I have no idea how successful I will be
But no one can stop me from playing the game
Every Sunday I share what I learn about health, money and business. Here is what I learnt last week:
Don't bullshit yourself on why you're successful
Would you have invested in Jeff Bezos when he was a nobody?
The impact of Vitamin D3 supplementation on athletes
You can access previous editions of my weekly emails here. Let’s begin!
(1) I have no idea how successful I will be
I have no idea how successful my efforts will become.
If I had the power to predict the future then won't buying stocks cheap and selling them at peaks be the easiest way to gain riches? But I wonder what kind of a life would that be? A life in which you know everything that has to happen before it happens does not sound like a fulfilling life. After the initial victories, it feels like every subsequent win would lose the meaning of the word "victory" because there would be no fight in the game to achieve the result. A man (or woman) who does not get the opportunity to prove himself is bound to be an unfulfilled person. Irrespective of the cards you have been dealt in life, whether you are rich or poor, healthy or sick, male or female, in a poor country or a rich one, the truth is that you cannot predict the results. All you can do is choose to play your cards in the best way possible.
I recently read Ryan Holiday write about why you don't want to tell yourself stories because you can fool yourselves in believing your own false narratives. He gives the example of how Google bets on founders who "want to change the world". Yet Google has failed nearly 300 times in the bets they have taken. Their biggest success from search came out of Larry Page and Sergey Brin doing their Stanford PhDs dissertation. They did not ask themselves "what should we do to change the world" yet that's what their search engine ended up doing. And one of their most valuable assets, YouTube, was started not to disrupt TV but share funny video clips online.
Ryan points us to better advice from the great Paul Graham who says that "we should keep our identity small. Make it about the work and the principles behind it—not about a glorious, aggrandizing vision. Have frighteningly big ideas but start with deceptively small things. Iterate. Scale your ambitions as you grow."
I am glad that uncertainties, doubts, risks and fears exist. I am glad that success is not easy. And when success does come, do not bullshit yourself about how you cracked some secret code. You did not. You just gave yourself the opportunity by being present in the water when the wave came. You would never have been able to ride that wave had you been sitting on the beach. It does not matter whether you ever get the opportunity to ride a wave, that you only ride it once in your life (one-hit wonders), or whether you do it multiple times successfully (serial entrepreneurs). What matters is that you are out in the water, everyday, swimming, doing what you were made to do - work.
(2) Would you have invested in Jeff Bezos when he was a nobody?
This is a company which half of the US population pays monthly money to.
Even you and I in India pay them a subscription. Their revenues are as big as 20% of the Indian economy. Yet despite its size they compounded their operating profits at an incredible 50x over the last decade with profits touching $37 billion. If you had believed in them when they IPO'd in 1997, each $1 of yours would be worth $2600 today. This means $10,000 investment would have grown to $26 million. In rupees this means that an 8.3 lacs investment would be worth 215 crores. Not bad!
I wonder who all believed in Jeff Bezos and Amazon when he was a nobody. He moved into his parents house to save costs when he started. The reason Amazon has "frugality" as one of their core values is because of him. They are remarkably good at cutting costs at whatever they do. They then pass on those cost cuts as reduced prices to their customers. For example: Amazon Cloud Services has cut prices for customers twice a year, every year, for the past twenty years. And they keep their margins low. This makes it very difficult for competitors to keep up with them.
I love their idea of two-pizza teams. This means that an initiative shouldn't have more than 5-10 people to execute, else it's too big. This lead to the concept of single threaded leadership. For any initiative, there is a single owner. There might be a lot of stakeholders and their inputs might be valued but the owners decision in this particular initiative is what matters. This means there is accountability. The owner has the power to "disagree and commit". Amazon is incredibly decentralized for a big company because of this core tenet.
Here is Jeff Bezos explaining how they think about business strategy:
“I very frequently get the question: 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one. I almost never get the question: ''And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two -- because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. ... [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, 'Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,' [or] 'I love Amazon; I just wish you'd deliver a little more slowly.' Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.”
We at Marcellus believe that Amazon is still undervalued so we own them in our Global Compounders Portfolio. If you want to listen to why, then here is Saurabh and Jaibir talking about their Amazon investment:
(3) Study on Vitamin D3 Supplementation in Athletes
In recent years, there's been growing interest among coaches and athletes in understanding how vitamin D levels affect muscle strength and athletic performance. This is because vitamin D is essential for bone health and muscle function. A recent meta-analysis (a study that combines the results of multiple scientific studies) looked into how supplementing with vitamin D3 impacts athletes' strength and vitamin D levels in the blood.
