Retiring All Black greats Richie McCaw and Dan Carter got the timing dead right, both for New Zealand and for themselves. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Retiring All Black greats Richie McCaw and Dan Carter got the timing dead right, both for New Zealand and for themselves. Photo / Brett Phibbs
They're driven by a hard-wired, naked ambition to succeed - in business, sport, politics, the wealth stakes - and will stop at nothing to get there. Jane Phare looks at what happens when the pinnacle is reached and life afterwards is looming.
Diane Foreman knows exactly what it's like to lose a "baby".
Her baby in this case was her icecream-making business, Emerald Foods. She offered it to Fonterra. They said no, so she sold it, for an undisclosed sum, to Chinese businessman Jerry Liu earlier this year.
Suffice to say, the glamorous millionaire businesswoman has plenty of zeros in the bank. Not a bad position to be in but, she says, selling a business is "like a grief".
"It's a strange feeling to wake up and suddenly find that everything that filled your mind is gone. No emails, no phone calls, no movie running through your head about what you're going to do that day."
Entrepreneur Diane Foreman sold her icecream-making business to Chinese businessman Jerry Liu earlier this year. Photo / Nick Reed
Selling the business made her feel "very sad", she says. "You have invested your whole life in the people, the brand and the product. It's not made easier by the amount of money you get. You need to prepare for that moment, otherwise there is a big empty space."
She's bought herself some time, buying an apartment in London for "a gap year". There is, she says, "another business left in me" and she'll start looking when she's ready.
While Foreman has it sorted, plenty don't. Littering the world's success racetracks are the deflated remains of highly focused, ambitious achievers who, having reached the pinnacle, have fallen unceremoniously down the other side, their lives spiralling out of control - alcohol, drugs, depression, their relationships breaking apart. The years of striving to reach a goal, set a record, make a top team, become a chief executive, build up a business or make a big pile of dosh have taken their toll.
Call it what you will, Wealth Fatigue Syndrome - known as "affluenza" - or Toxic Success Syndrome, there are no shortage of sufferers. Buzz Aldrin, one step after Neil Armstrong on the moon, crashed and burned afterwards - suffering from depression, alcoholism and three failed marriages. Olympic gold medallist and Tour de France cyclist Sir Bradley Wiggins indulged in marathon drinking sessions when depression hit after the 2004 Athens Olympics.
This year Markus Persson, the billionaire gamer, startled his Twitter followers with an admission that he was unhappy and lonely, despite having more money than he knows what to do with. Since selling his gaming company, Mojang, to Microsoft for $3.7 billion last year, the Swedish creator of Minecraft has lived the good life, partying hard in his $104 million Beverly Hills mansion.
I can't remember ever having the time to notice trees or even walk through a park in another country when I wasn't hurrying to the next meeting.
But less than a year later he was tweeting mournfully from the Mediterranean island of Ibiza, "partying with famous people, able to do whatever I want and I've never felt so isolated".
Among the deluge of fatuous, hand-wringing and nasty replies was a tweet saying.
"What about spending time with family?"
Not such a silly idea, say the experts. Auckland psychotherapist Mary Farrell is unequivocal in her view. If high-achieving Type A personalities - or any of us for that matter - don't want to feel sad and lonely, they need to put effort into maintaining strong relationships with family, partners and friends.
The trouble comes, she says, when those relationships have folded along the way while the high achiever is climbing relentlessly and, at times ruthlessly, to the top.
Farrell, who has counselled some very wealthy and famous clients in the past 26 years, says the old adage "money can't buy you happiness" is true. She uses the word "desolation" to describe what many successful people feel when the phone stops ringing and the adoration has faded. "They get drunk or take drugs to get away from the pain of it. Cocaine is a big one among wealthy people."
But, she says, many handle that transition - from success and adulation to an ordinary life - well because they have the right people around them.
Former top sportswoman and sports manager Glenda Hughes agrees. Pick your team, she says, that group of trusted people, including family, who will give unconditional support before, during and after the ride.
The problem with latecomers, she says, is that the top sportsperson, politician or millionaire business mogul doesn't know who to trust, what the motivation for the friendship is. Cynical, perhaps, but Hughes has seen it all before.
Sports manager Glenda Hughes says she has seen it all before.
She has managed a string of great athletes - including former Silver Ferns captain Bernice Mene, Olympic equestrian Mark Todd and swimmer Danyon Loader, top rowers Rob and Sonia Waddell, and former All Black and Blues coach Tana Umaga. Her advice never changed.
Choose your team and learn to compartmentalise your life: wear the sponsored gear, sign autographs for fans and make media appearances as part of the job, she says. "And then you go home to the normal life."
