So, How Do You Becoming Successful?

Original article written by Marzy Dotes posted 11 years 3 weeks ago

Every once in a while I get approached by a new player to mentor them but I have difficulty agreeing to do so. Not that I’m not interested in it, it’s just that sometimes I still feel like I need a mentor myself. I ask myself what does someone like myself have to teach newer players?

I’ve never sent a horse to the Louisville Derby let alone won that race. My only foray into what some people call the “real” (non-all weather thoroughbred) Steward’s Cup resulted in a last place finish in the Marathon. I’ve never purchased a multi-million dollar horse in an auction and never leased a mare to the Steward. I think I’m still too scared to ask her what she thinks of any of mine since I pretty much know the answer already.

It took me a decade worth of seasons to stand my first stud. Number of Grade I stake wins for thoroughbreds?

Two including a race several weeks ago.

Some universally accepted harbingers of success in this game remain goals that still lay ahead of me to be successful in some ways it’s been defined. Not that it’s not all relative in that for some who’ve achieved that it might not seem like much, while for others it might be that they feel they have further to go. I had a good opportunity this week to think a lot about what success means to me and what I’m willing to do to get there.

I realized that often it comes down at least for me what I’m not willing to do to accomplish my goals. That’s as much an important question as what you are willing to do when it comes to defending what encompasses success for you and how to get there. Is it winning certain benchmark graded stakes? Is it hitting a certain percentile in wins or earnings per average? Is it focusing as much on building your reputation as a breeder as you do an owner? Is it to have fun and to help others have fun too? Is it to help make this game as fun for as many people as possible including new people?

It can be any of these things or all of them at one time along with other personal goals not included. I had assessed my stable and realized that it’s pretty close to where I want it to be at this point and it’s bringing me a lot of fun and that’s is what is important even if there’s a lot of goals I never reach.

Even though I haven’t hit the benchmarks of success that come up often in conversation, I still get approached to mentor new players and to answer questions and give advice to them. Some of the questions are simple like, how many weeks should I wait to race a horse and should I train and race close together? Is this a good race to enter my horse?

Those can be answered in a couple sentences.

Some questions are direr. Along the lines that I injured my horses and now my balance is in the red, what do I do now? Others require a mixture of candor and diplomacy to answer, like a player approached me to buy my horse, is this a fair price? I get that one a lot especially connected with the new players’ list and that’s a whole different article that I’m researching on buying and selling horses after being hit up during a recent dispersal. But for a short answer, if the asking price is a $1,000 or less for a beautifully bred stakes winning filly or mare, probably not.

Some other questions are more general and those are the toughest to answer especially in a world where it seems every response has to be a terse sound byte, admittedly not one of my strengths.

Like what does it mean to be successful and what does it take to get there?
The reason why it’s difficult to answer that question is because success means so many different things to different people. The paths to get to what constitutes success also branch out in different directions. Do you want to win a lot of races? Do you want to have a Triple Crown champion, win a SIMMY?

Stand a lot of successful stud horses and breed a lot of very nice mares? Do you want to specialize in certain divisions or take a broad approach?

Do you want to mainly have fun and meet people? Do you want to participate or create programs to promote racing divisions, to help newer players?

These are just some examples of goals and some of them are more difficult than others. And once you set your goals, you have to put together a longer range plan with short range goals in between to try and get there. You have to decide on strategy which means utilizing your strongest skills, perhaps working on weaker ones, appreciating your mistakes and asking yourself questions of personal ethics as well. What are you willing to do to accomplish goals? Are you someone who helps people along the way including those less experienced than yourself or are you willing to help yourself to less experienced players to accomplish your goals?

I’ve seen the best and some of the worst of both philosophies in practice including this past week. Fortunately, the best is by far in the majority and the worst, constitutes a rather small minority. It’s hard as someone who comes to the game to get away from having to confront people and entities that take advantage of people in real life. Sometimes you just want to relax after all.

Still there’s some definite guidelines that are probably universal to most people to work towards achieving goals that likely are very different for different people.

The first one’s obvious and some people might ask why it’s even mentioned. That’s because it’s more obvious in theory but sometimes one of the most difficult to commit to in practice.

Be prepared to work hard. It’s just like life only the stakes are a bit lower. The more ambitious the goal, the harder and longer you have to work to have any chance of achieving it. Some, like winning the Louisville Derby, you might never accomplish anyway since there are a lot of other factors involved including luck and the fact that quite a few other players including really accomplished ones want to do the same thing.

