Don't Eat Your Seed Wheat

By Owen Thomas

I recently watched a great cooking show about making pizza dough. The discussion revolved around what flours were the best. The chef, Simon Bryant, revealed that he liked to use a flour called Pharaoh Flour. As these shows go, that was the cue for the short story segment. We see Simon walking through acres of golden eared wheat just before harvest - Cut to the owner of the farm.

They revealed the wheat was special dry climate wheat that had originated from Egypt. Extremely suited to the Australian dry climate, something our early settlers would have appreciated. It had been thought to have died out thousands of years ago or hybridised into our more common cold and wet climate wheat. It is very easy to digest, very high in essential nutrients and protein. More body friendly than our current varieties.

Why am I going on about wheat you ask – well here is the point of the story. The ancient Pharaohs were often buried with everything they might need in the afterlife, including wheat, in case they got hungry on the way there. Apparently on excavating one of the tombs, archaeologists found a small quantity of the ancient grain. One Australian farmer some 25 odd years ago was given 5 grains. That’s right, just 5 small insignificant grains, to see what they could do. It was their “seed wheat”.

Our farmers, hoping that they could create a premium and hence more profitable wheat, planted them in their vegie patch. They could keep an eye on the tiny plants and protect them from any pest or hungry birds.  On each harvest they took the ears of wheat stored them carefully and replanted the seed wheat again the following season.

Season upon season, year after year they completed the process. Nurturing and protecting each grain as though it was gold itself. Because it was. Now with hundreds of hectares of Pharaoh Wheat there is ample enough to go round for everyone. They have created an extremely profitable business. They have a product that is unique and special and hence they can charge a premium price. 

Some years ago I was fortunate enough to sit in a room with around 30 people listening to a multi millionaire who had come from being a university dropout fast food hand, to owning a business that was turning over several hundred million dollars a year and enjoying an extremely extravagant life style. As the meeting started we were all asked to write down what we would do with five million dollars. A few minutes later he went round the room asking people what they had written.

Of course the usual things came out, buy a big new home, Ferrari, a New Benz, travel the Bahamas’, I’m sure you could add to the list. His response was designed to shock us and wake us up. He declared that we all had “poverty thinking”. The thinking of people who would never be rich or wealthy. We were told that wealthy people would invest it all, and used it to make more money and that in turn to make more money. Taking that approach not only would we get all that we had written down but more than we could ever have imagined.

I’m not necessarily the greatest of sports investors (*), and like most, often battle with confidence, particularly when my bank is going south. I, like Matt Elliott, know that confidence is the most important thing to protect and I ensure I have a couple of friends who are also professional sports investors who I talk to on a regular basis.

One to celebrate the good days, but also to help keep my spirits up and give me a sense of perspective on the days when we can’t seem to do anything right. I recently was sharing with my friend my success with the slots scalping strategy. His immediate response was like mine in the story above, “boy that would pay for a great holiday and a lot better car”. He was right of course but those choices would never build any wealth either.

I paid my way through university selling door to door a product that a couple of friends of mine had developed. It was a good, but cheap, impulse buy. When we were looking for potential markets we would look for the nearest Kmart or Target. We had heard those realtors would move into an area where there were one hundred thousand CASH customers.

The social demographic that had money in their pockets ready to burn. This was the early 80’s. We would regularly make between $20-$40 per hour, cash; and on the odd occasion $100 dollars an hour. Pretty good for uni students in the 80’s.  We never did very well in the affluent suburbs.

Why are you a sports investor, is it just for fun? Are you seriously looking to build wealth and a better life for you and your families? Or do you have bigger goals written down. I have my own answers. I set strategies and discipline myself and practice delayed gratification with the profits I make. Do I always get it right? No. And sometimes it’s always nice to reward myself for all the hard work I’ve done.

But I keep that reward in perspective with my goals and double check whether my thinking is wealth or poverty orientated. If I do choose to reward myself, if find a reward that supports me in someway. It may be in my relationships, health or emotional and mental wellbeing. I have found the healthier and happier I am it pays off on the bottom-line. I am less stressed and make better decisions.

Pharaoh flour is now sold all over the world and thousands of loaves of bread are baked and sold. What would have happened if a couple of years into the early development of the new (old) grain the farmers had decided it was all too hard, ground the seed into flour, made up a couple of batches of hot cross buns and had a great Easter celebration?  I guess its all in the book title of the great author and student of wealth – Napoleon Hill –“THINK and GROW RICH”. It’s all in our thinking and not eating our seed wheat.

Note: I prefer to call what we do professional sports or racing investment, because we are deciding to invest our money based on our research and likelihood of getting a return. Some people gamble on sports, some people gamble in the stock market. But we invest with a strategy and intention of making profit for the long term, we don’t always get it right but neither do the professional fund managers.

©2006 Owen Thomas