The Archives at the Factory

525,600 minutes! That’s how much time is in 1 year. I could have used twice that amount as I was getting Thorium up off the ground. I can’t believe it has already been a year! What a wild and crazy ride it has been but I have survived year number 1. It has not been without its opportunities, excitement, and challenges and upon reflection I now understand so many of the business lessons I had read in books or heard from other experienced entrepreneurs. I understand them now because I have lived so many of them. In honor of that I am going to share 7 lessons I have learned during this first year of independence.

In Part 1 and Part 2 I looked at the common themes that lead to professional athletes having financial difficulty and bankruptcy. At the core the reasons are the same as most people: they spend more than they make and they don’t have a sound financial plan for the assets they do have.

In Part 1 we discussed the first 5 themes I have found in looking at why professional athletes end up broke. I will continue that discussion here with the next 5 themes.

There are lots of sobering statistics about athletes that develop financial difficulties once their playing careers are over. In the NFL 78% of players are bankrupt or in dire financial difficulty within 3 years of their careers ending (Sports Illustrated March 23, 2009). In the NBA it is over 60% (Sports Illustrated March 23,2009). There are a few big questions that I am going to discuss over the next 3 blogs related to this topic. The first two are around the Why and the third is around What can be done to help?

I have had the pleasure of knowing and working with several professional athletes during my career. They are a very unique group of people that have interesting financial challenges that are not unlike those in the working world except that they pack their career earnings in a very short window of time, usually 10 years or less.