You can either approach this in a positive or negative fashion, and if you do the former, you have a much better chance at probably achieving many of your goals at some point. Oh, the hard work never ever stops even for those who win the Triple Crown. After that, it’s onto the next mountain to climb because once you reach the mountain top, you do have to climb back down and start all over with the next one. Believe it or not, a lot of people struggle with what to do next after they succeed which might be one reason why people drop off the game with successful horses in their barn. Success can sometimes be as difficult to deal with as failure. Having a long term goal with smaller goals benchmarked in it will greatly help avoid this type of difficulty and frustration.

Hard work means a lot of reading, researching, trial and error, being able to handle both success and failure. Navigating through all the obstacles and setbacks that you’ll encounter and learning from them. One of my favorite players here has a signature in her profile which is along the lines of learning from mistakes so you can make better ones tomorrow. That’s definitely true I think for most players.

And most important of all, patience, patience and yes, patience.

The second is also just as obvious but still, in reality sometimes gets lost as well. Have fun. It’s not always as easy as it sounds when your stats stink or the dreams you wove for your stakes gallopers crumble to dust. But it’s the most important thing because it’s what gets you through the obstacles and periods of drought that inevitably fall between periods of abundance. It’s what makes the successes more sweet, the failures more palatable and having a sense of humor about meeting up with both. It’s what could help ensure that you stick with your program long enough to get where you want to go.

Be respectful when asking and receiving assistance including advice or in some cases more than that. No one owes you anything and no one in this game, new player or veteran is entitled to anything. The feeling of entitlement over who should have this or not have that is what leads most often to poor behavior and frustration with accomplishing goals. Be courteous and respectful in your dealings with people including in the social arenas. If you have a lot of experience in real life doing both, it’s not that difficult. Don’t take advantage of someone’s generosity or someone’s lack of experience or knowledge is also very important.

The next bit of advice is similar in that don’t screw other players to get ahead and accomplish your goals. Yes, you might reach some of them more quickly if you take advantage of other people’s weaknesses including generosity and inexperience but your achievements will be lessened by choosing that route.

Don’t build your stable at other people’s expense, meaning by taking advantage of or using other people to get what you think you need or want. Unfortunately for new players, the ones who might experience this are often you by people who believe that your inexperience and in some cases, generosity gives them entitlement to do just that.

This one personally for me was not so hard to follow, but hardest to watch when I have a new player approach me and is experiencing it. Like most people, I had so many positive experiences when I was new here and not only did veteran players not take advantage of me, in some cases they helped save me from myself and my own ignorance. It just makes sense to me to honor that spirit by paying it forward in any way I can do so. Another piece of advice that might help you avoid having this happen to you is if you’re lucky to get or buy a really nice horses, hold, hold, hold onto it!

Treat others as you yourself would like to be treated. If you have conversations in social arenas, follow the posted guidelines on them and be courteous and respectful like an adult. Again, that’s something that’s not that difficult to do if you have a lot of experience dealing with a wide variety of people in the real world. According to research talking with players who fall out or reduce time playing, the two most common reasons are real life situations that reduce or stop game play and whether or not people feel welcome or excluded in the social arenas. I’d rather be someone who makes some feel welcome rather than excluded, what about you?

One of the best ways to show your tremendous respect for the very hard work and time that the admin folks put into this wonderful game is how you conduct yourselves in social media and it should be one of the easiest. For one thing, it makes their lives a bit easier. Having moderated or sometimes babysat chat and forums on other sites, it’s not as easy as it sounds those who do so here do a thankless job very well in my opinion. The bottom line is you can either talk about respecting others or you can show it in your actions, and the latter speaks much louder for most people over time.

It can be a lot of fun for players to socialize but it can be hard for some as well, it doesn’t come naturally to everyone and some things like sarcasm translate poorly online. In fact, when someone acts sarcastic to me, I usually react as if they’re being serious in response. A good guideline to follow that works is to treat a social arena as a nice house that you’re visiting and just act accordingly.

These are just some basic tenets that no matter what your individual goals are, they will do a lot to help new players to get there. Some like conducting yourself in an ethical manner might mean working even harder and longer, but when you do accomplish goals it feels like you’ve really done something satisfying.

Although this article is rather verbose, I hope that it provides food for thought if you’re a newer player. These guidelines are mostly just common sense and in practice, they work quite well.

And remember most of all, have fun!

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