What does playing games have to do with entrepreneurship? A lot. The way you play games provides insight into how you’ll handle challenges in your business, and whether or not you’ll win at the game of entrepreneurship.
Have you ever played the more challenging levels of a game like Sudoku? They have easy, medium, hard, and even a level called diabolical. The same is true of many other puzzle type games.
What typically happens with these games is that you get to the point of being stuck, and can’t figure out what numbers or letters to fill in. And if you’re like a lot of people, all of a sudden, you get to a point where you say, “You know what? Forget it. I don’t want to play this any more. This is too hard.” You may set it aside, and perhaps start another game.
The thing is, entrepreneurship is a game. Capitalism is a game. Free enterprise is a game. When you learn how to play the game, it can favor you.
The thing that separates successful entrepreneurs from wannabe entrepreneurs is that the successful ones are obsessed with figuring it out, and not quitting until they get it right. They want to finish the game they started.
But a lot of rookie entrepreneurs don’t win the game because every time they get to a point where they don’t know the answer, they just give up. They say, “I’m going to start a new game.” They may decide to try real estate or insurance, or technology, or any other number of things, rather than working through the obstacle of the game they were already playing.
The way to win in the game of entrepreneurship is to keep going, when you come up against a problem you don’t know how to handle. Instead of saying, “Oh my goodness. I don’t know if I can do this. Let me go into a whole different business.” you stick with it and put the puzzle together.
So my challenge to you is to stick with things when you come up against a problem you don’t know how to solve. If you do that, you’ll win at the game of entrepreneurship.
