Let That Be a Lesson to You All. Nobody Beats Me 17 Times in a Row
Fuel Your Passion to Hone Focus, Deepen Connections & Foster Grit
After losing to Jimmy Conners sixteen times in a row, Vitas Gerulaitis finally broke through and beat his relentless tormenter. In the post-match press conference, Gerulaitis said, "And let that be a lesson to you all. Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row.”
Rods, Insurance, and Racquets
When the original partners of Liberty Benefit Insurance Services of Los Gatos, California, Dixon Greer and Ryan Kennedy, began selling insurance together in the early 1990s, they failed to make one sale in their first 23 prospect meetings. When I started in insurance, I went nine months and made over 10,000 cold calls before closing a sale. In 2011, Greer, Kennedy, and the rest of the Liberty Benefit team sold the business to BB&T (now Truist) for more than we ever imagined possible back in our winless days.
Last week, I spent six hours on Lake Oroville with a good friend, Gary Dobyns. Gary is the founder and CEO of Dobyns Rods, which he moved from California to Texas five years ago. He has seen the revenue of an already successful business more than double in that time. He began over a dozen years ago by double-mortgaging his house and risking his family’s retirement savings as he worked from his garage in Yuba City, California. Now, in his early 60s, Gary works just for the fun of it and the love of his team. Not bad for a guy who “retired” from manufacturing cable in his 40s at thirteen dollars an hour to chase a career as a pro fisherman and ultimately, a rod manufacturer.
When we launched the boat, it was 38 degrees. Six hours later, when we finally called it quits, it was 44 degrees. The water temperature was 45 degrees. None of this is ideal for bass fishing. At launch, there was only one other boat in the parking lot, something Gary commented that he’s never seen in a lifetime of fishing on Oroville. Fishing is excruciatingly difficult on all California lakes right now. Gary caught his five-fish limit. I caught none. Then I started thinking, two weeks earlier, in my last day on the water, I spent seven hours on Folsom Lake without catching anything. Thirteen hours in, I’m approaching the Gerulaitis Threshold. The bad news is that it’s taken me nearly half a century to be completely okay with that. The good news is that I got there before my 50th birthday.
Gary Dobyns and Craig Gottwals Teasing a Pro-Am Weigh-in on Lake Mojave in Arizona.
I’m tickled at the prospect of returning to the water next week. In fact, when I do, I will try all new lures in all new locations. There is a lesson in there for me, and I will learn it no matter how many fishless hours I’m destined to endure. Poetically, I suppose, it would be nice to catch a bass just before my seventeenth hour so that I can make Vitas’ claim.
The modern world is defined by comfort, ease, and instant gratification. We’ve been groomed, since time immemorial, to seek safety, relax and eat until we’re full at every opportunity. That served humans well when calories were scarce and food was real. But today, we have hyper-processed, cocaine-ified sugar, seed oils, and corn syrup. It’s turning the Western world into an obese cabal of diabetics.
I feel it, just like anyone else. The older I get, the less I want to bike in the winter, fish in the rain, and hike the steepest hills in my foothill town. The warmth of a fire and a movie or a good book are always just a few paces and a wi-fi connection away.
Fighting that, however, took Liberty Benefit, Dobyns Rods, and Vitas Gerulaitis over the finish line.
Working Half-Time at the Radio Ranch
Jack Armstrong of the Armstrong and Getty Radio Program regularly talks about practicing the guitar for at least an hour daily, despite being a single dad of two young boys and working half-time at the radio ranch. That’s a joke; A & G are on the air for four hours every day, but they each spend another four-plus hours each day preparing for the next show. Joe Getty regularly comments that many talented folks can host a radio show for a week or two. It is what you come up with for your 57th show that reveals the ultimate truth about your capability.
Jack’s passion for the guitar is a bit of a love-hate relationship. He notes that he’ll never be great at it but pushes himself to the point of frustration every week. He turns off his phone, sits in a quiet room, and challenges himself to play things beyond his capacity. He relishes the difficulty and the endlessness of the task.
Jack and Joe struggled for years, bouncing from Kansas to North Carolina and then Sacramento, California, with little to no audience and absurdly mismatched music-radio formats that had them savoring 39-cent hamburger sales at the fast-food joint across the street just so they could load up on calories to make it to the next, meager paycheck. Joe brags that he could bring three, four, or even five-day-old donuts back to life with a perfectly moistened paper towel and a microwave oven – The Donut Whisperer.
Their Charlotte job was so boring that the two would take turns lifting weights in the studio while the other guy would introduce the next pop tune. The two joke that they were never as fit as in those Charlotte days.
More than twenty-five years later, the Armstrong and Getty radio program can be heard in most states and captivates a rabid fanbase of listeners who rarely miss an episode. They ground it out through years of tumult and a near-poverty existence in a notoriously difficult industry to make it to where they are today.
