In this episode, Scott Becker shares ten powerful mantras, concepts, and sayings that shape decision-making in business and life.
Chapter 1: What are the 10 mantras and concepts discussed?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's concept is 10 mantras, concepts, and sayings. We'll work through 10 of these. This is in preparation for a talk we're giving in May. We're going to go through 20 to 30 mantras, concepts, and sayings. But hopefully some people will find this interesting.
Chapter 2: What does 'change it, leave it, or accept it' mean?
First concept is what we think of as change it, leave it, or accept it. In other words, double down, stay the course, or abandon. So this is really for any business line, any personal pursuit, you're always sort of making this choice. Do you double down and do more of it? Do you stay the course, just keep on doing what you're doing or do you abandon it?
And I think these are always choices as to what you're making. So currently I'm working with two vendors, both terrific, but I'm not sure if I'm actually getting value out of that. The easy choice is just to stay the course, The harder choice, but probably the right choice, is to abandon what I'm doing with those two and use the money in some other places.
So sort of double down, stay the course, or abandon it. You know, same thing with whatever's working in business. You double down on it, or do you stay the course, or do you abandon it? And the things that are working well, you generally double down on. Things that are fine, you might stay the course. And other things you might choose to simplify life, simplify business, to just sort of –
abandon it. The second concept is it's a part of this comes out of a Jerry Seinfeld concept. But this kind of work on is in terms of clarity day to day and being able to function day to day at the highest level, at the most optimal level. It's this concept of constantly taking care of one's mental health. more meditation, more calm, and for me personally, trying to ease coffee.
Chapter 3: How do you manage investments wisely?
Chapter 4: What is the significance of mental health in decision-making?
abandon it. The second concept is it's a part of this comes out of a Jerry Seinfeld concept. But this kind of work on is in terms of clarity day to day and being able to function day to day at the highest level, at the most optimal level. It's this concept of constantly taking care of one's mental health. more meditation, more calm, and for me personally, trying to ease coffee.
But this constant concept of more meditation, more calm, more moderation of coffee. The third concept we'll talk about is an investment concept, and I love this concept. I'm not sure who coined it, but I love it. It basically says, save like a pessimist. Be careful about your spending, keep putting money away, and so forth.
And then invest like an optimist, meaning for the long run, put some money in equity so they could ride with optimism over the long run. The economy is going to get better and better and that you're going to see returns in the long run if you invest like an optimist.
Chapter 5: What does 'don't let the old man in' signify?
Now, all of us, we talk about constantly this concept of really working your allocation of assets and having an emergency fund so you can go ahead and go ahead and keep things where you want them. When the market dips, you don't feel compelled to sell. So save like a pessimist, invest like an optimist. I love that concept. The fourth concept we talk about is, and again, this applies to anybody.
I'll use the phrase that we use. The phrase that we use is, don't let the old man in. And this is the concept, and it's not an anti-concept of tempering oneself, because you have to constantly temper yourself so you don't beat your body up. But if you slow down too much or you put on too much weight, it's very hard to then take it off.
If you slow down too much, your muscles get so sore, your body gets so sore that the effort to really get back at it is very, very hard. And so physically and mentally, the concept is don't let the old man in because once he's in, it's much harder to recover and so forth.
Chapter 6: How can professionals transition from practice to leadership?
And so people that have injuries and have to rehab, you know, we have great empathy for trying to keep yourself relatively busy and moving. So as you do get better, you're able to do things you want to do. Or if you take too long off of anything, it makes it much harder to reattack things. So the concept is don't let the old man in. The fifth concept, I love this, and it's about management.
is that in many organizations you have a core job to start with. Let's say you're practicing law, you're practicing accounting, and then as you get the basics of it, then at some point you move towards your practicing leadership. So you start with practicing law or your profession, and then you move towards practicing leadership, and that's the next concept there.
We used to have people that were fantastic at what they do, tremendously task-oriented, would be fantastic at tasks, They have to move from being able to be great at tasks to be able to apply analytics to it, analysis, and to practice leadership in that context. The sixth concept, and we talk about this in business always, is whatever business you're in,
You want to really understand the business and the landscape. It's why 100 years ago in media and in law, and it's entirely in healthcare. So I could know law, I could know media, but I could really apply them in the context of the industry that I really started to understand. And it's not so much as a lawyer, you've got to be a business expert and everything.
But it really helps to understand the context you're in. It puts you so much further ahead of other people in terms of getting from point A to point B and being able to problem solve. So really understand the business and the landscape you're in. The seventh concept is one that as you get older, you become more and more familiar with this. And this is this concept of injuries versus illness.
So for those of us that have injuries... we have to almost view that as a huge positive because injuries, you know, you have a knee blowout, you've got eyes that need surgery on, both of those that I had in last year, that may suck, but it sucks a lot less than having cancer or a serious illness that could threaten your life or really threaten your longevity and what you can do.
So constantly being almost viewing it as a blessing. You don't want the injuries, but injuries over illness always. The eighth concept we talk about here in Montress concepts it's saying is, As the economy weakens or it's challenging, it's very important to do a few things. Prioritize your spending. It's what you think it should be, whatever's critical. Go very easy on escalating debt.
Look at how you could reduce debt and keep debt in check, but don't blow up your cash cord to pay down your debt because you need cash. Cash is king. I see some of these companies recently doing big share buybacks, but they're leaving themselves with lots of debt. I hate that. Go easy on debt. understand your asset allocation, which we talk about often, and maintain your emergency funds.
Make sure you've got enough emergency funds that you could withstand things, that you don't have to sell to the market at a bad time, that you're fine, that you're solvent. The ninth concept came out of a specific discussion that was had in our household
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