Those who know me know that I love golf. But it wasn’t always that way: When I started playing in high school, I made the team only because it was a no-cut sport. I gave up golfing for years after that, but when I started again, I put my mind to learning and growing at the sport.
This has been a decades-long journey for me – a journey that saw me drop 54 strokes off my score! – and through it, I’ve learned a lot about golf. But I’ve also learned just as much about human behavior and smart investing. In fact, the basic principles that have helped me succeed in golf are the same that help my clients save for their future:
- Use logic and emotions. Most financial professionals will only use numbers and math to explain investing. But it’s impossible to completely separate your emotions from your logical brain – whether you’re golfing or I’ve found that I shoot best when I use my logic brain – I call it “Brain 1” – to learn off the course, and embrace my emotional brain (Brain 2) to quiet my logical side when I’m on the course. I tell my clients the same thing: Honor your emotions! If an investment strategy is keeping you up at night, it’s not worth it – even if it’s “logically” the right thing to do.
- Drill down to basics. In golf and investing, I find everyone learns best when complicated things are broken down to their basic components. On the golf course, that means isolating each part of my body during the swing – how should I turn my hips? How do my wrists move? When I work with clients, that means ditching the financial jargon and drilling down to the concepts that are most important for them to understand, so that they feel comfortable with their saving strategies and goals.
- Follow a routine. When I restarted golf, I made an effort to play and learn almost every day—and that’s when I started seeing such dramatic progress in my swing. Seeing that kind of progress in an investment account is also about forming healthy routines, like saving a certain percentage of each paycheck.
- Find the right teacher. One of the most important things I’ve done to improve on the golf course? Find excellent people to help me do it. One of the best teachers I’ve ever had in my life is Andy Krajewski – a former pro golfer himself, Andy made complex golf concepts simple for me and helped me improve my score exponentially! Now, he does the same thing for his clients as a Financial Advisor at Arbor Financial Services.
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