Sporting events are a great microcosm of the games we all play. So we can take some great lessons away from them. One of those lessons is playing to win. Now you may be thinking … that seems kind of silly. Doesn’t everybody play to win?
https://biggsuccess.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/4-Traits-of-People-Who-Play-to-Win-blog-post.png430448George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Fosterhttps://biggsuccess.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/BIGG-Success-Nurturing-Your-Inner-Entreprener.jpgGeorge Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster2024-08-04 13:36:062024-08-04 13:40:124 Traits of People Who Play to Win
Malcolm Gladwell wrote a great article for The New Yorker a while ago. He talks about how David beats Goliath. It’s a great read full of stories about underdogs.
The main story is about a girl’s basketball team that made the national championships when they shouldn’t have won a game. The other stories – from David to Lawrence of Arabia – all support why these girls were able to achieve what they did.
He cites a study that showed that small armies beat superior opponents a little over one-fourth of the time (28.5%). However, when these underdogs ignored the conventions of war and fought on their own terms, they won nearly two-thirds of the time (63.6%)!
So you’re two times more likely to win if you set the rules of the game!
Set your terms to get your terms
Bigg success is life on your own terms. So it turns out that it’s a circle. You set the terms (your strategy) so you get the terms you desire (your mission).
You are the entrepreneur of your life. You’re in charge. Set the terms for the battles you engage in so you’re more likely to win those battles.
Small businesses, the Davids of the business world, can trump the Goliaths. Not by trying to compete head on. Not by following the conventions.
By crafting strategies that may fly in the face of wisdom and engaging the Goliaths in unfamiliar ways, Davids can be victorious.
The price for bigg success
If you plan to go head-to-head with the Goliaths, there’s a price you must be willing to pay.
It takes effort. You have to be willing to work longer. You have to work harder. As Gladwell says, effort trumps ability.
He cites the girls’ basketball team. Their secret? A full court press. Not just when the game was in its final minutes like a lot of teams do. These girls used a full court press for the entire game.
It rattled their opponents who hadn’t practiced for a full court press. Their standard plays started at half court. By engaging their opponents on the whole court, these girls put them on unfamiliar turf.
There are many ways today for small businesses – even solopreneurs – to trump large competitors. In many cases, they don’t involve money. They involve time. But that’s okay because you know that effort trumps ability if you focus that effort on unconventional tactics.
That’s how to make your small business a bigg success!
Thank you so much for checking in with us today. Next time, we’ll chat about why women shouldn’t compete with men. Or is it the other way around? Please join us next time to find out. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!
Contrarian investors go against the grain. They invest in companies that are “out of favor” with other investors. These companies are often characterized by things such as a low price/earnings ratio or a high dividend yield.
Price/earnings ratio (P/E ratio) is the quotient of the stock price divided by the earnings per share. Sometimes referred to as the “earnings multiple”. For example, if a company’s stock is selling for $10, and its earnings are $1 a share, its P/E ratio is 10.
Dividend yield is the quotient of the annual dividend per share divided by the stock price. For example, if a company pays out a dividend of $1 a year, and its stock price is $20, its dividend yield is 5 percent.
If a company has a relatively high P/E ratio, it generally means that investors perceive something better in the future. For example, they may expect a relatively high rate of earnings growth. That’s why these investors are often referred to as “growth investors”.
Contrarians are often called “value investors”. They do the opposite of growth investors. They look for stocks with low P/E ratios. For any number of reasons, investors don’t have high expectations for these companies. The dogs of the Dow There are underdogs in every competition. In horse races, they are called “dogs” and people who mainly bet on “dogs” are called “dog players”.
That leads us to one way to make a contrarian play with stocks – the dogs of the Dow strategy. This strategy dates back to at least the early 1970s, but gained popularity in the early 1990s when Michael O’Higgins wrote Beating the Dow.
Dow refers to the 30 stocks that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the oldest and single most watched stock index in the world. To many people, “the Dow” and “the market” are synonyms.
The idea behind this strategy is to buy Dow stocks with the highest dividend yield. Those are considered the dogs of the Dow.
It’s a relatively easy strategy to implement:
Determine how much you want to invest in this strategy.
Divide that amount by 10. This will be the amount you invest in each stock.
After the final trading day of the year, select the ten Dow stocks with the highest dividend yield.
On the first trading day of the year, buy the ten dogs of the Dow stocks.
Repeat this process year after year. Something to note, though, is make sure you hold your winners for a year and a day so you can take advantage of the lower capital gains tax rate.
Like any stock market strategy, in some years you’ll win. In others, you will not. For example, this strategy seems to do particularly well when there is a flight to safety. You may find that being a dog player is a valuable part of your larger portfolio.
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Malcolm Gladwell wrote a great article for The New Yorker a while ago. He talks about 