Episode 18
SWAGGER - WHAT IS IT? AND CAN IT HELP YOU BUILD SUSTAINABLE WEALTH?
Episode Description
In episode #18 of The Big Bo $how, Big Bo (a.k.a. Jason Blumstein, CFA®) takes a look at one of the most overlooked personality traits in building sustainable wealth — swagger.
For individual athletes and team dynasties, swagger is a key ingredient to success. But how does it fit into investing? And could it cause your downfall? Or is it an ally?
In this $how, you'll hear:
How swagger is different from cockiness — and how investors can implement the right amount into their financial plans.
Lessons to learn from both the $63.4 billion Enron collapse and the alarming statistics behind the financial struggles of former millionaire ex-athletes.
The cocktail ingredients that make up the right mix of swagger — integrity, knowledge and passion.
Bo Know$ segment: 6 steps you can take to implement swagger into your personal and financial lives.
Hope you enjoy the $how!
Episode 18 Key Takeaways:
00:00 Defining the fine line between cockiness, overconfidence and swagger.
04:20 Two eye-opening statistics that underline the general hubris and overconfidence of Americans.
06:38 What investors can learn from the cautionary tales of both professional athletes and Enron executives Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling.
10:40 Looking at Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger to draw ties between knowledge and swagger.
13:22 Where “people get things wrong” on the path to building sustainable wealth.
15:59 Bo Know$ segment: 6 steps you can take to implement swagger into your personal and financial lives.
22:21: A quick wrap-up and episode summary.
Episode Transcript
Welcome to Episode 18 of The Big Bo $how. On episode 18, we're going to discuss a concept called swagger. What is it? And can it help you build sustainable wealth? We'll go through the definition of it, where swagger can go wrong, where it can help you. And then we're going to have a special bonus segment at the end. We're going to introduce six steps to implement swagger into your life to help you grow. So sit back, relax, and welcome to episode 18 of The Big Bo $how.
Alright, let's get after it. We're gonna talk about the concept of swagger all throughout episode 18 of The Big Bo $how. Number one, how did I personally get infatuated with this concept of swagger? Growing up as a kid in South Florida. I was a huge Miami Hurricanes fan. And if you look it up, people always talked about how The U invented swagger. Throughout the 80s and 90s, early 2000s. The Miami Hurricanes had some of the best, most dominant college football teams out there with players like my personal favorite Warren Sapp, Willis McGahee, Ray Lewis, Michael Irvin, some of the best defenses and offenses in all of college football, and this drove them to win multiple college championships. Now, many people would think watching them that the Hurricanes were just a cocky, flashy team, but they were not. They had swagger. So what is swagger? To me, having swagger means that you have the confidence to know that you're going to win. But being humble enough to know that you still have to work hard to get there. You see, there's a fine line between cockiness, overconfidence, and swagger, having enough humility, and being too humble, there are fine lines. And as CEO and founder of Julius Wealth Advisors, I come across clients, whether they're current clients, or prospective clients or just talking with people. And I think having this balancing act to have swagger will help push you and motivate you and get you to where you want to go on your path to creating sustainable wealth. Some people have too much confidence, some people don't even have the competence to even try. Some people have no humility. Some people aren't way too humble enough to think that you can even get to where they want to go.
So let's get this going. Let's talk about ways that I see where things can go wrong. When it comes to swagger in creating sustainable wealth. As I talked about, there's this fine line between cockiness and swagger. One is blind and one is aware enough to have humility, and no one's limitations. cockiness is another way of saying someone is overconfident in their abilities. And this leads to where swagger can go wrong. You see, there's a behavioral concept known as overconfidence, bias, and overconfidence bias is the tendency for a person to overestimate their abilities. Let me show this to you in a couple of studies that have been done on everyday life, not in the finance realm. The first study was done by a couple individuals. I will not repeat their names, but the study was talking about how most people think they have above average intelligence and the other one was done by the American Automobile Association, both done in 2018. So let's go through these examples.
