Hey, it’s Adam.

This one is off the usual track. Most of you don’t know I trade and invest. Stocks, options, and a few others, for over ten years now. When I ran leagues, I had much less time for it, but I never stopped watching the markets.

The last few weeks have been rough. So has the last year, and not only in the markets. I’m not getting into politics here. But I keep noticing the same pattern in my trading account and in the fight business, and I wanted to write it down.

The stomach, not the brain.

Peter Lynch ran and built one of the best records in investing history. His line: “The key organ in investing isn’t the brain. It’s the stomach.”

His point is that almost anyone has the brainpower to make money in stocks. Far fewer have the stomach to sit through what it takes.

That one landed for me, because I’ve never been the smartest guy in the room. What I’ve had is 20+ years of getting hit, in fights, in business, and in the markets, and still showing up the next day.

A fight camp is a volatile market.

Anyone who has done a real camp knows the curve. Bad sparring days. A cut that goes wrong. Weeks where you feel like you’re getting worse.

The people who stand out aren’t the ones who never take a step backward. Everyone takes them. They’re the ones who take the step back on Thursday and still walk into the gym on Monday.

Markets feel the same. One red week tells you very little. One loss tells you very little about a career. What matters is staying in long enough for experience to compound.

Promoters, I’m in it with you.

I talk to a lot of promoters going through it right now. No money in the bank, a show in six weeks, sponsors who stopped replying. I don’t have a formula for that, and I’ve been in that seat myself more than once.

What helps me is zooming out and asking an honest question: do I have the stomach for this? There’s no shame in the answer being no. But it’s better to ask early than at show four with the credit cards maxed.

Last week I wrote that real money shows up when you’re consistent. The longer I’m in this, the more I think consistency is a stomach problem before it’s a money problem.

Quick one before the rest. 3MF Daily is live. The fight business in 3 minutes, every morning at 8am. This letter is where I think things through. The daily is what happened, so you start your day knowing. It’s free: 3mfdaily.com​

Fighting is a different animal.

The fight business asks for more stomach than most, for two reasons.

First, not everyone in this space is a nice person. You’ll deal with people who’d never last a week in a normal industry, and you still have to do business.

Second, the stakes. In most sports, the worst outcome is a bad score. In ours, people put their health on the line every time they walk out. Anyone who has sat cageside when a fighter goes down and doesn’t get up right away knows the feeling.

I’ve watched fighters on our shows get seriously hurt. More than once I questioned whether I belonged in this business. Where I landed: we chose this path, and the fighters chose it too. If you’re in it, you owe it to them to be in it fully.

Fifteen years in, still a white belt some days.

I’ve been training BJJ for about 15 years, and I’ve been a black belt for a while. And every so often, someone reminds me how much I don’t know. A position I thought I’d solved. A younger guy with a game I’ve never seen. I walk off the mat humbled, and honestly, it’s good for me.

Trading does the same thing. Ten years in, there are weeks I feel like a complete beginner.

That’s the part I wanted to write about most. The moment you think you know it all is the moment you can lose it all. Holding a losing position forever isn’t stomach, it’s ego. A fighter who keeps taking the same fight with the same holes in his game isn’t persistent, he’s stuck. Stomach keeps you in the game. Staying a student is what makes it worth staying.

Wins and losses.

Enjoy the wins. Don’t skip that part. But don’t let the losses tell you more than they should either. One bad night isn’t a verdict.

When I was competing, I learned far more from my losses than from my wins. A win tells you that something worked. A loss tells you exactly what didn’t. I still believe that, on the mat, in the markets, and in this business.

Rocky said it better than any investor: it’s not about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.

I’m still getting hit. Still learning. Still here.

Talk soon,

Adam

P.S. Everything I’m working on lives at adamskovax.com. If you’re building something in this space or have capital to deploy in combat sports, that’s where to find me. Or just reply to this email.

P.P.S. I post more than once a week. Fights and behind the scenes on Instagram @adam_skovacs, the business side on LinkedIn. Follow me on both.