Thursday, December 3, 2009

You Can't Have Your Cake and Hide it Too.

Although Rick Telander of the Chicago Sun Times put the Tiger Woods' situation better than anyone I've heard or read so far in this article, I gonna offer my two pence anyway.

The majority of us live simply and are consequential only to our friends, families, colleagues and the Master Planner. We all have public and private faces that we manage with whatever moral or ethical codes we carry. Others aspire to greatness in various forms of public displays for the fame, wealth, influence or any combination of the former.

Any investment manager will tell you, the greater the risk, the greater the reward. If you choose the public life for the rewards, you also choose the risks.

The difference between those in the public eye and those of you like me is when we screw up, there is a plop and a ripple affecting those in our relatively small spheres of influence. Public figures, when they choose poorly, make a huge splash and everyone ends up getting wet.

In Tiger's case, everyone but Elin. She is a smart one and clearly understood her investment. Seven figures immediately transferred to her sole account, a renegotiation of her 10 year, $20 million marriage/ prenuptial contract so that she earns more to stay married for less time. Make no mistake, when your life is linked to a public figure, you have so much more to lose than they do unless you have your own thing detached and independent of your public cash cow.

Do the right thing, Tiger. Be contrite, be wiser, be the image you're well paid to be or begone.