The first one found that 65% of Americans think they have above average intelligence. 65%. The second study found that 73% of Americans think they're better than average drivers. Think about that. Average, by definition, is 50%, or above and 50% or below. That's how you come up with the average. So these studies are showing how most Americans are overconfident in their abilities, we typically tend to overestimate how good we are at things. And this is where you can see that, in my opinion, the way to overcome overconfidence ties to one of the core values that I have at Juliuis Wealth Advisors, and knowledge. Knowledge, swagger often arises from knowledge. So you see, if you have a lot of confidence, but you back that with knowledge, this will allow you to get you on your path on your plan to approach sustainable wealth into a place of swagger. Because if you understand what you are doing, and you understand where you want to go, and you've done the research, and you've done the data, or you found someone that has the knowledge that can complement your knowledge, then you don't always try to chase what other people are doing, you have the knowledge, which gives you the confidence, the proper confidence to get you to where you want to go.
Now, unfortunately, being a huge sports fan, and working with some athletes, what I've seen in one is couple statistics that really upset me is where there's overconfidence, this lack of knowledge, unfortunately, sometimes gets the best of people you see in athletes, and I was there I was, you know, played in college, didn't make it to the NFL hurt my back. A lot of athletes are very driven, very motivated people. And they've been told their whole lives, how great they are. But then when they shift to post career, well, now they're kind of stepping out of their core competencies, their core competency, their whole life has been sports. Now they have to shift and they be given all this money, all this attention, all his notoriety. And they have to shift their core competency. So where are they going to get this knowledge? They need to then take all the knowledge and the hard work that they gain the knowledge to play sports and go successfully to shift to the next phase of their lives. And this leads to statistics that I see that really upset me. It's a study that was done only back in 2009 by Sports Illustrated, that found that 78% of NFL players go bankrupt or fall into severe financial stress within two years after retiring. And in the NBA, this number is 60% after five years. So this is where you can see that too much swagger, whether it's in sports and the statistics that I gave you whether it's people thinking they have above average intelligence, better drivers, business, whatever it is too much swagger, having a lot of confidence and not backing it with knowledge can lead you to thinking you're always the smartest guy in the room, which ironically, is literally the book title that chronicles the downfall of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling at Enron. With too much swagger, you can easily convince yourself that it makes sense to try something like day trading, buying penny stocks, following the herd.
Of course you should because you know best you're too overconfident in your abilities, and you're not backing this with the proper knowledge. What I would say is good luck with that, historically speaking, that philosophy, those strategies having too much confidence and not backing with knowledge has failed people over and over and over again. So the first way, and the way that we have seen that swagger and can go wrong, is having overconfidence and not backing it with knowledge. So now we're going to take a quick break, and we're going to come back and we're going to talk about how swagger can help you in creating sustainable wealth.
All right, welcome back. In the last segment, we went over what can go wrong with swagger or having too much confidence in your path to creating sustainable wealth. We're now going to go over the ways that swagger can help you in creating sustainable wealth. The first is swagger is tied to my core value of integrity, integrity, trust, having a track record items that typically lack integrity or things are investment or plans that are flashy things that have flashiness, for example, what we just experienced this from 2021 through 2022, when we saw major spikes and collapses of things like NFTs or cryptocurrencies or investments that everyone thought were going to the moon, get rich quick schemes, things like that, typically, and what we've seen throughout history, lack integrity. What has integrity? What have I seen the way that I look to implement historically for myself and clients, Julius Wealth Advisors simply in investing in the most profitable businesses? It's not sexy. Where did I learn this philosophy? From people like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. And it's pretty easy to say, think if you would ask, pretty much anybody. Is Charlie Munger or Warren Buffett sexy? Pretty sure the answer is going to be no. But this philosophy has driven them. It's driven me. And this is because you're investing in companies that have integrity, have strong balance sheets, effective business model, strong moats, good cash flow, high returns on equity, all things that do not sound sexy, but have, historically speaking, had integrity, and have people like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, who have used this philosophy to grow their wealth, thinking long term, again, not sexy, we've talked about this in the past, when you talk to the media, or you read newspapers, or you go through what's going to sell on Wall Street, these are all things that you have to own now. No you don't. Time discipline squared. Thinking long term doesn't sound sexy, but it has integrity. It helps you to create that swagger, if something has integrity, it can create the knowledge that you need to implement swagger.