The problem comes when that normal life, and those in it, have been neglected. Hughes is becoming increasingly concerned about the impact of social media on high achievers, including sports people, as she witnesses them sharing every part of their personal lives with thousands of followers.
"What they're doing now is having their own conversation with half the country. What's going to happen when suddenly no one's interested in the conversation?"
For Foreman, her first "what now?" experience came nearly 20 years ago after she and former husband, Bill, sold Hamilton plastics company Trigon for $130 million. Suddenly, there was no business to run. As an antidote, the couple bought a yacht and sailed round the Pacific but Foreman was soon back in the game, building up the Emerald Group.
Now, with the sale of Emerald Foods, she's back in the same place, but delighted to find herself noticing leaves changing colour as she strolls through London's Hyde Park.
"I can't remember ever having the time to notice trees or even walk through a park in another country when I wasn't hurrying to the next meeting."
The other day, she says, she noticed a woman in a restaurant working on two phones and an iPad at the same time.
"I realised that just a few months ago that was me and took enormous pleasure in slowly eating my lunch and just watching her."
Foreman agrees that trying to achieve a balance between work and family is essential, acknowledging that often during the process of growing a business the family suffers. "I am the first to admit that my children didn't get enough quality time."
Rich-list entrepreneur Tony Falkenstein agrees that having an "inside team" is essential.
His team includes his wife of 35 years, Heather, and his brother, Tom, in Australia, with whom he talks weekly and exchanges advice.
The owner and CEO of Just Water International says he works consciously to give equal focus to business, family life and his health.
Rich-list entrepreneur Tony Falkenstein agrees that having an "inside team" is essential.
For that reason, he says, he plays tennis and does Pilates with Heather rather than indulge in time-consuming pastimes like fly fishing or golf.
He's lucky to have a "glass half-full" outlook on life.
Says Heather: "Tony can be having the biggest business crisis. He tells me and I can't sleep all night, while he goes straight off to sleep, saying in the morning that he has the solution."
Falkenstein admits to a "horrible" time in his business life during the 80s when, fresh out of a successful career as CEO of Optical Holdings and "bulletproof", he launched Zee Watch, selling watches from Hong Kong. In three months he sold 27,000 watches.
Swatch, launched at the same time, sold 6000.
The problem was Falkenstein's plastic watch straps became brittle and broke, resulting in a storm of complaints.
"They all came back and I had a two-year guarantee." Falkenstein decided to tough it out, paying back money to customers. "The money meant nothing to me. It was the loss of face ... I didn't go into depression but certainly was depressed." It took him a year to get over it, he says.
Helping high-performance sports people cope with setbacks and pressure was part of Hughes' job when she was taken on by the New Zealand Sports Foundation (now High Performance Sport NZ). Much has changed in recent years, she says, with sporting organisations like the Rugby Union, New Zealand Cricket and Netball New Zealand running programmes to help athletes cope with everything from sudden new-found wealth and sponsorship, success and failure, and planning for life afterwards.
Those who don't cope and spiral into alcoholism, drug dependency or depression probably had those tendencies anyway, she says. But the pressures of a high-performance career means setbacks can be enough to push a sportsperson over the edge.
"Unless you prepare yourself properly for the changes that are going to happen when you stop anything high profile, it is going to be an issue," she says.
Former Olympic rower Nathan Twaddle remembers the moment, in late 2010, that he decided to chuck in his career as a rower. One morning he slept through the alarm, missed training and made an impulsive decision. "I decided that was it."
It was a decision he was to later regret. He earned a bronze in Beijing in 2008 and had the 2012 London Olympics in his sights before he quit.
Nathan Twaddle remembers the moment that he decided to chuck in his career as an Olympic rower.
"It was pretty hard sitting on the couch and watch the rowing crews do so well," he says.
That wasn't the only tough part. Armed with his commerce degree, Twaddle tried to get a job in banking but the after-effects of the GFC and the fact that, at 34, he had no work experience, meant he couldn't "get through the door". After six months he was back working with rowers but the transition wasn't easy. "I was not part of the team any more and I felt clumsy trying to do this new job."
That new job was as an adviser with Sport NZ's Athlete Life programme, helping elite sports people transition to a normal life, a job he still does.
There is, he says "a massive change of identity" when an athlete has reached a pinnacle, competed in Olympic and Commonwealth Games and world championships, and then faces a vastly different life. Some struggle with depression and relationship problems, and are helped by psychologists working with the Athlete Life programme.
Twaddle has seen plenty of athletes go through that struggle. He tells them it's perfectly natural to feel down but that they have the skills - the ability to set goals, work hard, work as a team, focus on the task and deal with setbacks - to make them successful in the next phase of their lives.
