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Competition

Like many entrepreneurs who felt driven to grow their companies, he suffered from a major disability, namely, his own blindness to what he had accomplished. He was haunted by a sense of inadequacy, of not measuring up. He would compare himself with the most famous entrepreneurs in the world and wonder what they had that he lacked. He was so focused on his shortcomings that he couldn't see - or give himself credit for - the real contributions he had made to his community and the positive impact he had on the lives of the people around him. It was as though all that counted for nothing if he hadn't achieved what the world considered the pinnacle of success as measured by the size of his company or his personal fortune.
- About Jay Goltz, CEO of CitiStorage

Players must remember that the best victory was not over the opponent but over oneself.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American Entrepreneur, Statesman and Scientist, commenting on the game of chess

We assess every facet of our lives in comparison to others. Do I make more or less money than my peers? Do I live in a smaller or bigger house than my parents or siblings? Do I have a more important job than the people I went to school with? Am I in better physical shape than my old friends? Are my children as successful as my friends’ children? There are a number of problems with keeping score in this way:

- Being more “successful” than those to whom you compare yourself may not make you happy.

- People have completely different advantages and “starting points”. If you are in the race for wealth, you may be at quite a disadvantage competing against someone who has inherited a vast fortune. In every respect – beauty, intelligence, athletic ability – people have widely varying inheritances.

- There will always be others who are more successful than you in some way, thus it may be impossible to win the game; this may lead you to feel bitter. Conversely, there will always be those who are not as successful as yourself, perhaps leading you to arrogance or conceit.

- You have no control over the actions of others. Thus, no matter how hard you try, you may lose the game. And just the fact of not having control may be frustrating.

- Those whom you are competing against may play by a completely different set of rules; it is very frustrating to play a game against those who use different rules.

- Competition with others implies that for some to win, others must lose. This is neither healthy nor true. In fact, when an individual creates value, many people benefit.

This book is largely about taking the above factors into account so you may fairly compare your own accomplishments to others. But while acknowledging that people seem driven to compare themselves to others, the most important game is with oneself. Once you’ve determined how you will create value, decide how you will keep track of that value – that is your way of keeping score. This outlook has a number of very important advantages:

- While you have little or no control over the actions of others, you have almost complete control over your own actions. It is true that there are some events over which you have no control; your plane may crash, you may develop cancer – but overall, on a day-to-day basis, you have a very high degree of control, and complete control over the choices you make. Each day you can decide what you will try to accomplish; each day you can make a full effort, or not. Only you can decide how hard you will work to achieve your goals.

- You can make your own rules and prioritize your values.

- You can score yourself only on those aspects of your life which you believe will lead you to happiness. Perhaps you already have enough money to meet your needs, and you decide that raising happy children is the way that you enjoy creating value. If so, you can focus on your children, and not worry whether your income is keeping pace with others. But if you decide to focus on your children, you should also avoid comparisons in this area. What matters is whether your children are as happy as possible; not whether they’re as happy as someone else’s children.

The value of competing against yourself is easily seen in the world of amateur sports; if a middle aged woman takes up running to improve her health, she would not dream of trying to run the worlds’ fastest mile, or the world’s fastest anything. If she is sensible, she will set attainable goals that can be reached with the amount of effort that makes sense given the amount of time and effort she is willing to devote to this aspect of her life. For a woman in, say, her mid-forties, 25 pounds overweight, and with no recent history of exercise, she may start by running miles at a 12 or 13 minute mile pace – and that’s just fine. If she sets as her goal running 10 minute miles, that might be quite ambitious, but if she were to reach that goal, it would represent a dramatic improvement in her fitness, and would probably, when combined with better nutrition, result in very encouraging weight loss and improvements in other overall measures of health.

The key in setting goals, and keeping score, is to set goals that are meaningful to the person who is trying to achieve them – not the goals that they are told should be meaningful. As Kim Polese, founder of Marimba Inc., says, “I look around me, and I have so many friends who started companies who are worth $50 million and more, and they are depressed. They think they've made it, and they take six months off and they realize they're more depressed than ever. Because this wasn't really what ultimately it turned out life was all about.”

