MUST take some level of risk if you want to receive returns above the risk-free rate. The risk and uncertainty in investing is what most people struggle with.
Some risk in investing can be minimized by properly diversifying your portfolio, but many people still focus on individual investments rather than the total portfolio. This misses the big picture. Portfolio pieces are put together because they behave differently in different scenarios. That means some investments might be up while others are down.
It’s better to think about investments in the context of your total portfolio. How do they all work together to help me achieve my goals. The same principal applied when I was a trainer, my clients worked through a wide variety of exercises, some of which were completely unrelated. If you do the same exercise or workout over and over, your body adapts, the benefits marginalize, and the goal will not be achieved.
Clear Purpose Improves the Odds of Success
The key to success in both investing and working out is clarity of purpose, understanding the price, and focusing on the bigger picture.
Whether aiming for “Michelle Obama’s arms” or a secure financial future, a clear and purposeful goal will guide you through the challenges and keep you motivated. Remember, the journey is seldom a straight line, but with dedication and a well-defined goal, the milestones will be achieved.
You might ask how this particular client ended up, was the goal achieved? I was at the birthday party; it was a beautiful sunny day, she wore a sleeveless top and received tons of compliments on her toned arms. She’d also lost over 50 pounds in the process of achieving those arms, but that was just a side effect. It was never the goal.
Many people came up to me at the party, commenting on her amazing transformation and wondering how I did it. The joke was on them; she did all the work.
