From Dan Peña – "The Money Messiah" and Mentor/Coach for The New Millennium

Dear Friend and Subscriber,

As I sat, watching Pete Sampras win his seventh Wimbledon Championship (his thirteenth Grand Slam Championship – a new all time record), I thought of what I wrote a few days ago. I also thought of one of my devotees response which I forwarded to you.

Pete Sampras is a genuinely nice guy. Even a little shy. He’s 28 years old and says he owed today’s success to his parents, fiancée and God. He was losing at the beginning of the match and came back, after thinking he might lose, to win strongly.

Notwithstanding my devotee might believe Pete Sampras is an anomaly, I don’t ! The key is, he was led by a role model – in this case his parents.

I’ve written, ad nauseam, how Socrates wrote (even before I came on the scene) the easiest way to success was modeling someone who had already achieved success – been there and done it.

Obviously, Pete Sampras modeled other great tennis players to become arguably the greatest of all time. But, dealing with the ramifications of super success, he got the solid grounding he received from his parents.

Speaking of grounding – a couple of years ago a business partner of mine sent me the attached poem. It’s not that I had never seen it before – because I had – as many of you may have as well. It wasn’t because it was an especially difficult transaction we were working on together. It wasn’t because he was contemplating quitting. He sent it to me to give to some of my other business partners who were having a tough time of it. He wanted them to gain some inspiration from the words. What the other partners did take inspiration from was who sent it to me.

It came from a 32-year-old young man from Dublin. He was a Chartered Accountant (CPA) formerly from a ‘Big Five’ firm. He was no longer in the accounting business. He was trying to consolidate pubs, but, in his case, it was a bit more tricky. You see [no pun intended] he is almost totally blind. He sees, at most, dark shadows. He has gone to the wrong office building; he has sat in the wrong reception room; he has fallen in open construction pits, yet he doesn’t feel sorry for himself. He wants to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. He wanted to try and help me help others. He is a giver not a taker.

People often ask me why I ever started coaching in 1993. Fortunately I have met a number of such outstanding human beings. Being a high performance person doesn’t only relate to money and riches: ie; the Pope, Nelson Mandela.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve taken the riches route and I’ve been fortunate enough to have experienced notoriety and publicity along with that success, but, for those that have followed my career closely, you know I’ve also experienced the agony of defeat.

Today was a day for the good guys like Pete Sampras. But the real truth is the guys/gals like my blind partner – TONY WARD – are the real heroes we should model ourselves after.

To Our QL,
Daniel S Peña, Sr.
 

P.S. TONY has been training the last year to represent his country in the Olympics. He’s a 800 and a 1500 meter [Real] MAN.