Perseverance and sticktoitiveness undergird all these examples. One does not fall into a multimillion-dollar rod business, a beloved national two-and-a-half-decade radio program, or build a thriving insurance business purchased by a Fortune 500 company without passion, grit, focus, and human connection.
Unfortunately, if you allow it, the modern world cuts deeply against every one of those traits. Today’s attention spans are clipped to seconds as we jump from text to Twitter to Tik Tok, respond to the most recent email, keep our Slack chat going, and log into the next Zoom meeting. We replace the sustenance of meaningful, in-person relationships with the cotton candy of Instagram followers and pretend we’re nourished. It’s a dance of business cosplay layered over a foundation of empty calories.
We teach our children that they are extraordinary no matter what they fail to accomplish and that they are precious, unique snowflakes worthy of a trophy and victory celebration whether they win all their games, none of them, or ever even bother to show up for practice. If they are sad, frustrated, or anxious, we rush them to the nearest dispensary for a reflexive prescription of SSRIs to ensure that nobody ever feels bad or experiences any frustrations whatsoever.
If things are too difficult and grades are too low, teachers are admonished to lessen the workload, alter the curriculum and hand out higher grades, whether warranted or not. We’ve bubble-wrapped our infallible angels with foam on a playground with nothing more dangerous than a bench to fall from. Check out: German Insurance Companies Demand Perilous Playgrounds So That Kids Can Learn About Risk.
See also Ep. 0253: “Academia is a Racket”: 13 Problems with Conventional Academia by @KillmerCj discussing all of the ways teachers are pressured to lighten workloads, inflate grades and otherwise toe the line of our government school bureaucracy.
Intuitively, we know it is wrong, but we fall prey to the ease of society’s movement toward domestication. We sleep in a big box, climb into a smaller shiny metal box and drive to work so that we can sit in front of a screen and work in the smallest box yet all day. We then rinse and repeat.
How Do You Break Out?
Not everyone will want the risk and difficulty of starting a business and suffering the long, grueling hours of the lean years. And that is totally okay. But we all will lend a hand in raising kids, even if it is just as an aunt, uncle, or friend. Plus, the vast majority of us need to improve our own physical and mental health.
To those ends, the easiest way to do this is to fan the flames of a passion, desire, or curiosity you already have. Whether reading, writing, a sport, art, music, crafts, gunsmithing, geocaching, or building websites, you have an interest. Indulge it. Set aside time every week to tend to it like a budding flower that needs the perfect amount of light, water, and fertilizer. And when you do this, place your phone on silent and focus on what you are doing. Be present in every movement, decision, and consequence.
The simple act of tuning out and forcing your brain to focus on one thing solely will clear your head. The more you do it, the better your focus will be. The modern world robs our focus and fosters chaos. You must constantly fight against that to keep your mind sharp, and your soul nurtured. As you cultivate this passion, hobby, or maybe even a new career, seek out others passionate about the same thing. There is no better way, especially in adulthood, to meet new people and instantly have something in common.
Your connections with others are the number one predictor of your health and longevity. It is not your BMI, A1C blood glucose level, cholesterol, or blood pressure. It is your relationships, especially the longer-term ones.
This is from Waldinger and Schulz writing at the Wall Street Journal:
For 85 years (and counting), the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which we now direct, has tracked an original group of 724 men and more than 1,300 of their male and female descendants over three generations, asking thousands of questions and taking hundreds of measurements to find out what really keeps people healthy and happy.
Through all the years of studying these lives, one crucial factor stands out for the consistency and power of its ties to physical health, mental health and longevity. Contrary to what many people might think, it’s not career achievement, or exercise, or a healthy diet. Don’t get us wrong; these things matter. But one thing continuously demonstrates its broad and enduring importance: good relationships.
In fact, close personal connections are significant enough that if we had to take all 85 years of the Harvard Study and boil it down to a single principle for living, one life investment that is supported by similar findings across a variety of other studies, it would be this: Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period. If you want to make one decision to ensure your own health and happiness, it should be to cultivate warm relationships of all kinds. ...
The passion and camaraderie will foster your grit. The more you develop a love for something, the easier it will be to do, even in the most challenging times. I’m thoroughly convinced that this is the best gift you can give to yourself to foster satisfaction, strength, and accomplishment as we traverse this age of maddeningly shallow frivolity. And any step you can take toward teaching this to your children, a sibling, or a friend’s child will result in an overwhelmingly tremendous reward you will carry with you for the rest of your days. At a minimum, modeling this practice will benefit the youth in your orbit.
As for me, I can’t wait to get back out on the water and suffer through another cold, windy, potentially fishless Saturday.