Twaddle is already gearing up for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. This time he's not training but helping other athletes to plan for when it's all over. Athletes who plan ahead cope better, he says. "But it can still be a mental shock when it happens. The best thing we can do is warn athletes that it's coming."
Coping with success, and all that comes with it including life afterwards, is not a new problem. Back in the 60s, a young All Black centre, Ron Rangi, started his rugby career as a teetotaller. By the time his short life - 47 years - was over, he had wrecked his health by binge-drinking.
Former All Black Pita Alatini became depressed and hit the bottle after he was dumped from the ABs in 2001. "I was shocked when I was unexpectedly dropped from the team."
He spoke to no one, fearing his problem would be seen as a weakness after the prestige of wearing the black jersey. The counselling help Alatini finally received was "awesome", he says. "You need people who are there for you no matter what."
Retiring All Black greats Richie McCaw and Dan Carter got the timing dead right, both for New Zealand - in terms of adding invaluable experience in the Rugby World Cup - and for themselves.
Now, after speaking out in support of depression and mental illness awareness, he's become aware of other top players who have expressed relief that they are not alone.
"There have been a few that I've played with who are similar or worse cases. They are building themselves back up now. There is no shame in it."
Apart from planning for the transition from high performance to a more ordinary life, Hughes says one of the most important decisions for top sportspeople is when to retire.
"There's nothing sadder than seeing a top sportsperson come down the other side."
She thinks the retiring All Black greats, Richie McCaw and Dan Carter, got the timing dead right, both for New Zealand - in terms of adding invaluable experience in the Rugby World Cup - and for themselves. But after the euphoria of New Zealand's triumph over Australia, it can't have been easy for retiring All Blacks to take a step back. After the final whistle at Twickenham, McCaw said he took a long time to take off the black jersey.
Once it was off and he had announced his retirement, McCaw instantly became a "former All Black".
High-profile politicians often don't have the luxury of timing their retirement. One election and the party can be suddenly and devastatingly over. Wellington-based Hughes has got to know many politicians in her various roles over the years and says, for many, life after the Beehive comes as a shock.
"If they are at that level for a long time they actually lose a whole skill set because they're used to walking out the door and the car is there waiting, and the flight booked."
"If you don't prepare yourself for the things that are going to change, it's a bit like walking into a new job and not knowing what to do."
Former beer baron Sir Douglas Myers, 77, never had a "what now?" moment but he does remember feeling daunted as a young man about to take on the world of business.
Former beer baron Sir Douglas Myers, 77, never had a "what now?" moment - he was always too busy planning for the next decade - but he does remember feeling daunted as a young man about to take on the world of business.
"I can remember very clearly at 30 feeling a bit overwhelmed by the realisation that the 'learning phase' of life was over and one had to now actually make something from all that education and training."
Thirty years later, he decided he'd had enough of business, bought Senses, a 59m superyacht, and sailed the world. At 70, realising that retirement wasn't for him, Sir Douglas launched back into business.
"I have ended up controlling two businesses with a global presence and a lot of growth," he says. "I was pretty conscious that to retire and do nothing challenging would be destructive and it's given me a new lease of enthusiasm."
Now suffering from cancer and undergoing regular chemotherapy treatment, Sir Douglas says he has put a lot of effort into arranging for his three children to be able to handle the family businesses in the future.
"If I get a couple more years, I think I'll be very relaxed about moving on."
He's witnessed others struggle with life as they age, "unable to juggle failing powers and capabilities", he says. "I was always able to distinguish between those things you could control and maintain and those, like fame, that others could turn off, the lack of which often seems to bring despair."
I was always able to distinguish between those things you could control and maintain and those, like fame, that others could turn off, the lack of which often seems to bring despair.
Sir Douglas' advice for high achievers is to "depend on yourself and maintain your independence".
As for money, he sees it as a means to be able to spend as much time as possible doing the things he likes, including philanthropy.
Both Foreman and Falkenstein talk about "leaving something behind" as part of moving through business life. Foreman wants to help other businesswomen with their careers, while Falkenstein says he gets pleasure out of his 18-year mentoring involvement with the Entrepreneurs' Organisation, and giving money away to causes he is passionate about like educating young people about business, and obesity.
Alatini, too, talks about giving back. As coaching director for Pakuranga United Rugby Club, he's working on his coaching skills and hopes to get an opportunity to work his way up and "have a crack at the next level".
In the meantime he gets a kick out of working with schools and the up-and-coming youngsters who could well become rugby greats. "It's given me a new lease of life," he says.