What Was Studied:
The researchers focused on the effects of vitamin D3 supplementation on various strength measurements and blood vitamin D levels in athletes. Specifically, they looked at:
Bench press one-repetition maximum (1RM), which measures upper body strength.
Handgrip strength.
Quadriceps maximal contraction, which measures the strength of the muscles at the front of the thigh.
Vertical jump height, which is a common measure of leg power and explosive strength.
Who Was Studied:
The study involved 318 athletes, aged between 14 and 29 years old. These athletes included football/rugby and soccer players, swimmers, and those practicing judo or tae kwon do. They were divided into groups that received either vitamin D3 supplements or a placebo (a substance with no therapeutic effect).
How It Was Studied:
The researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 10 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) from various countries, including the United Kingdom, Poland, Israel, Korea, and New Zealand. These trials were conducted mostly during winter, with one in autumn, to ensure that natural vitamin D levels from sunlight were minimized.
Participants received vitamin D3 in different dosages: daily (2,000–5,000 IU), weekly (20,000–40,000 IU), or in a single large dose (150,000 IU). The duration of the studies ranged from 8 days to 12 weeks.
What Were the Results:
The meta-analysis found that supplementing with vitamin D3 significantly increased the athletes' serum vitamin D levels by an average of 14.8 nanograms per milliliter. More importantly, there was a notable improvement in the strength of the quadriceps muscles, which are crucial for many athletic activities.
However, the study found no significant improvements in handgrip strength, bench press one-repetition maximum, or vertical jump height. This suggests that while vitamin D3 can enhance some aspects of muscle strength, its effects may be more specific to certain muscle groups or types of strength.
Conclusion:
The findings from this meta-analysis highlight the potential benefits of vitamin D3 supplementation for athletes, particularly in increasing quadriceps strength and improving vitamin D levels in the blood. Coaches and athletes might consider monitoring vitamin D levels and supplementing accordingly, especially during the winter months when natural sunlight exposure is limited.
Implications:
For parents, coaches, and athletes themselves, this study emphasizes the importance of maintaining adequate vitamin D levels not just for bone health but also for muscle function. Supplementing with vitamin D3 could be a simple yet effective strategy to enhance athletic performance, particularly in sports that rely heavily on leg strength.
Overall, while the results are promising, it's important to remember that vitamin D3 supplementation should be tailored to individual needs and ideally monitored by healthcare professionals to ensure optimal health and performance outcomes.
Summary:
Purpose: To explore the impact of vitamin D3 supplementation on athletes' strength and vitamin D levels.
Participants: 318 athletes, aged 14-29, from various sports.
Method: Analysis of 10 randomized controlled trials from different countries.
Findings: Significant increase in blood vitamin D levels and quadriceps strength, but no significant improvement in other strength measures.
For a deeper dive into the specifics of this research, you can refer to the original study on PubMed.
Harsh Batra (LinkedIn)
Whenever you are ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:
Happy Ratio - The foundation of health is your diet. You should focus on eating nutrient dense meals. But this is not always possible or easy. Happy Ratio is the only quick service restaurant chain that is on a mission to encourage Indians to eat and drink healthy food that is tasty. We aim to be physically and virtually present everywhere you get hungry. We are currently present in CyberHub, Fortis Hospital Gurgaon and Select Citywalk Saket. We are also available on Zomato and Swiggy.
iDeals VDR - If you are running M&A transactions, planning an IPO, or sharing anything confidential online, my team can run your Virtual Data Rooms. You can turn excel sheet formulas on and off, choose exactly who can do what, make documents automatically expire, and visually check buyer interest easily. Companies like Pfizer, Mercedes and Tata trust us.
Marcellus Investment Managers - I am a Marcellus client because their investment philosophy resonates with how I think about investing. I believe that Marcellus can generate average returns of 18% per year over the next 10-20 years through its funds. That is 5x returns every 10 years. I trust them with my savings and evangelize their approach of investing in clean, honest and cash flow positive businesses. Investing comes with inherent risks so please do your own due diligence before deciding where to put your money. I am also an Independent Financial Advisor with Marcellus.