So many people pursue wealth only because it’s what they are expected to pursue; not because it has meaning to them. As Bo Burlingham found in researching Small Giants, what enabled his group of successful entrepreneurs to avoid the trap of seeking growth for growth’s sake is their self knowledge; they actually thought about what they wanted to get out of life, in a broad sense, and how their business could contribute, or be an impediment, to those personal goals. “They are very clear in their own minds about what life has to offer at it’s best – in terms of exciting challenges, camaraderie, compassion, hope, intimacy, community, a sense of purpose, feelings of accomplishment, and so on – and they have organized their businesses so that they and the people they work with can get it.”

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Quotes

Real estate is often an area that highlights the role of luck and chance, as its value is overwhelmingly driven by location, yet the value of that location may change for many reasons, and often change dramatically, for reasons having nothing at all, and in fact in no control, of the owner. It’s easy to see how someone buys a large parce of land in a rather distant suburb of a major city, simply because he needs a large piece of land for his modest business. But over the years, having nothing to do with the forsight of the owner, that piece of land might become worth many millions, as the development inexorably creeps out to the what were once outlying areas. This is a process that enriches, quite by accident, many small business owners who happened to buy a large parcel of land simply because it was cheap and fit their present business needs, only to find the location catch fire, and the land to rise dramatically in value. An even better, and a bit more unusual example, can be found with the High Line in New York. The High Line is an elevated railroad track built in the 1930s to service the warehouses on Manhattan’s West Side. There was certainly nothing glamourous or even attractive about the area at the time. The timing was terrible; as soon as the track was built, railroad traffic ground to a halt due to the Depression and competition from trucking. The last train ran on the High Line in 1980, after which it was pretty much abandoned to become just another piece of industrial waste. Not only did it not have value; it had negative value; the cost of pulling it down was estimated at $5 million, and in 1984 the track’s owners, ConRail, sold the track for $10 to a transportation consultant in order to avoid being responsible for demolition costs. (The sale was later voided.) For many people argued what should be done about the track, with the prevailing consensus being that it should be torn down. As usual, there were years of litigation, and occasionally some dreamer would step forward with a plan to revitalize the track, and surrounding areas, into a park, or something else. One of the plans was to turn it into a 22 block long swimming pool. In 2001, in his last days as mayor, Rudolph Giuliani put the process in motion to have the High Line demolished. However, the events of 9.11.01, have put New Yorkers in a mood of radically reinventing the city, what with the rebuilding and renassiance of the World Trade Center, and the whole financial district. Although the idea of making over the High Line area had kicked around for years, the timing, and the involvement of Joshua David, a former freelance journalist with an interest in urban design, and Robert Hammond, a marketing and Internet consultant. Both were young, 29 and 35, when they began their Quioxtic battle to save the High Line, and formed the non profit lobbying group Friends of the High Line. They filed suit against the city to prevent the demolition, but it was really luck, with some celebrities happening to fasten onto this as the cause of the moment, and good timing, plus the sudden realization by developers and architects that the recreation of the area had all sorts of amazing redevelopment opportunities. Now, eight years after beginning the fight, what once seemed impossible is now unstoppable. There are already many major hotels and residential buildings under construction along the High Line, with big time developers and famous architects. Who benefits? Well, hopefully, in some way, David and Hammond will benefit, although it’s not exactly clear how. But for sure, those who own property along the High Line, many of whom initially opposed David and Hammond and the Friends of the High Line, will benefit in a major way; people like Douglas Oliver, who with a partner, bought a warehouse on on Tenth Avenue, between 25th and 26th streets. In 1978, on the eve of the last trains running down the High Line, they bought the warehouse and underlying ground for $75,000. He’s turned down offers of over $100 million; and for good reason; down the block, housing trendy new restaurants like Craftsteak and Del Posto, is a building that Recently sold for $150 M. As Oliver says, “These days around here, you see women in fur coats buying million dollar paintings. When I bought the place (which was a rough industrial area known for transvestites) the women in fur coats around here were usually men. But Oliver, to his credit, was actually an early supporter of the High Line, and even made a donation to help the Friends of the High Line, who he acknowledges for his good fortune: “This is a gold mine. The landlords should be thanking them.”.

—High Line development in NYC

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