Are You Thinking About What Tomorrow Will Bring For Your Rowing?
October 13, 2008 by Mike
Filed under Think Different, Transportation
A Sunday special post
photo by luismi1985
Coming back from a race yesterday, I got worried—really worried.
It wasn’t about the team or the race results.
Instead it was about something haunting. The future. Specifically, money for the future.
During the regatta, as I watched one of our races go by I struck up a conversation with a parent of one of my rowers. The theme of the conversation was how bleak the economy looks right now, and how discretionary money in people’s budgets are drying up.
We both wondered what tomorrow would bring.
Why is no one talking about this at our level?
Not one other coach has mentioned money concerns to me this past week, and when I brought it up to a few they just seemed to shrug their shoulders. I guess, “It will be okay” was the message.
I talked to my assistant coaches about this. When I got home I immediately started to make alternate plans for this year if the money dries up. Not just for equipment, but for the thing so many of us do—travel.
Our Spring Break trip is only 4 months away. As of today we now have
- Plan A
- Plan B
- Plan C
- Plan D
Which one we select will depend on how much money we’ve got when all is said and done.
If you are starting to get concerned, a few suggestions that might help:
- Have the conversations early. More preparation now means less panic later.
- Develop alternate plans: be thoughtful, pull help in if you need it.
- Look around, talk around. How are others planning?
- Gently prepare the troops.
- Be prepared to constantly refocus and adjust
Are you thinking about what tomorrow will bring for your rowing?
Related post:
Mike,
Tough times don’t last… Tough people do! The key here is to adjust with the changes.
It’s no different than what we ask of our kids every day through the season.
From an economic aspect the system has not changed in thousands of years – we exchange things we have for things that we value. If the “value” or “supply” of what we exchange changes we substitute more “units” of lower value or less “units” of a higher value. The key is that the person who has what we want sets the value. So you’d better find out what it is they value the most.
To put it into more practical terms, these changing economic times require us to become more aware of our resources… We can worry that the old ways of long trips to poorly run events for mediocre performances are over or we can focus on what will help us to increase the value we offer as leaders, guides and coaches every day and then go out and make it happen.
The reality is the economy has always been fluid. Some of us may have become complacent. Perhaps now we can reinvent “our economy” by doing what we ask our kids to do every day. I tell my kids to
“Set high goals and I will help you achieve them” and “the only failure is in not trying harder”
In the end we will be better for our efforts and the sport and our economy will thrive because of our efforts.
Mike,
As with you, I’ve been watching and thinking about the past week’s news regarding the economy.
Several months ago, when things were slowing down, I felt that the programs that rely on donors and fundraising for their equipment and general budgets were likely to see their intended capital equipment purchases and racing schedules delayed, postponed or even shelved entirely due to uncertain economic times. Today, the stock market is making a rebound, but who knows about tomorrow. Too many of those people have already lost their jobs and possibly their homes. These could very well be the parents of the high school kids we coach, or those parents who have been spending the funds needed to send their kids to a private college.
We get a false sense of security the minute the markets turn upward, but the underlying fundamentals are still very tenuous.
This fall, some programs that were planning on equipment purchases in the spring, moved their decisions forward to this fall. Two good reasons were incentives by the boat manufacturers due to competition and also the uncertainty that their intended funding would still be around come the first of the year.
Some programs that had their equipment budgets in place for spring felt that by purchasing a bit earlier,their hard earned funds went to work on a product that could last and also gave them peace of mind by not having to fret about it eroding over the next 5-6 months. It may be boats, oars, trailers or even a truck. These ‘crew’ items are just like the typical long term item you buy for your home (durable goods, like washers, dryers, stoves and such) that last 3 years or longer.
It may be better to use the funding now, than wait till the spring when you really must have the needed boat, oars, trailer or truck. The fear is whether the money will still be available to your program at that time. What if you are forced to delay your equipment upgrades till next year or even the year after? As you said, Plan ‘A’, Plan ‘B’, Plan ‘C’,…….
If you are going to buy in tricky economic times, get products that will have a useful, long lifespan that hopefully can give you a good return on your investment (quality, dependable equipment) that retains a high resale value when it is time to let it go. If it lasted 3 years traditionally, maybe it needs to last 5 years now or long enough for the economic uncertainty to stabilize.
If this is a bit bearish, what if everything turned around tomorrow and headed high into the hills. Would we trust it all the way? Only time will tell!
Plan ahead and plan wisely, make sure you know what the worst case scenario would be for your program and most likely, no matter what happens, it probably won’t ever be that bad!
Cheers!
@ David and Casey:
Great contributions to the conversations, thanks. Maybe things will turn around in the market today (it went up) but the things that caused a change may still need to be dealt with.
A rower who makes a great improvement should be celebrated, but with one improvement does that mean more improvement?
Thanks for adding.