Now the next piece is passion. It also ties into my core value at Julius Wealth Advisors. First, we talked about integrity. Now we're moving on to passion, the concept of swagger and passion, both drive people to push to get better every single day. If there's something in life you're not passionate about, you're not going to want to wake up and drive and push and have the humility to get better. Passion is that silent driver people with passion and have confidence and then combine it with humility. They're never satisfied, because you know, there is more to do to get better, what am I investing for? What do I want in my life? What is my why? When you find that why you will find your passion. And when you have a why, people that I have seen will often be successful because of their desire and drive to constantly improve, you see, because creating wealth once more than investing, that's where I think people get things wrong, because you can be the best investor of all time. But what are you planning for? What is your why? What is the purpose of your investments, or you can have a great plan. But if you have terrible investments, it's not going to help out. If you combine all that with great behavior, that swagger, the mindset to have the confidence that you're going to win, but the humility to know that you have to work hard to do so, that to me is when you can have swagger on your path to grow sustainable wealth. We're gonna take a quick break. And when we get back, we're gonna have a Bo Know$ segment on six steps that you can take to implement swagger in your life as you look to grow.
All right, welcome back bow no segment, the final segment of Episode 18, on swagger, we're gonna go into six steps to help you implement swagger into your life. And what I like to call the process of earning the right to grow for me, throughout my life, I've experienced the benefits of this process, whether it be obtaining a full scholarship to play football in college and understanding my circumstances, as a child to get a full scholarship to a great school, whether it be business of starting my career off with literally only $50 in my bank account, and 30,000 in debt, growing my net worth, to be able to start my own business. And most recently, this year on my son's little league team, who went undefeated, we've talked about this team in the past. Last year, we went .500, the year before we went 0-8-1. And this year, they finished the season off 14-0, went undefeated, implementing these six steps in my life, and this team. And in my opinion, if you implement these six steps, they'll help you create swagger, and earn the right to grow. So let's go through these six steps.
Step number one, you have to show up and be present, and get ready to work. You see, the first step is being present in your situation. Don't worry about where you want to go 5-10-15 years down the road, you'll get there. But you also have to be present and understand your current circumstance, not what other people are doing, what you're doing, except the current moment you are in, and then get ready to work and put in the work.
Step number two, take the time to evaluate your situation and develop a go for plan. Now that you're in the present, and you're ready to get to work, you must take the time to evaluate and analyze yourself at every level. This will help to set the foundation for you to grow. And don't let people or other market forces push you to move too quickly. But also, don't let the enemy of great be perfect. No strategy, nothing you implement is not going to have some flaws, nothing's going to be perfect. There'll be pros and cons to everything. But if you analyze that, and you have a path of dealing with this, then you should be on your way with a great foundation.
Step number three, include your team in your plant being an individual, or what we used to call when I played football, a me person that's toxic, and having anything that's toxic in an environment will destroy your plan. And don't forget, even the greatest individuals in this world are dependent on others for their successes in life. So you want to seek input from others, get help from others, as you develop your plan and strategy and know that you might have to play a different role as long as it's helping the team. For example, when I played football, what was my goal? My goal was to get a full scholarship to a great school to get my college education paid for. I wanted to play quarterback. I thought I had a great arm. But I was 6’2, 275 pounds and the team needed me to play off on the line. So it wasn't about me. It was about the team and the team would eventually allow me to get me to where I wanted to go. So make sure you include a team in your plant and have that team first mentality.
Step number four, be disciplined and detail oriented. As your plan starts to go into motion, you must be disciplined about executing your plan and know that a lack of discipline will derail the best strategy and a fierce focus on discipline can make the most lackluster strategy solid. Every day you must come to work with discipline and focus on executing your plan every step of the way. Discipline.
