Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa June 2016 | Page 12

MASTER INVESTOR

WHY SPORTSMAN
LOSE MONEY
•Bad financial advisors - Bad decisions
•Badly chosen accountants - decisions
•High risk investing
•Poor guidance
•Poor financial literacy
The Impact Rugby Programme

Statistics show that 65% of sportsmen go broke
within just a few years of quitting professional sport.
According to John Smit, the secret to a successful and
lucrative career lies in ‘good planning and adjustment
of budget while playing to live on less and be prepared
for when your income decreases after playing’.
The question then arose of how to help the current
players under him bridge the divide from high earning
players to earning similar income in their professional
careers after rugby? The answer was, in his own words,
“by preparing players while they play to have either an
education, work experience etc.” With that in mind,
the Sharks Rugby Board have recently implemented
The Impact Rugby Programme. The programme aims
to encourage education, networking and the ability
for players to use their value of the profile to their
advantages when applying for a trade.
The goal of the programme is to teach players how
to manage their personal finances wisely, build their
income, source credit, protect their assets and invest
for their future now so that when their rugby careers
end they are set up with a new source of direct passive
income mainly from property investment.
Rugby players have busy careers and many don’t
have time to educate themselves on how to invest
the fruits of their highly paid careers. Most top
rugby professionals are highly successful in their
careers and are well paid sportsman but tend to lose
their wealth due to following bad advice on get rich
schemes, developing bad financial habits, submitting
to financial predators and general poor choices.
Rugby is similar to a high paid job, which does not
always translate into long-term wealth. According to
Smit, players have around an 8 to 12 year window to
earn big but not all are taught how to hold onto their
wealth after their careers come to an end when they
face the real world.
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JUNE 2016 SA Real Estate Investor

The Impact Rugby Programme exposes players to
new ideas on both successful investment principles
as well as some investment failures. Some of the
principles include how to invest wisely, set financial
goals, use your psychology when investing, analyse
a property both physically and numerically, find an
investment property as well as step-by-step guides on
investing and managing your investments.
The players are also taught the fundamentals
of seeking proper asset allocation, getting smart
financing, using leverage, asset protection and smart
asset management. “If we can make a success out of
Impact Programme, then hopefully that will be what
they remember the most, not the money they made”
says Smit.

JOHN SMIT
AT A GLANCE

Definition Of Success: Success is how close
and how fast it takes you to get to achieving the
goal that you’ve set. In a week as a rugby player, it’s
very easy, your goal is to win the game and if you
accomplish that then the result is easy to assess.
In business, it’s far more difficult, you’ve got to set
goals, you’ve got set a process to get there, you’ve
got to try make sure that you do not waste time
because it’s not something that is judged every
single week, so you got to create times where you
judge yourself.
I Am Driven By: Success Whatever I do, I want

to leave it in a better state than how I found it. If
I’m a part of a team, I want to know that when I
leave, the team is in a better position than when
I got there. What drives me now is that my time
here, when it comes to an end, people can say,
“Sherbet, there was a huge amount that happened
in this business” and I can leave a positive legacy.
Every one of us is driven by the fact that we would
like to leave a legacy.

The Difference Between good And
Great: People who are great at what the do are
continually driven by the detail and by a passion
for implementing their ideas into actual actions
(which is a difficult thing). People who are only
‘good’ may have unbelievably great ideas but they
just do not know how to close deals and actually
action these ideas into becoming a reality.

RESOURCES
The Legacy Project
Sharks Rugby Union
www.reimag.co.za