The other week I said I’m closing the chapter on the most recent season of my life.

This is the season I was talking about.

For the last 2 years, I’ve had to play the short game and the long game at the exact same time. And it’s an extremely uncomfortable place to be executing from day over day. I usually know that there is a change of opportunity every few years but being cash crunched at BREZ when it was extremely unplanned for + getting an IRS audit + settling with the gov’t on back taxes + not drawing salaries from Structured or Konstant put a wild wild compression on cashflow and future investment opportunities.

I am blessed to have opportunities beyond what I ever thought was possible at this point in my career but I was not in a cashflow position to all of a sudden be out ~2mm unplanned for with no set return date.

We live well, 3 homes in California, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Rome, Mykonos, New York, Austin, San Diego, Vegas etc each for myself and my wife and son… So I'm not complaining but I’ve built this life to be this way.

I’m not a car guy, I’m not a watch guy, I’m not a shoe guy, I’m not an art guy. I travel and travel well.

The short game focus is what happens when you’re in a cash flow crunch and the needs in front of you are no longer able to be solved with cash deployment and talent arb and require you to do it yourself to preserve the cash for more needed things (stocks, bonds, 

You need to preserve capital. Or find capital quickly. You make the decision that helps right now, even if it isn’t necessarily the decision you would make with a five or ten-year horizon. As long as you DO NOT GO AGAINST YOUR CORE THESIS, YOUR MORAL COMPASS, OR YOUR ETHICS.

The long game is everything you are still trying to build while that is happening.

Business. Reputation. Health. Family. Faith.
The future version of your life that still needs you to make good decisions today.

So you’re trying to solve the next 90 days without doing anything that kills the next 5 years.

And unfortunately for me, my life is not organized like:

Wake up
Do one thing
Finish that one thing
Move on to the next thing

It all kind of bleeds together. There is no clean point where “this is my work” ends and I go back to being a husband or a dad. I’m all of those things at the same time, every day, and the way I’m operating in one area always finds its way into the others.

If home feels unsettled, I find it really difficult to do incredible work. If work is confusing or going badly, I don’t magically leave that feeling at my computer when I walk into the other room.

One affects the other because it is all still my life, but home was so good that my head kept going:

“No, we’re okay. We’re safe. Keep going.”

I don’t think I fully understood how important that was while I was in it.

When one part of your life feels like it could go sideways at any moment, having another part that still feels safe changes what you’re capable of carrying.

So when the rest of my life started feeling pretty out of hand, I made a very deliberate decision to focus on my fitness, my health, and understanding what my body actually needs.

Right now, this is probably the best I’ve ever looked and the best shape I’ve ever been in. Even when I was playing professionally.

The weird benefit is that it has changed how I look at work..after a ridiculous workout, staying committed to my diet, or doing something physically that I genuinely didn’t want to do, whatever is waiting for me on this computer doesn’t feel quite as difficult.

It’s still work. There are still problems. BUT it reminded me that I can do difficult things on purpose, which is a useful thing to remember when life is throwing difficult things at you anyway.

For the first time in a while, I’m not thinking about everything in terms of a 1 to 2 year recovery and I can think in 3, 5, and 10 year bets again.

I can see beverage, hydration, and supplementation being a very real part of my future. I can think about what BREZ becomes and how I am there to support it in one way or another over the next decade instead of only thinking about what needs to happen this month.

The short game no longer feels like the ENTIRE game.

And If you’re in a short-game season right now, hit reply and tell me what you’re working through.

Otherwise, I’ll see you next week.

- Shack