Step number five, be unemotional about your plan. We've talked about this. Emotions typically get people into trouble. Because as your plans go along, there's going to be outsiders as enemy noise, there's going to be people, situations that are going to try to cut your plan down and try to cut you down. But if you're disciplined about your evaluation process and setting up your plan, do not get emotional about those doubters. And then you might get to a point in your strategy where things aren't working out. But if you're too emotional, you're gonna get too high, we're gonna get too low. And this might derail you on your path to growing success.
And then the final step, step number six, if you hit a bump in the road, see the first step and repeat the next you see, it's inevitable that your plans in life, personally, professionally, sports, whatever it is, they're going to hit a snag. Planes always hit a snag. For example, when I played football in college, I injured my back. And in my football career. Did this get me down? No. I was unemotional. I said, well, I got to where I want to go. Now I'm gonna have to use my brain muscle and get good grades and get the job that I always wanted. I went back to step number one, you don't get through down, you're going to hit a bump in the road. It's inevitable whether it's creating wealth, you might first start investing, the market goes down 20 something percent like it did last year. Are you going to get emotional and quit? Say the markets are rigged markets are gambling, that seems overly emotional, you cannot get too emotional. And when you do and when you hit a snag, and know that you will go back to step number one and start to repeat the steps. Because constant work ethic evaluation, teamwork, discipline, and unemotional thinking will be your ultimate recipe to grow in life and business and creating long term sustainable wealth.
So let's wrap this up. Let's wrap up to episode 18. Regarding swagger on the big bow show, on the show, we went into ways that swagger can go wrong and that is overconfidence, bias, having too much confidence without backing it with the proper knowledge. We went into ways that swagger can work for you. That's having integrity, whether it's in your investments, in your plan always having integrity as a person, and then passion finding that why finding that silent driver is going to constantly push you along your way. And then we had the six steps for you to earn the right to grow to create that swagger flywheel if you will in your life.
Step number one, show up and be present, get ready to work.
Number two, take the time to evaluate your situation and develop a go-forward plan.
Number three, include your team in your plan.
Four be disciplined and detail-oriented.
Five be unemotional about your plan.
And six, if you hit a bump in the road, which is inevitable that you will probably see step one and repeat the steps.
SO WITH THAT SAID, THAT'S GOING TO CONCLUDE EPISODE 18 OF THE BIG BO $HOW. IF YOU'RE CURIOUS ABOUT BUILDING SWAGGER IN YOUR LIFE AND INVESTING IN CREATING SUSTAINABLE WEALTH, REACH OUT TO US AT JULIUS WEALTH ADVISORS AT 201-289-9181 OR EMAIL ME AT JASON@JULIUSWEALTH.COM. AND I'LL END THE SHOW AS I END ALL THE SHOWS, IN TELLING YOU TO LIVE A LIFE OF INTEGRITY. LIVE A LIFE OF KNOWLEDGE OBTAINING AS MUCH KNOWLEDGE AS YOU CAN. AND ALWAYS LIVE A LIFE THAT YOU'RE PASSIONATE ABOUT.
Until next time, all the best.
Disclosure:
The content is developed from sources believed to be providing accurate information. The information in this podcast is not intended as tax or legal advice. Please consult legal or tax professionals for specific information regarding your individual situation. The opinions expressed and material provided are for general information, and should not be considered a solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security. Julius Wealth Advisors, LLC (“JWA”) is a registered investment adviser located in Englewood, NJ. Registration as an investment adviser does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The publication of The Big Bo $how should not be construed by any consumer or prospective client as JWA’s solicitation or attempt to effect transactions in securities, or the rendering of personalized investment advice over the Internet. A copy of JWA’s current written disclosure statement as set forth on Form ADV, discussing JWA’s business operations, services, and fees is available from JWA upon written request. JWA does not make any representations as to the accuracy, timeliness, suitability, or completeness of any information prepared by any unaffiliated third party, whether linked to or incorporated herein. All such information is provided solely for convenience purposes only and all users thereof should be guided accordingly. JWA is neither your attorneys nor your accountants and no portion of this podcast should be interpreted by you as legal, accounting, or tax advice. We recommend that you seek the advice of a qualified attorney and accountant