Play the Tuba

I was a big band geek in high school. The biggest, actually. I went onto become drum major, both in high school and college. Some of my fondest memories.

Anyway, about halfway through my junior year of high school we got a new band director. A guy that was 22 years old, a tuba player right out of the University of Texas. He was keen to shake things up.

Early on, during one of the rehearsals, he looked around and said, “Jesus Christ, this sounds like the Okeechobee Swamp Kazoo band!”  Later, he explained to me: we were full of flutes, clarinets, and saxophones, but we had nothing in the way of tubas, trombones, or baritones—low brass. It gave the band a reedy sound.

This is a naturally occurring phenomenon in many high schools. When a kid wants to learn an instrument, the cheapest options are typically flutes, clarinets, and saxophones, which back then, cost $300-$500. If a kid wanted to play the tuba, that was a $3,000 investment. So especially in a poor region where I grew up, families went for the less expensive option.

So the band director, John Kuhner, capped the number of flutes, clarinets, and saxophones at 8 each. He had auditions, and if you didn’t make the top 8, you had to learn a different instrument—or leave the band.

Well, nobody left the band, but kids did learn other instruments. The school owned a bunch of low brass instruments, so the kids just borrowed those and practiced while they were at school.

It made a huge difference. We had a big, full, brassy sound, and my senior year, we dominated every competition.

One of the freshmen that year started out as a saxophone player who didn’t make the cut. He picked up the tuba, and got so good at it that at the age of 14, he tried out for the Cadets of Bergen County, one of the best DCI drum and bugle corps in the country—and made it. He became one of the stars of the Cadets, and went on to become drum major—for four years in a row, becoming one of the all-time legends of DCI.

Kuhner explained this phenomenon to me: if you play the clarinet, you are in competition with thousands of other clarinet players. If you play the tuba, you are in competition with nobody. Ergo, play the tuba in high school, because every college, university, or drum corps needs tuba players. You’ll always have a job. And you’ll probably get a scholarship, and go to school for free. That $3,000 investment pays off huge.

I never forgot that lesson. And I thought of it again while watching the Winter Olympics. For example, basketball is a global sport. And the NBA, the pinnacle of competition, only accepts about two dozen new players each year—from around the world, with millions of people competing for those spots.

But let’s say, for example, you tried out luge when you were a kid, and spent your formative years driving up to Lake Placid to practice. How many lugers are there in the world?  200?  Your chances of getting a medal at Olympic competition are pretty good.

There are constraints, obviously. A family whose child is a luger needs significant resources, without much in the way of financial gain. And basketball is free, and you can get paid millions. But you get the picture.

The key point: if you want to be successful, do something nobody else is doing.

In my own case, I was once a trader. Shit trader out your ass. There are thousands of traders. And this is perhaps a topic for another time, but the most profitable traders don’t automatically end up running the most money. Money management is a business, and some traders aren’t good businessmen.

So I decided to write financial newsletters. When I started, there were only a handful of good ones. I have never told anybody this: after I quit Lehman, I went home and emailed about 15 different newsletters, asking them about their business, lessons learned, stuff like that. Some of them told me that I should abandon all hope ye who enter here, the newsletter business is a graveyard, and that I had no shot. Nothing could have served as a better motivator.

My brother Chris got into a very niche business 20 years ago—brokering dental practices. This is harder than it sounds. It has taken him two decades to build this business, but now he is one of the major players in the Midwest. He works hard, but he is killing it. Sure, he has attracted some imitators, but he’s gotten such a huge head start that he has clear sailing until he retires, subject to economic cycles. Brokering dental practices—who knew there was money in that?

There is money in everything.

Here in Myrtle Beach, there is this giant Taj Mahal tourist trap called Broadway at the Beach, with a bunch of retail and attractions. In the middle of it is a giant pond. In the pond are carp. Some years ago, a guy installed a bunch of coin-fed fish food dispensers for people to stick in quarters and feed the fish. The fish are fat. So is the fish food guy. I know how much money that guy makes, and I’m not at liberty to say, but let’s just say it won’t fit in a pocket.

You would not believe the stories I have heard over the years, of people who made money in all these bizarre fucking ways, doing very niche things—playing the tuba. Think about this: the guy who makes the fake grass for the gas station sushi probably has a phone number in his bank account. And he probably didn’t set out to make fake sushi grass when he graduated from high school. He probably fell into it. How many manufacturers of fake sushi grass are there?  Probably not that many.

Playing the tuba.

An economist would look at this and call it a market inefficiency. And that’s one of the things I hate about the stock market—so many dildos trying to have it all, and it arbitrages away all the easy profits. So if you want easy profits, trade something that nobody else is trading. Trade propane. Trade rough rice. There are only a few dozen people in the world that do it. Your odds of getting a medal are much higher.

That’s the beauty of capitalism—the division of labor, and specialization. The more advanced an economy is, the more specialized it is, and the more people you have brokering dental practices and making fake sushi grass and things like that. There are literally a million different ways to become a millionaire in this country, that don’t involve banking or tech. All the smart people flock to banking or tech because, well, that’s where the money is. It’s also a big fucking food fight, and the attrition rate is high. I would argue that’s not where the easy money is at all. That’s the hard money. The easy money is making nozzles, or something like that.

We view these niche businesses with a great deal of contempt. They’re not the high class businesses. The guy making nozzles doesn’t care. He’s making haystacks of cash, and doesn’t care what you think of him. That’s not to say that manufacturing is easy, but it is a hell of a lot easier than banging your head against the wall manipulating spreadsheets and being disappointed with your bonus every January.

The tuba is a badass instrument, by the way. If I could do it all over again, I would.

Go fuck yourself,

Jared

Music Recommendation: Here’s a nice video of GWAR doing a cover of Pet Shop Boys. Hilarity ensues.

P.S. We’re Gonna Get Those Bastards will always be free. Feel free to forward to as many people as you like.